Ivory sale row: Tanzania should first put its house in order 

The Citizen.co.tz
By Lucas Liganga

One of the most emotive issues in the country today is what to do with a haul of ivory in government custody.  On the one side is a group, which believes that the 90 tonnes should be sold and the proceeds spent on wildlife conservation, and in the opposite corner, those convinced that such a move would only fuel the slaughter of more elephants by poachers.

The matter became even more poignant last March after the Tanzania Government’s appeal for international approval to sell its ivory stockpiles valued at Sh20 billion was turned down, and some MPs cried foul, accusing neighbouring Kenya of involvement in an alleged conspiracy against their country.

Tanzania’s proposal to sell off the ivory hit a dead end at the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species (Cites) meeting held in Doha, Qatar.

With the Cites decision having slammed the brakes on the sale bid and the tension and finger pointing almost relegated to the back burner, it is time for deep reflection by all the players.

Lesson one: The last such concession that allowed the southern African countries to sell their "legal stocks" immediately resulted in increased poaching in eastern Africa, from where ivory is then smuggled to buyers overseas.

Lesson two: Kenya was hit by a wave of poaching last year, hardening the country’s stance on the matter.

Lesson three: Compared to 2007, poaching figures for elephants quadrupled in Kenya last year. Reliable sources within Kenya’s tourism and wildlife management organisations are laying the blame squarely on the Cites decision at the last meeting that allowed the limited trade in southern Africa.

And lesson four: The hunger and greed for the "white gold”, as ivory is also known, are largely fuelled by China and other south and far eastern countries, with little or no regard to conservation efforts in Africa, which are crucial to support and maintain wildlife and nature-based tourism.

Tanzania Natural Resource Forum (TNRF), an Arusha-based organisation working to improve natural resource management for local livelihoods, says the country should stop blaming Kenya for its failure to sell its ivory stockpiles and instead improve its own wildlife governance.

In a statement posted on its website this week, the TNRF argues that although the debate is interesting, it clouds the root cause of the problem: the fact that despite Kenya’s opposition, Tanzania has serious challenges within its wildlife management systems that must be dealt with before presenting a successful bid to Cites.

TNRF notes that the row between Kenya and Tanzania over ivory sales continues, with the latest episode in a saga that has been running for the past three months being Prime Minister Raila Odinga’s recent suggestion that it would be better to burn the stockpiled ivory as his country famously did way back in 1989.

However, in an interview with the Sunday Citizen, Tanzania’s Minister for Natural Resources and Tourism, Mr Shamsa Mwangunga, said the country had no intention of doing so.

Instead, she added, Tanzania would continue to build its case for the sale of the ivory at the next Cites meeting in 2013.

In Doha, Tanzania lost its bid by a single vote, with its officials blaming Kenya for the setback.

However, according to the TNRF, Tanzania’s own poor wildlife management practices and institutions are largely to blame for the Doha debacle.

“For Tanzania to succeed in three years’ time, government officials must address the root of the problem rather than becoming overly preoccupied with Kenya,” TNRF observes.

The forum says no one is of the opinion that elephants are endangered in Tanzania. Their population has doubled since the 1989 Cites ban on ivory trade.

The big issue is whether if Tanzania is allowed to sell the ivory, this will encourage more poaching of elephants or boost conservation.

Zimbabwe, South Africa, Botswana, and Namibia have in the past been granted approval through Cites for limited ivory sales, hence the need for Tanzania to clearly demonstrate that illegal stuff will not be mixed with the stockpiled ivory, TNRF adds.

“This means having effective and transparent enforcement measures, and proving that ivory sale revenue will benefit local wildlife conservation,” TNRF says.

It must also demonstrate that the money will be used to compensate the communities that suffer extensive damage to crops by elephants, as Tourism minister Mwangunga has pledged.

Tanzania’s international credibility is weak on these key points. The TNRF says there is little evidence that it has been effectively curbed the illicit ivory trade within its borders. Major recent ivory seizures in Asia have been traced back to Tanzania.

If the government is serious about selling its ivory stockpiles at the next Cites conference, it must improve wildlife conservation back home.

