Demand for ivory soars despite ban

Sharp jump in poaching of rhinos and elephants
Nirmal Ghosh Straits Times 25 Feb 12;

BANGKOK: Last week's massacre of almost 300 wild elephants by poachers in a national park in the African nation of Cameroon underscores the tragic reality that the ivory trade is booming, more than two decades after it was banned.

The killings stunned the government, whose wildlife guards are no match for well-armed poachers who are often veterans of civil wars.

There has been a sharp jump in the poaching of elephants and rhinos for ivory and horns. Ivory is prized for carvings in China and for personal seals, or 'hanko', in Japan. Rhino horn is used in Chinese medicine, though there is no evidence it has medical properties.

Last year, the authorities seized 23 tonnes of elephant tusks, from around 2,500 dead elephants - more than in any other year since 1989, when the ivory trade was banned.

The jump reflected 'both rising demand in Asia and the increasing sophistication of the criminal gangs behind the trafficking', the international wildlife trade monitoring group Traffic said in December.

The size of the latest massacre in Cameroon 'has no comparison to those of the preceding years', Ms Celine Sissler Bienvenu of the International Fund for Animal Welfare told a local newspaper, The Voice.

Money from ivory sales to Europe and Asia funded arms purchases for use in regional conflicts, particularly the ongoing unrest in Sudan and in the Central African Republic, she said.

Asian elephants have also come under renewed pressure. This month, a sniffer dog called Tracy tracked down 32kg of ivory hidden in a forest by a poacher. The ivory was taken from an elephant killed in eastern India's Dalma Wildlife Sanctuary.

And this month, in the Malaysian state of Kedah, wildlife and parks enforcers raided two houses, seizing eight tiger skins and nine elephant tusks.

There has been a similar surge in poaching of rhinos. From 2000 to 2007, only about a dozen rhinos were poached each year in South Africa, where nearly 90 per cent of all African rhinos live. But in 2010 the number shot up to 333. Last year, it reached 440.

The craze for rhino horn has left even old mounted rhino heads in museums unsafe. In July last year, poachers broke into Ipswich Museum in Britain and cut off the horn of a mounted Indian rhino.

The Chinese market is the common factor for both ivory and rhino horn. Demand for rhino horn in Vietnam has also soared recently, apparently on rumours that it is a cure for cancer.

In South Africa, the authorities have begun restricting Vietnamese 'hunters' from signing up for legal, controlled rhino hunts where they can take away the horn of the dead animal, provided it is not used for medical purposes.

Vietnamese traders have been arrested trying to smuggle out rhino horns, and in 2008, a Vietnamese diplomat was recalled from South Africa after being filmed buying rhino horn.

US authorities on Wednesday night arrested seven people, including a Chinese national, on charges of trafficking in rhino horn.

There are proposals now for allowing stockpiles of rhino horn - some of which is in private hands - into the market to drive down prices and relieve the pressure on wild populations.

But that approach hasn't worked with ivory, analysts say.

After years of bitter debate, parties to the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species (Cites) in 2008 allowed China and Japan to buy 108 tonnes of stockpiled ivory from Botswana, South Africa, Namibia and Zimbabwe.

The argument was that releasing the stocks into the market would save more wild elephants from being killed.

But studies by the British-based Environmental Investigation Agency (EIA) in 2010 and last year revealed that up to 90 per cent of ivory on sale in China was still coming from illegal sources, and prices of legal ivory had increased to US$7,000 (S$8,760) per kg.

The reality, say analysts, is that putting a product into the market stimulates demand for it.

'In effect,' said Ms Mary Rice, an executive director of EIA, 'instead of stemming the poaching by satisfying the demand, the sale of the stockpiles has simply fuelled the demand for illegal ivory.'