Scientists urge CITES to reject ivory sale by Tanzania and Zambia

Washington, March 18 (ANI): Scientists are urging the treaty panel at the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species (CITES) to reject ivory sale by Tanzania and Zambia.

The countries at CITES in Doha this week will decide, among other proposals, whether to grant requests to Tanzania and Zambia to lower the protection status of their elephants, allowing them to conduct one-time sales of stockpiled ivory.

Such sales, however, according to an international team of 27 scientists and conservationists, could lead to the increased slaughter of elephants for their ivory throughout Africa.

CITES is an international agreement between the governments of 175 member countries.

Its goals center on ensuring that international trade in specimens of wild animals and plants does not threaten their survival.

The two-week meeting began on March 13 in Doha.

Scientists argue that the convention should reject requests to conduct the sales, which are supposed to be on ivory taken from dead animals or those culled under legal animal control efforts.

In the past, such sales, they argue, have created a demand for ivory on the black market, where the substance fetches prices 10 times those obtained in legal auctions.

This leads to poaching and threatens to reverse the recovery of African elephants observed since the ban on international ivory trade was put in place two decades ago.

"CITES has a tendency to be swayed by proposals suggesting that large species such as elephants can be exploited sustainably and the profits set aside to provide funds for future conservation when there is no evidence that these have ever worked other than superficially in the short term," said Andrew Dobson, a professor of ecology and evolutionary biology at Princeton.

"In contrast, there is evidence that shows how rapidly these schemes lead to loss of the resource species and only short-term profitability to the few individuals who ran the scheme," he added.  

The scientists said that Zambia and Tanzania are major sources and trafficking corridors for Africa's illegal ivory, demonstrated by tons of contraband ivory seized in 2002, 2006 and 2009.

DNA sampling on the 2002 and 2006 seizures traced the majority of that ivory back to those two nations.

In the last 30 years, African elephants have declined to about 35 percent of their original numbers, and their population today stands at less than 500,000.

"CITES must consider the precedent that will be set if these petitions are approved," said Katarzyna Nowak, a postdoctoral fellow at Princeton. (ANI)