TRAFFIC - WildlifeTrade; News - Zimbabwe moves to tighten ivory

Zimbabwe has tightened legislation governing the legal trade in ivory souvenirs

—The government of Zimbabwe has revoked the right of licensed domestic ivory traders to issue “Short Export Permits” at the time ivory products are legally purchased as souvenirs.
The move will stop abuse of the legal trade in ivory souvenirs.
“Zimbabwe believes in sustainable and legal wildlife trade, but we will not tolerate unscrupulous individuals who abuse the system”, said Mr Vitalis Chadenga, Director General of Zimbabwe Parks and Wildlife Management Authority.
“We are committed to curtailing any illegal trade in ivory from our country and request the co-operation of the global community to help us achieve that objective.”
All Parties to CITES (the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora) have been asked not to authorize the import of ivory carvings when an individual presents a Short Export Permit from Zimbabwe.
Formerly, such Permits were supplied by Zimbabwe’s CITES Management Authority to licensed curio traders who could issue the document to souvenir buyers at the time of purchase.
CITES Parties have authorized such trade in ivory carvings from Zimbabwe for non-commercial purposes since 1997, when the country’s elephant population was transferred to Appendix II of the Convention.
But that decision did not allow trade in raw ivory, which was never intended to be covered by the Short Export Permit system.
However, documented cases have come to light whereby unworked elephant tusks were being illegally offered for import to a number of countries using Short Export Permits.
Now anyone wishing to take ivory carvings out of Zimbabwe will need to obtain an export permit from one of three CITES Management Authority offices in Harare, Bulawayo or Victoria Falls.
“TRAFFIC applauds the Zimbabwe government for this positive development,” said Tom Milliken, Regional Director of TRAFFIC’s programme for east and southern Africa.
“It’s the right thing to do and sends a clear message against illegal trade practices.”
Earlier this year, the Elephant Trade Information System (ETIS) report prepared by TRAFFIC on behalf of CITES Parties noted the Zimbabwe government had previously suspended trade in ivory products because of abuse of the regulatory system.
The rule changes were announced through an official Notification to all CITES Parties issued by the Convention’s Secretariat on 16 August (Notification No. 20010/024).
Zimbabwe has the third largest elephant population in Africa, with nearly 100,000 animals, according to the African Elephant Database of the IUCN/SSC African Elephant Specialist Group.
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TRAFFIC - Wildlife <b>Trade</b> News - Thai Customs seize four suitcases <b>...</b>

Customs officers display the 4 seized suitcases containing a total of 90 kg of ivoryIn yet another important ivory seizure at Suvarnabhumi International Airport this year, Customs officers have apprehended 90 kilogrammes of ivory from a passenger attempting to smuggle it into the country packed inside four large pieces of luggage.

The 62-year-old Malaysian national was stopped at International Arrivals on the 28th August after Suvarnabhumi Airport Passenger Control Customs Bureau officers found 16 pieces of cut ivory upon searching the man’s bags.
The suspect had arrived on an Ethiopian Airlines flight from Addis Ababa to Bangkok. The ivory was confiscated and the case is now under review by the Customs Department.
The latest seizure underlines the important role Customs officers play in the war on illegal wildlife trade.
The Thai Royal Customs has been at the helm of a string of headline-grabbing ivory seizures since late 2008. The department also made three huge seizures this year, netting two tonnes of ivory in February, 1.4 tonnes in April and close to 800 kilogrammes in July; all at the Suvarnabhumi International Airport.
“The Thai Royal Customs is committed to taking strong measures to ensure that proper legal import and export procedures under the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Fauna and Flora is adhered to at every check-point across the country especially Suvarnabhumi Airport,” said Mr. Ekalarp Rattanarut, Director of Suvarnabhumi Airport Passenger Control Customs Bureau.
Although Ethiopia has made strides addressing illegal trade in ivory in recent years, its airport in Addis Ababa remains a major transport hub through which contraband ivory continues to move.
China, for example, made 139 ivory seizures in 2009 alone from Chinese nationals coming from Addis Ababa on Ethiopian Airways flights.
Thailand, together with Nigeria and the Democratic Republic of Congo, were identified as the three countries most heavily implicated in the global illicit ivory trade in the most recent analysis of the Elephant Trade Information System (ETIS), the world’s largest database of elephant product seizure records.
ETIS is managed by TRAFFIC on behalf of Parties to the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora (CITES).
“The Customs officers responsible for this ivory seizure in Thailand are to be commended, although the fact this trade continues illustrates that Thailand’s domestic ivory market remains a serious issue,” said Chris R. Shepherd, Deputy Regional Director of TRAFFIC Southeast Asia.
“Unless Thailand starts making ivory seizures in the marketplace, we fear its ivory trade will continue.”
“Airlines also need to be increasingly aware and vigilant in order to ensure they are not used and therefore implicated in the global ivory trade,” he added.
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Trade in Mammoth Ivory

