Africa to stem ivory trade

2004-10-08 19:55

Bangkok - African nations announced on Friday a continent-wide plan to crack down on their unregulated domestic ivory trades blamed for the deaths of up to 12 000 elephants a year.

The draft plan, expected to be approved on Monday by the worlds treaty regulating the trade in endangered species, commits every African nation with a domestic ivory market to strictly control its trade or shut it down completely.

"All African elephant range states should urgently prohibit the unregulated domestic sale of ivory," according to the draft put forward to the 166 member countries of the Convention on the International Trade in Endangered Species (Cites) currently meeting for two weeks in Bangkok.

Cites banned the international ivory trade in 1989, but the ban does little to address Africas domestic ivory markets.

"Unregulated domestic markets across Africa are fueling a significant portion of the poaching were seeing in central Africa today," said Tom Milliken, director for East and Southern Africa for wildlife trade monitor Traffic.

"These markets consume up to 12 000 elephants annually, so its time we have an action plan that closes a huge loophole in the global effort to save elephants."

The plan identified the countries with the worst illegal markets as Cameroon, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Djibouti and Nigeria.

Global conservation group WWF hailed the plan as a "courageous move by African nations to impose a hard-hitting process on themselves to address illegal trade in ivory".

The countries must report on their progress to Cites by the end of March next year.

Africa is currently home to an estimated 400 000 to 660 000 elephants.

At the Bangkok conference, Namibia is requesting an annual export quota of two tonnes of ivory while another African nation, Kenya, has proposed a 20-year moratorium on ivory trading.

- AFP