Did you know about woolly mammoth ivory?

It is antique, of course, as mammoths died out thousands of years ago, but the bodies of mammoths living as recently as 2000 BC in Siberia have been exhumed in large amounts for their ivory. So much for resting in peace.

One man has control of 80% of all the mammoth ivory in the world. He decided to carve a throne for President Yeltsin out of the rare tusk and by the time it was ready, Yeltsin was no longer in power!

So now you can buy it for a million $.

Mammoth ivory is red and brown and different from elephant ivory.

The first person to look into this area is horn and tusk smuggling researcher Mr Esmond Bradley Martin (left in the picture) who told us about it today.

Today was an important day for elephants at the CITES conference.

CITES: ELEPHANT VOTE

On Tanzania's proposal to downlist the African elephant to Appendix 2, the votes were 59 yes 60 no 13 abstentions. This also means a one-off sale of stockpiled ivory can not be sold. (In the afternoon a similar proposal by Zambia was also rejected.) A representative from the Tanzanian delegation said it was a sad day for the country.

The sale would have brought in 20m US dollars, worth 4 years of conservation. They wanted to use the revenues to help antipoaching efforts.

He said the ivory being poached is not all from his country:

"Tanzania is a transit for the illegal ivory trade. We have a large coast with 3 major ports. We are surrounded by 6 landlocked countries that need our ports. People hide their ivory in different ways. It isn't all from Tanzania. People in our communities depend on us fighting to get permission to use this resource. We have tried but now the issue is whether the decision will assist anti-poaching. We are sitting on treasures which could be used for schooling, road building, etc and it is a huge resource. The reaction is that we are now in danger of experiencing higher poaching. We have created more hostility between the human beings and the elephants. We felt more people should have been able to speak at this morning's Committee 1 meeting so as to get clarification of grey areas. It was not fair. The decision was based on false info. We will try and appeal this at the plenary. We will fight as hard as poss before accepting defeat."

Mr Ghanim of Qatar added: "A one-off Ivory sale would have helped buy guns and vehicles to chase the smugglers. There was a HEATED debate of both sides. There was a confidential voting. 59 voted yes, 60 no 13 abstained. The proposal was rejected."

When I spoke to the same Tanzanian representative after the press meeting, he said "We are disappointed. All we wanted was a one-off sale and then observe the moratorium for the next six years. It is not fair. Zim SA Ken and Bot were allowed to sell theirs now but we can't till 9 years are up. We are on Appendix 1 and those 4 countries are on Appendix 2. It is a sad day for us."

Other news:

Central Africa has not got back to the secretariat re bushmeat trade. Matter of concern for TRAFFIC. The secretariat was asked to liaise more closely.

Rhinos: 2 days ago. Kenya proposed that parties should destroy stock of horns. And for parties to disclose how much horn stocks they have.

Lots of objection to that.


Interesting BBC article by Richard Black