World Sentinel | WWF and TRAFFIC: Ivory Sales Proposal Fails at CITES Meeting

 

Ivory Sales Proposal Fails at CITES Meeting

Newswire Services

March 28, 2010

Washington, DC -- Requests from Zambia and Tanzania to hold one-off sales of their ivory stockpiles failed during a United Nations species trade meeting that comes during a worldwide poaching crisis.
Governments participating in the United Nation´s Convention on the International Trade of Endangered Species of Fauna and Flora (CITES) rejected proposals by Tanzania and Zambia to relax trade restrictions on their elephant populations by moving them from Appendix I -- the highest level of protection under the Convention banning all international commercial trade -- to Appendix II.
The two countries had also initially asked that they be able to hold a one-off sale of their ivory stockpiles. No commercial ivory sale is permitted if elephants remain in Appendix I, but an Appendix II listing allows some regulated international commercial trade.
Neither country was given permission to sell their ivory at this stage or relax trade controls on their elephant populations. The decisions come amid a poaching crisis destroying elephant populations in Asia and Africa.
"WWF and TRAFFIC believe the main factor behind the ongoing elephant poaching is the continued existence of illegal ivory markets across parts of Africa and Asia," said Crawford Allan of TRAFFIC, the wildlife trade monitoring network of WWF and International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN).

World Sentinel | WWF and TRAFFIC: Ivory Sales Proposal Fails at CITES Meeting