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IN Switzerland next week, Tanzania, Kenya, Gambia and Somalia will seek
a ban on the international trade in ivory as an essential first step towards
saving Africa’s remaining elephants. They will argue that all efforts to
regulate the ivory trade have failed, and that the trade is responsible
for the deaths of up to 100 000 elephants each year.

Some countries in southern Africa, including Zimbabwe, South Africa
and Botswana, oppose a ban. Rowan Martin, the deputy director of research
in Zimbabwe’s department of wildlife, claims that its populations of elephants
are increasing because of his department’s ‘excellent management’. The animals
now need to be ‘culled’, he says. ‘Closing the illegal trade gaps is a waste
of time,’ he claims. ‘The problem is not the foreign importers.’

But several lines of evidence cast doubt on Martin’s claims that Zimbabwe’s
elephants are the best managed in Africa and on the increase. He says that
in the northeast, where Hwange National Park holds the largest populations,
the number of elephants has increased by some 8000 in the past two years.
But the data are based on a survey conducted in 1988 when thousands of elephants
had migrated across the border from neighbouring Botswana. Severe drought
has plagued its northern territories for years, and elephants travel to
Zimbabwe to drink from artificial watering points in the parks. Botswana
counted its elephants in early 1989 when the migrating elephants returned
to its territories. Both countries now want to ‘cull’ what appears to be
virtually the same herds of elephants.

Martin helped to draw up the present CITES system of controls. The experience
of the Environmental Investigation Agency (EIA), based in London, in our
two-year investigation of the illegal ivory trade, strongly suggests that
these controls have failed to protect elephants, even in Zimbabwe.

Poachers have killed some 300 000 elephants in Africa since 1986 when
the new CITES controls took effect, leaving an estimated 625 000 elephants
on the continent. Demand by consuming countries for ivory inspires intensive
poaching, and corruption flourishes everywhere that trade in ivory and rhino
horn occurs, including Zimbabwe. Martin admits, in a recent report on the
ivory trade in southern Africa, that: ‘In the past two years the escalation
of illegal hunting for the ivory within Zimbabwe is very noticeable. As
elephant populations decline in countries to the north, the pressure on
elephants is expected to intensify.’

In fact, severe poaching is already damaging Zimbabwe’s populations
of rhinos and elephants. In the Gona Re Zhou National Park, one of Zimbabwe’s
largest populations of elephants is thought to have been virtually wiped
out by poachers from nearby Mozambique. Zimbabweans, including some government
officials, are reputed to be involved as well. The populations in the Zambesi
valley also seem to be declining because of poaching, ‘culls’ and sport
hunting.

My colleague, Dave Currey, executive director of the EIA, discovered
that poached ivory from Zimbabwe was being shipped to one of the carving
factories in Dubai in the United Arab Emirates (UAE), an entrepot for smuggled
ivory. The factory manager said that they received regular shipments from
Zimbabwe.

In his report, Martin sets out to disprove allegations by Craig van
Note, of the Monitor Consortium in Washington, that South Africa is the
centre of the continent’s largest illegal trade in ivory and rhino horn.
Since van Note testified before a Congressional hearing in the US last year,
evidence to support his claims has grown.

Hong Kong is the distribution centre for the world’s poached ivory.
Illegal traders use the ‘legal’ CITES system, which accounts for only 22
per cent of the world’s supply of ivory, to launder the rest – poached ivory
from illicit sources. CITES also does not control trade in worked ivory,
and much of the poached ivory is worked before shipment to Hong Kong.

Van Note argued that much of Hong Kong’s supply of ivory comes through
a major South African network made up of South African nationals and middlemen
in Angola, Mozambique and Namibia. He claimed that the South African customs
union, which is shared with Botswana, Swaziland, Lesotho and Namibia, provides
the primary route though which much ivory and rhino horn moves in and out
of South Africa. Once a shipment is inside any of the countries comprising
the union, the container cannot be opened.

Several new developments substantiate van Note’s case. For instance,
a major shipment of poached ivory and rhino horn was seized on Botswana’s
border with Zambia in October 1988, hidden in false compartments on a truck
owned by a South African, Tony Viera, and driven by a Zimbabwean, Patrick
Mutambi. The consignment, weighing almost 2 tonnes, was on its way to a
dealer in Johannesburg – Chong Pong of A. H. Pong and Sons. Pong is described
as the ‘biggest dealer in rhino horn and ivory’ in South Africa. The owner
of the truck was tried and convicted but fined only $3000. At least 21 truckloads
of ivory and rhino horn had used the same route in the five months between
June and October 1988.

Pong’s activities are said to be sanctioned at high levels of the government
because he provides useful contacts in Hong Kong and the People’s Republic
of China. Meanwhile, the seizures of ivory in Namibia and South Africa have
increased over the past few months, thanks to the work of the conservationists,
journalists and wildlife enforcement agencies who have followed up van Note’s
allegations.

Tanzania disputes the claims made by Martin. Constantius Mlay, director
of wildlife in Tanzania, has overseen a major antipoaching sweep which led
to the arrest of more than 1000 poachers, dealers and middlemen. ‘As long
as someone in Europe, the USA or Japan is going to buy ivory, someone in
Africa will kill elephants. We cannot stop the poaching of our elephants
for the illegal ivory trade unless the big men in Hong Kong, Singapore,
Taiwan and Japan are put out of business.’ Tanzania banned its own internal
ivory trade at the end of 1986.

Once Tanzania proposed an international ban, the EEC, the US and many
other countries responded by banning ivory imports. Since then, prices being
paid for ivory have plummeted in Tanzania. Poachers are finding it difficult
to sell ivory, and the remaining dealers and middlemen are not giving their
usual advances to poachers to acquire as much ivory as they can from killing
elephants. In Zaire prices have dropped by more than half, and in the Congo
by 20 to 50 per cent. Ivory has become less valuable as the demand from
the rest of the world falls.

Around the continent of Africa, the poachers are on the run. But their
big business backers, in an industry worth $1 billion a year, are fighting
back. The handful of Hong Kong syndicates that dominate the illegal trade
in ivory and rhino horn, and Japanese importers, are backing efforts by
southern Africa to oppose a ban. Without a ‘legal’ ivory trade, such traders
will find it extremely difficult to launder poached ivory onto the world
market. A worldwide ban will disrupt the infrastructure of the illegal trade,
reduce demand and make enforcement simpler because all ivory will be illegal.

Allan Thornton is the chairman of the Environmental Investigation Agency
in London.