“There is no need to blame other countries and external interest groups.  This way, Tanzania stands a good chance of success next time around,” say stakeholders in the tourism industry.

A report released in March by the London and Washington, DC-based Environmental Investigative Agency (EIA), shows that Tanzania’s house is far from being in order.

The EIA was established in 1984 to investigate, expose and campaign against the illegal trade in wildlife and the destruction of the natural environment.

Working undercover to expose international environmental crime – such as the illegal trade in wildlife, illegal logging and trade in timber, and the worldwide trade in ozone depleting substances – the EIA has directly brought about changes in international laws and the policies of governments, saving the lives of millions of rare and endangered animals and putting a stop to the devastating effects of environmental criminals.

The report titled, ‘Open Season—The Burgeoning Illegal Ivory Trade in Tanzania and Zambia’, says the poaching threat in Tanzania is most pronounced in the Selous Game Reserve.

This unique world heritage site covering 50,000 square kilometres is Africa’s largest protected reserve, and contains one of the continent’s largest elephant populations.

During the last big wave of elephant poaching that hit much of Africa in the 1980s, the Selous lost 70,000 elephants. Yet a catalogue of reports and evidence show that the reserve is still poorly protected and wide open to poachers, who are often assisted by corrupt game scouts.

In 2007, the findings of an EIA investigation were presented to the Minister for Natural Resources and Tourism.

It cited the complicity of a range of government officials in the illegal trade. One trader stated that he could procure significant amounts of ivory on demand from a senior officer from the Wildlife Division in the Selous, says the report.

Recent reports state that at least 50 elephants a month are being poached in the Selous.  The proportion of elephant mortality attributed to illegal killing, which provides an index of the poaching threat, rose from 18 per cent in 2004 to 63 per cent last year.

It says aerial observations in one sector of the game reserve during 2008 recorded 53 recently poached elephants, compared with 18, the previous year.

Field investigations by EIA show continued flow of ivory out of the Selous. Poachers enter the reserve for periods of around two weeks and kill an average of 10 elephants on each trip, according to the report.

It says the poached ivory is then buried in remote locations on the edge of the reserve until it is sold to traders, usually from Dar es Salaam. The transactions take place in villages that have become known hotspots for ivory trading.

The report says this is the case across the Selous: from Mloka in the north, through a cluster of villages such as Chumo, in the centre, and down to Liwale, in the south.

Villagers describe a thriving trade in ivory, with buyers from Dar es Salaam staying in local guest houses and concluding deals at Sh45,000 ($34) per kilogramme of ivory. The loot is then transported to Dar es Salaam by bus, or even in government vehicles.

Last November, police seized 28 tusks, weighing 62 kilogrammes in Liwale, on the southern edge of the Selous, and arrested three businessmen from Dar es Salaam.

Police also seized 20 tusks hidden at a guest house in Liwale. During the same month, 33 tusks were unearthed at a house on the outskirts of Dar es Salaam and four suspects arrested. The ivory, weighing over 100 kilogrammes, came from the Selous.

But the bulk of the ivory poached from the Selous is smuggled through Dar es Salaam in containers to markets in the Far East, says the report.

The extent to which organised ivory syndicates target the Selous is evident in the DNA analysis of two major ivory seizures in 2006.

In July 2006, Customs officers at Kaohsiung port, Taiwan, intercepted two containers supposedly containing sisal fibre shipped from Tanga. In one container, bales of sisal were found to conceal 744 elephant tusks. In the other, 350 tusks were discovered – a 5.2-tonne ivory haul.

In the same month, 2.6 tonnes of ivory, comprising 390 tusks and 121 cut pieces, were seized at a house in Hong Kong.

These seizures indicate the involvement of cross-border syndicates, capable of gathering large consignments of ivory for buyers in the Far East.

Samples were subjected to DNA testing to establish which elephant populations had been poached to provide the contraband seized in Taiwan and Hong Kong.

The results revealed that the tusks came from the Selous ecosystem, spilling over into the Niassa Reserve in Mozambique.

