Merchants and ivory

Two African states, Tanzania and Zambia, are seeking to change the ban on trade in ivory at the meeting next month of the Convention on the International Trade in Endangered Species (Cites) in Qatar. But the countries face a battle, because other states, such as Kenya and Mali, are strongly opposed to any change and have been lobbying the EU in Brussels this month to support a block to any change to the ban. Tanzania and Zambia wish to sell off their stock of ivory and, if permission went ahead, it would be the third 'one-off' auction of ivory since the world ban came into force 20 years ago last month. The ban was initially successful in halting the huge scale of elephant killings of the 1980s, when Africa's elephant population fell from 1,300,000 to 625,000 in a decade. But following the most recent sale in November 2008 of 100 tonnes of ivory owned by Botswana, Namibia, Zimbabwe and South Africa — bought by dealers from China and Japan — there has been an upsurge in seizures of illegal ivory and of elephant poaching. Supporters of the ban believe the resumption of any trading creates a market into which illegal poached ivory can be laundered, thereby boosting demand for it. In some central and west African countries this is now pushing elephants to extinction, conservationists say. Chad is though to have only a few hundred, and Senegal and Liberia may have fewer than ten. Sierra Leone's last elephants were wiped out by poachers last year. Reports suggest that in Kenya, which has some of the strongest wildlife protection legislation in Africa, the number of elephants killed by poachers rose from 47 in 2007 to 98 in 2008 and 214 last year. It is thought at least 15 tonnes of African ivory — the equivalent of up to 1,500 elephants — were heading to Asia last year. Allan Thornton, head of the Environmental Investigation Agency, the Washington-and London-based group that provided much of the evidence of poaching which led to the original ban, said: " The present level of poaching as a result of the illegal ivory trade is already devastating and wiping out elephant populations across Africa. If this new sale went ahead it would be throwing fuel on the fire. " Tanzania and Zambia want to sell their stocks of legally acquired ivory, from culling or from elephants that …