Ivory Trade

Discussion on Elephant Management and poaching topics
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Re: Elephant Poaching & Ivory Trade

Post by Lisbeth »

Kenya is a prime tourist destination and understands that the wild fauna is essential to tourism. Also South Africa probably knows that, but as there is a surplus of elephants they will most likely try to go the way of permission. The problem is, that once you have started, it will be very difficult to stop and the surplus and much more will be gone in a jiffy 0*\

Most of those countries are not thinking far enough, but only NOW and want to get on board the money wagon as Flutterby says.


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Re: Elephant Poaching & Ivory Trade

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Relative to what I wrote above:

KENYA'S EARNINGS FROM TOURISM SURGE 31.2% IN 2018

Along with tea exports and cash sent home by Kenyans living abroad, tourism is one of the top sources of hard currency for the East African nation.

NAIROBI - Kenya’s earnings from tourism jumped by almost a third in 2018 from the previous year to $1.55 billion, after the number of visitors rose by 37%, the tourism ministry said on Monday.

Along with tea exports and cash sent home by Kenyans living abroad, tourism is one of the top sources of hard currency for the East African nation.

Tourism arrivals were just over 2 million last year, the ministry said, adding that 68 global hotel brands had so far set up facilities in Kenya, whose attractions include white sandy beaches on the Indian Ocean and wildlife reserves like the Maasai Mara.

Government officials hope the start in 2018 of direct flights between Nairobi and New York by national carrier Kenya Airways will help to boost the number of visitors from the US.


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Re: Elephant Poaching & Ivory Trade

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Krugersdorp woman arrested for possession of elephant tusks

10.01.2019 - Natasha Pretorius Journalist

Krugersdorp Police chased a suspicious car to a house where they found elephant tusks

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Police officers holding the elephant tusk they confiscated. Photo: Supplied by Captain Raymond Sebonyane spokesperson for the Krugersdorp police

Krugersdorp Police arrested a woman for being in possession of elephant tusks and what is suspected to be drugs.

On Wednesday, 9 January, at 2.15pm, Krugersdorp Police members were chasing a suspicious vehicle that stopped at a house in Krugersdorp West.

Once there the police requested to enter the house but the owner denied them access. After talking to the owner he eventually granted them access to the house

Upon searching the house they found elephant tusks and substances that looked like drugs.

The police and the K9 Unit arrested a 41-year-old woman.

She was taken to the cells and will appear in the Krugersdorp Magistrates’ Court soon.


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Re: Elephant Poaching & Ivory Trade

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Ex-Zimbabwe mayor arrested with 120kg of ivory

Victoria Falls (Zimbabwe) (AFP) - Date created : 08/03/2019 - 16:52

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Poaching is devastating African elephants -- numbers have fallen by 110,000 over the past decade to 415,000, say conservationists AFP

A former mayor of Zimbabwe's tourist hotspot Victoria Falls was caught with nine elephant tusks weighing 120 kilograms (264 pounds) and arrested with two other suspects, police said Friday.

Sifiso Mpofu, 42, was elected mayor in 2013, serving until July last year when he lost to an opposition candidate.

He was arrested on Thursday night at his house in Mkhosana township, police said.

Acting on a tip-off, police and rangers swopped on the former mayor's house and found him and the two other suspects moving the tusks from a car, they said.

Two other tusks were found in a bedroom during a search of the house.

"Information was received that the accused were in possession of raw ivory," according to a police document seen by AFP.

Mpofu -- who is the younger brother of the country's former home affairs minister Obert Mpofu -- has been charged with illegal possession of elephant ivory.

He is expected to appear in court along with his two fellow suspects before the end of the weekend.

Following his election defeat last year he retreated to his game farm, Sifiso Hunting Safaris, which is situated between Victoria Falls and Hwange National Partk, the country's largest game reserve.

The arrest comes two months after seven Chinese nationals were arrested for money laundering and unlawful possession of rhino horn on December 23.

They were caught with more than 20 kilograms (44 pounds) of rhino horn pieces worth nearly $1 million.

The seven, aged between 23 and 35, are in custody and will return to the Hwange regional court next week.

Elephant tusks are highly coveted in some Asian countries, including China and Vietnam, where they are used for jewellery and ornamentation.

The demand has fuelled a boom in poaching and trafficking in Africa. The continent's elephant population has fallen by 110,000 over the past decade to just 415,000 animals, according to the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN).

© 2019 AFP


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Re: Elephant Poaching & Ivory Trade

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Farking locust! :evil:


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Re: Elephant Poaching & Ivory Trade

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Japan’s new rules for curbing ivory trade won’t work, many experts say

BY RACHEL NUWER - 8 APRIL 2019 - NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC

Starting July 1, anyone in Japan who wishes to register and sell a whole elephant tusk must first prove its age through carbon dating.

According to Ministry of the Environment officials, the new measure is meant to ensure that illegal tusks acquired after 1990, when international trade in ivory was banned, don’t find their way into Japan’s domestic ivory market—now the largest in the world.

More than that, officials believe that carbon dating will prove to be so burdensome as to dissuade private citizens—who hold untold numbers of tusks—from selling their ivory to dealers. As dealers exhaust their remaining stockpiles, this will cause Japan’s market to slowly peter out, they say.

“We expect that the number of newly registered whole ivory tusks that enter into the domestic market will be extremely limited after this,” says Toshio Torii, deputy director-general of the Ministry of the Environment’s Nature Conservation Bureau.

With the new requirement in place, “the trade in Japan will never contribute to poaching or to illegal trade of any kind,” he says.

