Conservationists look for more concerted effort

The plume of dark smoke that rose over Nairobi National Park in Kenya on March 3 was like a signal, one to tell those who love elephants and other wildlife that the world is taking a stand against poaching and the ivory trade. That day a pyre of 15 tons of elephant tusks had been erected and set alight.

In recent days China's Forestry Administration clamped a ban on the import of ivory carvings from Africa until Feb 26 next year to protect the elephants, and Chinese citizens are being urged not to bring back such products to China. "The ban further demonstrates China's commitment to addressing the unsustainable trade in ivory," says Achim Steiner, under-secretary-general of the United Nations and executive director of the UN Environment Programme.

"Although more needs to be done if we are to fully combat the current elephant poaching crisis, this is a welcome step."

While there is already an international ban in place that generally prohibits the commercial trade of ivory (imports, exports and re-exports), China has decided to apply stricter domestic measures governing the import of carvings of ivory taken from African elephants, suspending the import of such carvings as personal and household effects, he says.

As many as 100,000 elephants were killed in the three years to 2012, the organization that oversees the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species said on March 3, World Wildlife Day. Elephant poaching rates remained virtually unchanged last year compared with 2013, it said, and still exceed natural elephant population growth rates, meaning a continued decline in elephant numbers is likely.

Steiner says: "All efforts to create greater public awareness for the plight facing Africa's elephants, and for the strengthening of policies and legal frameworks at national and international levels that will secure a future for elephants, are critical to tackling the current crisis. The long-term survival of elephants, and many other endangered species, will depend on a combination of a better informed global public, sustained and effective enforcement of existing laws and the strengthening of legal frameworks where they are currently not sufficient."

After torching the stockpile on March 3, Kenya's President Uhuru Kenyatta pledged to destroy all the country's ivory, one of the world's largest stockpiles, in a gesture that recalled the country holding an ivory burn in 1989, giving impetus to the international ban on the ivory trade that remains in force today. While many African countries are in general agreement on the need to stop poaching and the resulting trade, enforcement measures are piecemeal, meaning there are many loopholes that traffickers can use in a trade valued at between $7 billion and $10 billion a year, ranking it fifth behind trafficking in drugs, people, oil and counterfeiting. "It sends mixed signals when Kenya burns ivory stockpiles as Nigeria and Angola promote theirs," says Gao Yufang, a Chinese researcher and conservationist, a graduate of Yale School of Forestry and Environmental Studies. He also notes that travelers have been arrested in Kenya in possession of ivory carvings.

Last month a UN worker was fined KSh1 million ($11,000) by a Kenyan court after she was arrested at Jomo Kenyatta International Airport in Nairobi wearing ivory bangles bought in Congo. However, getting African countries to act in concert on the issue may be difficult. Commercial imperatives mean some countries lack the motivation to enact conservation laws. For example, while economies in East Africa rely on elephants to drive their tourism industries, which contribute more than 10 percent to the economy, other countries practice elephant culling to reduce human-wildlife conflict. "This has created diverse points of view that make it difficult to stop the global ivory trade," says Gao, author of a report titled "Elephant Ivory trade in China; Trends and Drivers", which was published in September. In China, many people think Africa has a big elephant population and that tusks are acquired after the animals die of natural causes. Also, contrary to media reports, carvings in ivory are considered cheap compared with carvings of jade, which tends to undermine claims that retail prices are driven by poaching and illegal trafficking.

"What is important right now is government policing of anti-trafficking laws and awareness campaigns that reconcile different existing perspectives and redefine the problems," Gao says.

"The most important thing right now is policing and awareness," he says, describing Kenya's decision to burn its stockpile as symbolic. The latest burn was the country's third. In the first, in 1989 under the eye of president Daniel arap Moi, five tons of ivory were burned. When Kenyatta set fire to the pyre he promised that his government would destroy 15 tons by the end of the year.

"The executive decision demonstrates the government's commitment to fighting poaching and illegal wildlife trafficking by putting the ivory beyond economic use," says Paul Muya, a spokesman for the government wildlife conservation agency Kenya Wildlife Services.

The burn goes hand in hand with actions to be taken under the Wildlife Conservation and Management Act 2013, which imposes harsher penalties on offenders, he says. The law change was introduced partly in response to a new breed of highly sophisticated poachers working with well-resourced international crime syndicates. Previously, offenders caught with illegal game trophies faced fines of no more than the equivalent of $120 and prison sentences not exceeding one year.

The new law dictates that offenders face a minimum of $11,000 or a prison term of not less than five years. The law has also decentralized conservation and management of wildlife to landowners and managers living around areas where wildlife is located. It promotes wildlife conservation as a form of land use and an opportunity to earn revenue. Its enforcement has resulted in a significant reduction in poaching. Last year 164 elephants were reported to have been poached, compared with 308 in 2013. The previous year 384 elephants were reported to have been poached.

