Ethiopian Journal

Botswana and at least three other southern African nations will appeal to the United Nations next week to lift a ban on ivory sales, the Environment, Tourism and Wildlife Minister Kitso Mokaila said.  

The Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species will meet in Doha, Qatar, next week where Botswana, South Africa, Zimbabwe and Namibia will seek to end a moratorium first imposed in 1989. The countries need to sell stockpiles of ivory to pay for the conservation of their elephant populations, Mokaila said in an interview on March 9 in Gaborone, Botswana’s capital.

“Our concern is that if we do not sell ivory, we will not be able to sustain those communities and conservation areas where the elephants exist,” he said.

While populations of African elephants are threatened in some parts of the continent, their numbers have surged in southern Africa, damaging the environment. Authorities in those countries want to benefit from the trade in elephant products. Ivory is used in Japan and China in furniture and for carvings, ornaments and trinkets.

Commercial trade in ivory was banned by Cites in 1989. In 2008, the four southern African countries were allowed to carry out a one-off trade in the product.

Botswana has an elephant population of 155,000, southern Africa’s largest, that is growing at 6 percent a year, Mokaila said. The country’s ivory stockpiles are increasing as a result of the natural mortality of the animals and measures used by humans to control their population growth, including culling, relocating elephants and darting the animals with contraceptives.

Kenya Opposition

The ban on dealing in ivory lasts until 2016. Countries opposed to trade in the products, including Kenya, want Cites to extend the ban for another 20 years.

“We have a multi-million pula ivory stockpile that costs Botswana millions to run,” he said. “We don’t have the capacity to keep a 20-year stock.”

African elephants can weigh as much as 6.5 tons and live for up to 60 years. They demonstrate complex social behavior, such as covering dead animals with leaves and twigs and staying by the body for days, according to the Web site of Wayne State University in Detroit.

Elephants tear down trees, threatening ecosystems that animals such as the bush pig depend on, South African National Parks says on its Web site. They also break fences, escape from parks to steal crops and are followed by buffaloes spreading foot-and-mouth disease, it said.

The Cites meeting begins tomorrow and ends on March 25, according to its Web site. (Bloomberg)