The carbon dating requirement will apply only to whole tusks registered after July 1, not to the 170 tons of tusks already stockpiled. Nor does it apply to cut tusks or carved ivory. For these reasons, a number of conservationists predict that carbon dating will have little, if any, impact on curtailing illegal ivory trade in Japan.

“I’m totally opposed to any praise for this new measure,” says Masayuki Sakamoto, executive director of the Japan Tiger and Elephant Fund, a nonprofit organization advocating for an ivory ban.

“I’m afraid some journalists and the general public may misunderstand and think that Japan seems to be stepping toward the closure of its domestic ivory market, but that’s not correct.”

Japan’s system for ensuring the legality of its ivory trade has long been criticized by Sakamoto and others. Evidence indicates that traders readily abuse loopholes in domestic laws to launder ivory of unknown origins into legality.

The carbon dating regulation, first proposed in 2017, is meant to close some of those loopholes. But ivory dealers already seem to be anticipating the change, Sakamoto says.

According to data he acquired from Japan’s Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry, dealers reported just 13.6 tons of newly cut pieces in 2017, but in 2018 the figure jumped to 24.8 tons. “Ivory dealers are very clever, and they’ve already changed their strategy,” Sakamoto says. “Now the stockpile of cut pieces is soaring.”

The government has yet to release logistical details of how the new regulation will work. Ivory owners will be responsible for arranging the tests and covering the costs, which could run up to $800 (according to the nonprofit group Traffic, which monitors wildlife trade, whole tusks in Japan sell for an average of $2,000 each).

The tests themselves are straightforward, according to Thure Cerling, a distinguished professor of geology, geophysics, and biology at the University of Utah, who first developed carbon dating methods for ivory.

“My personal feeling, though, is that they should just not have ivory sales at all—that they should just get the stuff out of the marketplace,” Cerling says.

Japan faces increasing pressure from governments and conservation groups to join China, the U.S. and many other nations in banning domestic ivory trade. The government has so far resisted, citing a lack of evidence connecting its ivory market to recently killed elephants in Africa.

“Japan’s regulations are legitimate,” says Hiroki Sato, a deputy director at the Ministry of the Environment. “If ivory derived from poaching is smuggled into Japan, it will be shut out of the domestic legal market.”

Read the original article here: https://www.nationalgeographic.com/anim ... ory-trade/


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Re: Elephant Poaching & Ivory Trade

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Malaysia destroys 4 tons of ivory tusks, products

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Staff at a government waste management facility arrange seized ivory tusks before destroying them Tuesday, April 30, 2019, outside Seremban, Malaysia. Malaysia has destroyed nearly four tons of elephant tusks and ivory products as part of its fight against the illegal ivory trade. (AP Photo/Vincent Thian)

SEREMBAN, Malaysia – Malaysia has destroyed nearly four tons of elephant tusks and ivory products estimated to be worth 13.26 million ringgit ($3.2 million) as part of its fight against the illegal ivory trade.

Water, Land and Natural Resources Minister Xavier Jayakumar says the ivory was confiscated in 15 raids between 2011 and 2017.

The tusks, which were marked, and products such as ivory bracelets and chopsticks were shown to reporters Tuesday before they were to be thrown into a large incinerator in southern Negeri Sembilan state.

Jayakumar said the tusks and products were burned to ensure they wouldn't be stolen and sold back in the black market.

He said Malaysia is committed to eradicating illegal wildlife trading, especially in ivory, and to stop smugglers from using Malaysia as a transit hub.


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Re: Elephant Poaching & Ivory Trade

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\O


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^Q^


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Ivory Trade

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Zimbabwe demands right to sell $300m of ivory to fund game reserves

2019-06-11 20:23 - AFP

Zimbabwe has demanded the right to sell its stockpile of ivory to raise money for conservation, wildlife authorities said on Tuesday, joining other southern African nations in calling for the global ban on the trade in tusks to be relaxed.

Wildlife authorities in the cash-strapped nation estimate the country's decades-old hoard of ivory is worth around $300 million, which they say would help plug funding gaps for game reserves.

The proposal has put it on a collision course with the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species (CITES), which prohibits the sale of ivory to curb poaching.

Zimbabwe, Botswana, Namibia, Zambia have cited the growing number of elephants in some regions in their bid to have the restrictions relaxed.

Spokesperson for Zimbabwe's wildlife authority Tinashe Farawo told AFP that the nations had submitted a joint proposal to CITES and warned: "If we are not allowed to trade we will not take part in CITES discussions on elephants."

"Our decision to sell ivory is not an emotional one. It is a scientific one backed by facts. At independence in 1980 we had 40 000 elephants and the number has more than doubled and yet the land is not expanding," Farawo said.

Zimbabwe has an elephant population of around 84 000 which is nearly double what it can cope with, according to the parks and wildlife authority.

But over the past decade, the population of elephants across Africa has fallen by about 111 000 to 415 000, largely due to poaching for ivory, according to the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN).

In May Zimbabwe sold 100 elephants to China and Dubai in an effort to raise cash. The deal was worth $2.7m over six years according to wildlife authorities.

Farawo called on critics of the ivory sale proposal to "give us money to run our operations," instead of lambasting it.

Wildlife authorities said if approved, it would help them fund operations, buy radios and vehicles for patrols to curb poaching.

"CITES was meant to regulate trade in endangered species but if there is no trade then CITES is not serving its purpose," Farawo said.

Last month Botswana, which has the largest elephant population in Africa, sparked controversy by lifting its five-year ban on elephant hunting citing "high levels of human-elephant conflict".


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