Allowing sales of ivory stockpile increases demand

Today, at the CITES conference, I attended a presentation by three independent scientists about elephants in Africa.

Dr Joyce Poole has studied elephants for 35 years and wanted to share her data.

She showed how elephants are very family orientated and that if the matriarch is killed, the family splits and then it is hard to recover the population.

She also said there is now a new and alarming trend of genital mutilation for medicines and showed some pictures which are too gruesome to put on blipfoto.

Dr Sam Wasser of the University of Washington had information on how the biggest hauls of ivory (the ones so large they must have been organised by sophisticated crime rings) were traced back to Tanzania and Zambia using DNA from tusks and faeces.

He also showed that every time those countries petitioned for an end to the moratorium on their ivory stockpile sale ban, seizures increased, and ivory sales went up.

(This was contradicted the other day by a member of the Zimbabwean delegation who said that selling stockpiles doesn't increase sales.)

Then Mr Iain Doulas Hamilton shared his findings and ended by saying he strongly recommends that Elephants in Tanzania and Zambia remain on Appendix One.

Dr Wasser added that downlisting would be bad for tourism which could provide more money than trading in ivory.

You can find links to his studies and other elephant info here.