Illegal wildlife trade must be stopped
2013-01-25 19:52
Geneva - Illegal trade in wildlife products like ivory
and rhino horn must be treated as a serious crime in order to end the
devastating poaching of protected species, the head of UN wildlife trade
regulator Cites said on Thursday.
"This is serious crime, and you need serious
resources and serious penalties" to address it, CITES Secretary General
John Scanlon told reporters in Geneva.
Speaking ahead of a meeting of CITES's 177 member states
in Bangkok in early March, Scanlon said finding better ways to crack down on
the illegal trade of ivory and rhino horn were among the top issues on the
agenda.
Pointing out that illegal wildlife trade is estimated to
rake in about $20bn a year, he insisted that such crimes needed to be treated
in the same manner as for instance the international illegal drug trade.
A World Wildlife Fund report last month listed the
illicit sale of wildlife products as the fourth-largest illegal global trade
after narcotics, counterfeiting and human trafficking.
The sharp increase in poaching of protected species like
elephants and rhino in recent years appears to be fuelled by organised
criminals eager to reap massive profits at very low risk, and is also believed
to be helping to fund insurgencies in Africa, Scanlon said.
"These trends with ivory and rhino horn are going up
[so much] that we will start wiping out local populations very soon," he
warned.
Rhino horn can sell for as much as $80 000 a kilogram, and
poachers have killed some 2 000 rhino in the past two years - a huge number
considering only about 2 000 rhino remain, he said.
Elephant poaching in Africa has also increased sharply,
with devastating incidents like the family of 11 elephants killed in a Kenyan
park earlier this month, and the up to 450 elephants slaughtered last February
in Cameroon by poacher gangs, likely from Chad and Sudan.
"It would appear that some individuals are
stockpiling. You could say they are banking on extinction [and] assuming that
as these species become rarer, the rhino horn and the ivory will become more
valuable," Scanlon said.
To halt the trade, authorities need to work harder to
trace the illegal products to the people creating the demand, he said.
"Until we find out who ordered [the products],
prosecute them, convict them and impose a serious penalty, we're not going to
be able to stop this."
- SAPA