"I think the realization has come to many African countries that conservation is not an option," says Wachira Kariuki, chief executive officer of the Pan African Animal Welfare Alliance. "It's a requirement that we must take hold of, and it's in that spirit that the Tanzanian government last year called for a meeting in Arusha that was discussing trans-border issues on wildlife where we have countries such as Mozambique, Tanzania, Kenya, South Sudan, Uganda, all those countries, and Congo was represented."

Kariuki says African countries need to do their utmost to work together on the issue. The Chinese government has given a much needed boost to such work. When Premier Li Keqiang was in Africa last year, China donated to the Kenya Wildlife Services surveillance equipment worth about $40 million that has night vision. "Previously rangers were ill-equipped to handle poaching at night that was done with poisoned arrows to avoid detection," Muya says. "Now this is a thing of the past." Kenya Wildlife Services has lauded China's one-year ban on ivory imports, and says there has been commendable collaboration between Kenya and China in fighting the ivory trade, and CITES has recognized the two countries' great efforts. However, conservationists have called on China to make an even greater effort.

"The ban definitely signifies to the world that China is taking wildlife crime seriously, but we would like to see more," says Iain Douglas-Hamilton, an elephant researcher and founder of Save the Elephants. "We would like to see a total ban worldwide."

A report the organization funded called "China Faces A Conservation Challenge: The Expanding Elephant and Mammoth Ivory Trade in Beijing and Shanghai" says the country needs policies to regulate the black market, especially the online trade. In 2011, after China intervened over the auctioning of ivory, demand fell 97 percent. CITES says the incidence of elephant poaching has also fallen, but not as sharply.

"The ban by the Chinese government represents a tightening of the noose," Douglas-Hamilton says. "Of course we want a total ban on the ivory trade, and this is the biggest prize." China is watching ivory bans being introduced in the United States state by state, he says, and if similar bans were introduced at a national level this would hugely reduce the demand that is driving the killing of elephants and the trafficking of ivory with its smokescreen of legal sales.

"What's interesting is the gradual shift of the Chinese government toward stricter and more drastic measures to help save elephants. The country is no longer denying that demand for ivory is a problem and they have tacitly encouraged NGOs to help reduce this demand." As part of the response to the elephant poaching crisis, the US government and several of the US states are working to close loopholes in ivory trade legislation by enacting bans or lengthy moratoriums on the sale of ivory.

"Imports and exports of raw ivory and products with ivory are already prohibited by CITES, but sometimes illegal ivory is sold under the cover of legal domestic markets, a process known as laundering," says Susan Lieberman, a researcher with the Wildlife Conservation Society.

"Such laundering is known to be a problem across the world, including in China, and helps drive poaching of elephants. The best way to combat laundering is to close domestic ivory markets." The society is working with African and Asian governments, NGOs and other partners to protect elephants in Africa and Asia and to combat trafficking in ivory.

Lieberman says the US government has therefore decided to take the steps necessary to prevent ivory being sold within the country. Ivory sales are now banned in the states of New York and New Jersey, and similar laws have been introduced in California, Hawaii, and other states. Obviously closing domestic markets is not enough by itself, and a critical need, in the short term especially, is for more effective anti-poaching efforts to protect elephants at key sites across Africa, and indeed Asia, so the US government has launched a new strategy on wildlife trafficking.

Simon Hedges, also of the Wildlife Conservation Society, which is based in New York, says many African countries that have elephants have also taken a prominent stand against poaching and trafficking. "Ultimately, however, the demand for ivory must be reduced very significantly. While there is a very high economic value placed on ivory, the poaching will continue, which is why the society and other organizations are also working to remove consumers' desire to purchase ivory. But the situation in Africa is urgent, and governments, NGOs and citizens must all collaborate now to end the elephant crisis.

"Such collaboration must include demand reduction campaigns that aim to change peoples' behavior but also efforts to stop poaching on the ground and to stop trafficking. And high on the anti-trafficking action list must be closing all domestic ivory markets whether in New York, Los Angeles, Shanghai or Guangzhou." He sees international cooperation as a key to success and says China and the US should work closely together on the issue.

The ban China has imposed on certain types of ivory imports is "a helpful first step", he says.

"What would be a tremendously significant addition, indeed a game changer, would be for the Chinese government to now extend that ban to all domestic sales of ivory too, either as a permanent ban or a lengthy moratorium."

Contact the writers through lilianxing@chinadaily.com.cn

(China Daily Africa Weekly 03/13/2015 page6)