Ivory auctions will undercut poachers: UN

Yahoo News 7 Nov 08;

GENEVA (AFP) – A controversial series of legal ivory auctions in southern Africa should undercut poachers who have been charging exorbitant prices in key Asian markets, United Nations conservationists said Friday.

The Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora (CITES), which regulates international trade in endangered species, allowed four African countries -- South Africa, Namibia, Botswana and Zimbabwe -- to hold one-off sales to buyers from China and Japan.

In total the auctions raised 15.4 million dollars, at an average price of 152 dollars per kilogram (2.2 pounds).

John Sellar, an anti-fraud official at CITES, said this controlled sale would undercut the illegal trade.

"If ever there was a demonstration that crime doesn't pay, this is it. The poachers and the dealers in Africa have taken people in Asia for mugs, and they appear to have got away with it for several years," he told journalists.

Some non-governmental organisations have claimed the price of illegal ivory can be as high as 800 dollars per kilogram.

"If any trader in China and Japan, or elsewhere, has been stupid enough to pay those figures, they must have been mad!," Sellars said.

"If next week you're a dealer in illegal ivory and you try and get 4, 5, 6, 7, 800 dollars a kilo for ivory, you're going to be laughed out of the room."

CITES has imposed stiff requirements on buyers of the ivory, which can only be sold within China and Japan and cannot be resold overseas. Both countries were required to create monitoring systems before the sale.

The four southern African countries are home to 312,000 elephants, and their government stocks of tusks came from natural deaths or the culling of herds to keep the population under control.

But the plan has been criticised by some environmentalists who fear it will inevitably stimulate demand and thus provide more opportunities for poachers.

"I believe that auctioning the ivory stockpiles would cause poaching to increase particularly in the central, eastern and western African elephant range states where poaching is not yet properly controlled," famed Kenyan conservationist Richard Leakey said.