Geneva (Switzerland): Dealing a major blow to elephant conservationists, the 57th session of the Standing Committee for the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species (CITES), yesterday approved China as an importer for 108 tonnes of elephant ivory, on for sale from four southern African nations.

China is known to be the world’s largest illegal ivory market, a fact evidenced by several multiple tonne seizures made at Chinese ports in recent years. Legalising the sale will only facilitate flushing of illegally acquired ivory into the mainstream market with competitive prices making them an attractive choice to consumers, conservationists argue.

Ashok Kumar, Vice-Chairman, Wildlife Trust of India (WTI), labeled this ruling as a major step backward in curbing illegal ivory trade and elephant poaching which is likely to impact the Asian elephant population as well.

Peter Pueschel, Program Director and one of the representatives for International Fund for Animal Welfare (IFAW) at CITES, raised an intervention on the floor objecting to China’s designation citing statistics from the “2007 ivory trade poll report”. “…Allowing new ivory to be imported into China will stimulate demand and create loopholes for illegal ivory to be laundered into the legal market, to be sold in stores or online to Chinese citizens or foreigners,” said Pueschel.

The report compiled by this leading elephant protection organisation, highlights the low awareness of the current ivory control system in China, and also citizens’ unwillingness to comply with this framework. According to the report, among the 14.5 per cent that were actual admitted consumers of ivory, 75.7 per cent would willingly violate the control system in order to obtain ivory at a cheaper price.

Earlier this month, in Mombasa, Kenya, 18 African elephant range states during the second African Elephant Coalition (AEC) meeting, had also discussed and unanimously agreed that China was unfit to be a trading partner for the stock pile sales.

Michael Wamithi, Program Director for IFAW’s global elephants program, and former director of Kenya Wildlife Service, who closely followed the proceedings of this meeting contended that in no way should China have been accepted. “There remain to be an estimated 20,000 elephants slaughtered annually for the trade in their tusks. Poaching has reached a level surpassing that which was experienced before the initial 1989 ban on the ivory trade. African elephant range states clearly do not have the capacity or resources to combat these massive attacks on their countries’ wildlife heritage and the burgeoning markets in China are only fueling these attacks. It is our duty as a civil society to step in and mitigate these inequities,” Wamithi said.

Major portion of the ivory on sale by Botswana, Namibia, South Africa and Zimbabwe was acquired through culling, a means for population control, by killing the elephants. Some portions were also collected from natural deaths and seizures within the respective political boundaries.

This will be the second time in nearly two decades that the international sale in ivory has been authorised since the ban by CITES in 1989.

In the first sale, sanctioned in 1997, Japan was the sole importer in the legal ivory trade. The approval by CITES came amidst objections by conservation organisations based on evidence, that the domestic market was not under control. Last year, it was granted the status of trading partner allowed to import the approved ivory after the Standing Committee decided that Japan had established sufficiently strong domestic trade control systems.

In 1989, CITES Parties listed the African elephant on Appendix I, effectively prohibiting all international trade in elephants and their derivatives, including ivory, but in 1997 this was resanctioned and certain populations were down-listed to Appendix II, allowing certain trade with special permissions from CITES.

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