Botswana to continue selling ivory every nine years

MARANYANE NGWANAAMOTHO
Staff Writer | Wednesday March 31, 2010 00:00

The recent CITES conference held in Doha revealed that African countries are divided on the issue of selling elephants.

Deputy Permanent Secretary under the Ministry of Environment, Wildlife and Tourism, Edmond Moabi, told the media yesterday that the African Elephant Qualition Group, led by Kenya withdrew their proposal, which was that the selling moratorium of ivory be increased from nine years to 20 years.

'SADC states, which have large numbers of elephants do not have any problem with the nine-year selling period while the Southern, Central and Western parts of Africa are against ivory trade,' he said.  He however, revealed that if they decide not to sell elephants, they would be endangering other animal species that are found in that area or country.  'People who do not want to sell are those who have very little while we have thousands of elephants,' said Moabi.

He said that Kenya and her allies withdrew their proposal when they realised that they might not be successful after Tanzania's proposal to be moved to appendix II was denied.  Tanzania's proposal was turned down on the grounds that if upgraded to appendix II, thus allowing her to sell, this would pave way for more poaching and illegal trading of ivory. 

'So Kenya and her allies realised that it would be difficult to advocate for a 20 year moratorium, and they then withdrew the proposal they had made at the last conference.  We are, therefore, still at the nine-year moratorium,' he said.

For the proposal to be successful, the group had to win two thirds of the votes. Because of such differences SADC agreed to meet again and discuss a way forward that would bridge the gap that exists between SADC nations and the rest of Africa. While SADC has in the past donated elephants to other countries they have failed to collect them.  'This is due to costs involved. It is very costly to transport elephants for very long distances and no elephant has been collected thus far,' said Moabi. He revealed that there is always a provision for countries that cannot control their elephants.  'They can withdraw from CITES and find their own buyers,' he said. 

Withdrawing from CITES, however, would mean that the countries concerned would have to find their own buyers who would also have to withdraw from CITES unless they were never members.  Currently, the only buyers that Botswana has are Japan and China.  At the conference, Botswana was given an award and P100 000 as acknowledgement for being the only country that has been consistent with providing intelligent information on animal theft and control. 

The money will be used for capacity building in the training of the stakeholders involved.