It is 4,000 years or more since the last woolly mammoths, with their spectacularly curved tusks and heavy shaggy coats, roamed the icy wastes of Siberia and Alaska. Climate change and hunting by prehistoric humans are thought to have driven them to extinction.
Although elephants are plentiful in Southern African countries such as Botswana and South Africa, in some countries of Central and West Africa, poaching is now pushing populations to extinction. (photo by Flickr user exfordy)
But the trade in ivory from the tusks of the ancient animals is now booming – and may present a risk to the future of the African elephant, conservationists fear.
The bodies of thousands of woolly mammoths have been found preserved in the frozen Siberian tundra, and the tusks are the best-preserved part of all.
According to a report, as much as 60 tonnes of Siberian mammoth tusks are being exported from Russia every year, mainly to China, where they end up in the workshops of its flourishing ivory-carving trade, being turned into brooches, pendants, figurines and thousands of other ivory objects, and sold around the world.
Conservationists are concerned that this legal trade could be used as a front for the laundering of illegally poached elephant ivory, thereby fuelling the poaching of elephants. The trade in African elephant ivory was outlawed by the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species, Cites, in 1989, to halt the plunge in elephant numbers.
“Wild elephant populations were decimated by the ivory trade. By the time the 1989 Cites ban came into force, Africa’s elephants had been reduced by more than 50 per cent,” said Mark Jones, programmes director at Care for the Wild, the international wildlife charity which commissioned the mammoth ivory report. “Poaching continues to threaten wild elephants. Anything that encourages the continued demand for ivory products, whether mammoth ivory or elephant ivory, could potentially exacerbate this threat.”
The report, by Edmond and Chrysee Martin, paints a remarkably detailed picture of a flourishing and valuable commerce in extinct animals – worth more than $20m (£12.6m) annually.
It points out that trade in woolly mammoth ivory has been going on in Russia and the rest of Asia for thousands of years, and reached a peak in the 19th century, but during the communist period from 1917 to 1991 business declined sharply.
However, since the early 1990s the domestic and international trade in mammoth tusks has reopened and expanded owing to the freeing-up of the Russian economy, more foreign visitors to the country and greater demand for ivory because of the Cites ban.
“In recent years,” says the report, “60 tonnes of mammoth tusks have been exported annually from Russia, mostly to Hong Kong for carving in mainland China.” There are also carving industries in parts of Russia, but most of these objects are sold on within the country.
Hunting for the tusks is now a major activity. “Every year from mid-June, when the tundra melts, until mid- September, hundreds if not thousands of mostly local people scour the tundra in northern Siberia looking for mammoth tusks,” the report reveals.
“All are Russians, as foreigners cannot obtain a permit to collect tusks. Some tusks are easily seen on the banks of rivers while others are detected on the flat lands. All types of transport are used to transport the tusks: boats, lorries, aeroplanes and even helicopters.”
The centre of the trade is the Siberian town of Yakutsk. Once the tusks are accumulated, traders send large planes to pick them up and send them to Moscow. They are paid for by weight. With the average export price of mammoth ivory in 2009 being $350 per kilogram, or $350,000 per tonne, the current trade is worth about $21m per year to Russia. The vast majority of the tusks are sent to Hong Kong, although some also go to Germany and the US. Nearly all are then re-exported to mainland China, where there is a well-established ivory carving trade, and where they are crafted into ivory objets d’art: some stay in China for domestic sale but many are sent back for sale to Hong Kong, and all around the world.
“Many thousands of recently made mammoth ivory items are for sale in Asia, Europe and North America,” says the report. “People wishing to buy an elephant ivory object may purchase a similar one crafted from mammoth ivory that is legal and free of cumbersome paperwork. Mammoth ivory items are not for sale in Africa. If mammoth objects were to be offered in Africa, they could be a cover for elephant ivory items.”
However, the report’s authors fall short of calling for a mammoth ivory ban, saying there is no evidence that the worldwide mammoth ivory trade is yet affecting either the African or Asian elephant.
“For this reason, and because the species is extinct and large quantities of tusks are still available in Siberia, it is the opinion of the authors that a ban on mammoth ivory commerce is not currently justified,” says the report.
Yet they sound a cautionary note, saying: “In future, a problem could occur if mammoth tusks of Chinese-made ivory items were brought into African countries, where law enforcement is poor, specifically as a cover for illegal elephant ivory carving and sales.”
Although elephants are plentiful in Southern African countries such as Botswana and South Africa, in some countries of Central and West Africa, poaching is now pushing populations to extinction. Chad is thought to have only a few hundred left while Senegal and Liberia may have fewer than 10. Sierra Leone’s last elephants were wiped out by poachers in November last year.
In Kenya, whose wildlife protection measures are among the strongest in Africa, the number of elephants killed by poachers rose from 47 in 2007 to 98 in 2008 and 214 in 2009. Reports suggest that at least 15 tonnes of African ivory tusks and pieces – the equivalent of up to 1,500 elephants – were seized in, or en route to, Asia during 2009.
Mammoth facts: The history – and prehistory – of a colossal creature
The woolly mammoth, mammuthus primigenius, sometimes also called the tundra mammoth, is perhaps the best known of the several species of mammoth which existed in prehistoric times, due to the many well-preserved carcasses found in the frozen tundra of Siberia.
Woolly mammoths were no bigger than Asian elephants, though their spectacular curving tusks were in a class by themselves, reaching up to seven feet long and weighing as much as 70kg each – which, at $500 per kilo for the best quality, is a lot of ivory, and a lot of money for the finder.
Protected against the cold in their long, shaggy coats, they roamed the frozen plains of Eurasia during the Ice Age, but declined to extinction about 10,000 years ago, probably because of human hunting, though it is thought that small groups may have survived into historic times.
It is believed that a dwarf subspecies may have survived on Wrangel Island, in the Arctic Ocean, until as late as 1,700BC.
Rumours persist that the animal may still survive in tiny numbers in the taiga, the vast Siberian plain forest, much of which remains unpenetrated – but nobody has ever provided any convincing evidence.
Copyright 2010 Independent Print Limited
Posted by chrisy58 on September 29, 2010 at 3:49 pm
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