For every one living elephant in Africa, two are dead due to poaching. In the past 20 years, the value of ivory has increased fifteen-fold. Certain African nations justify the trade in raw ivory, while others struggle to conserve the elephant population.
The African elephant was listed under Appendix I of CITES (the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora) in 1989, classifying it as threatened with extinction. This led to a ban on the ivory trade, instigating a furious argument among African nations. Some maintain that banning the ivory trade raises ivory prices, essentially encouraging poaching. Other nations counter that poaching is threatening their elephant herds.
But a total ban on poaching and the ivory trade is the only way to ensure survival of the African elephant. Obtaining ivory from an elephant is gruesome and cruel. The elephant must be killed before the ivory is acquired, and this is usually done through slow and painful stoning, poison darts or slaughtering by machine gun. Approximately 25% of the ivory is in the elephant’s skull and must be extracted by the poacher. The dead elephant corpse is then left in the fields with a mutilated, tuskless head.
The 1989 ban on the ivory trade, paradoxically, has reduced activity in the black market. Although the price of ivory has increased, lifting the ban would only increase the size of the market, causing many more elephants to be slaughtered by poachers. Since the ban, the elephant population has risen, but only in some areas, making the ban still necessary. There’s no way to tell where worked ivory originates, so that lifting the ban would only encourage poaching, making it easier for poachers to disguise illegal origins of ivory.
Between 1979 and 1989, the African elephant population plummeted from about 1,300,000 to 750,000, due mostly to poaching. The International Fund for Animal Welfare (IFAW) estimates that about 20,000 elephants are killed each year for their ivory, and 100 rangers’ lives are lost protecting the animals. At this rate scientists had estimated that the African elephant would be extinct by 1995. The protective measures now taken with the ban since 1989 has only been partially successful, but has undoubtedly helped save the species. The African elephant population equals about 450,000 today, showing that fewer elephants are being killed since the ban.
Certain African nations - South Africa, Zimbabwe, Botswana and Namibia - support resumption of the ivory trade. These countries claim that the repeal of the ban would not lead to substantial poaching, and that regulated trading is beneficial. They believe that elephant culling will help conserve other species as well as boost the revenue for the locals. The enormous ivory market in Japan is stable and pro-trade lobbyists think it is illogical to ban the trade because it leads to illegal trade practices.
But lifting the ban on the ivory trade would not stop -but actually encourage- illegal black market practices. The IFAW claims that lifting the ban would only help poachers disguise illegal trades because monitoring trade would be much harder.
Still, twenty-seven countries oppose a lift on the ban. Many of these countries depend on the revenue brought in by tourism, as elephants are an important attraction. These pro-ban African nations also consider elephants to play an important role in the local ecology. Male elephants are the ones with larger tusks and over time the size of their tusks have declined. This has caused poachers to start poaching females, killing old matriarchs and hindering the elephant herds’ social structure. Since the ban, fewer elephants are being killed, and this is reason enough to continue it.
Strong enforcement on the ban of the trade has helped the African elephants. Kenya’s largest national park, Tsavo, has had a 4.1 percent increase in their elephant population over the past 3 years, according to the Kenya Wildlife Service Director, Dr. Julius Kipng'etich. Banning the ivory trade in Africa clearly has encouraged the reduction of poaching.
Continuing the ban on the ivory trade seems to be the best way to help preserve the African elephant. Dr. Kipng'etich told Environment News Science, “The elephant is Kenya's flagship species and so its distribution and condition is a good indicator of the status of our wildlife.”
For more specific information on the appendices of CITES: http://www.cites.org/eng/app/index.php
For more information on IFAW: http://www.ifaw.org/ifaw_united_states/index.php