The Selous elephant population is being systematically poached to supply the surging trade in illicit ivory, says the report.

Stakeholders in the tourism industry, including international conservation organisations, are proposing that the Selous Game Reserve be transformed into an independent wildlife agency. This, they argue, will boost anti-poaching measures in the game reserve.

Selous has Tanzania’s most valuable populations of elephants and rhinos, but the animals are facing a risk as great as the poaching wave of the late 1970s and early 1980s.

Mr Richard Rugimbana, executive secretary of the Tourism Confederation of Tanzania (TCT), says selling ivory stockpiles alone won’t help sustain conservation.

“We should have long term anti-poaching measures in place first,” says Mr Rugimbana. “All of us support wildlife conservation because the animals are the leading tourist attraction in Tanzania.”

He says the bid to sell ivory should have been addressed on a wider perspective, including its effects on the tourism industry.

 “It is true that poaching is getting out of hand. And this is one of the issues the government should have addressed before going to Cites with its proposal.”

According to him, the feeling in the private sector is that selling the ivory would have led to a revival of poaching on a massive scale. “We were not asked to make our contributions to the proposal to the Cites global conference in Doha. We just read about it in the newspapers.”

The TCT executive says the government should have given the information to the private sector players and also listened to their views on how to deal with the matter.

“We, the stakeholders in the tourism industry, are heavily involved in wildlife conservation because at the end of the day we depended on the animals for business.”

The chairman of the Hotel Owners’ Association of Tanzania, Mr Damas Mfugale, says the conservation of the Selous should be treated as a life and death matter, as it is a heritage, not only for the nation, but also for future generations.

“Anybody who talks about Tanzania talks about the Selous, Ngorongoro and the Serengeti,” says Mr Mfugale.

The conservation of the Selous should be taken as seriously as that of the Ngorongoro and Serengeti, he says, adding: “The issue here is not the government failing to sell ivory but the need for it to put its house in order before trying to sell the stockpile.”

He says the government should have involved all the tourism industry stakeholders before it attempted to sell ivory, adding that the public-private partnership is crucial even in this industry.

Tuskers

Elephants play a major role in shaping the woodland structure of extensive areas such as the Selous Game Reserve, the second largest World Heritage Site on Earth.

Ivory trade approval requires a demonstration that the elephant population is secure, law enforcement is effective, and that the business will not be detrimental to the animals.

Yet Tanzania is among the largest sources of, and transit countries for Africa’s illegal ivory.

Since the ivory ban, seizures of ivory peaked in 2002, 2006 and 2009.

Tanzania was among the most heavily involved in this trade during each peak, and it was during the same period that the country petitioned the Cites to downlist elephants.

The Selous Game Reserve, the largest protected area in Africa, was ironically among the most heavily poached during the well-publicised slaughters that occurred between 1979 and 1989. At least 700,000 elephants were killed during this period—70,000 in the Selous alone.

In 1988, Tanzania launched a major anti-poaching campaign called Operation Uhai. The combined efforts of wildlife rangers, police and the military quickly brought an end to most of the poaching.

Tanzania joined six other countries in successfully petitioning for an agreement administered by the United Nations, known as Cites, to list the African elephant as an Appendix 1 species. This ruling effectively banned all international trade in elephants and their products.

Publicity surrounding the issue turned public sentiment against the ivory trade that it nearly eliminated demand for ivory worldwide. Western nations helped maintain the calm by pouring large sums of aid into anti-poaching efforts throughout Africa.

Collectively, this was probably the most effective act of international wildlife legislation in history, and public pressure was instrumental in its success.

Tanzania wants to sell the 90 tonnes of its stocks of legally acquired ivory (from culling, or natural deaths).

The country also seeks to have elephant populations downlisted from Cites’ Appendix I (which prohibits all trade in the species) to Appendix II (which allows trade if it is monitored).

But wildlife conservationists have maintained that if this was allowed, it would have amounted to throwing fuel on the fire.

Article at:  http://thecitizen.co.tz/sunday-citizen/40-sunday-citizen-news/2172-ivory-sale-row-tanzania-should-first-put-its-house-in-order