A UN wildlife conference rejected today proposals by Tanzania and Zambia to relax a trade ban on elephants to allow a one-off sale of their ivory stockpiles.
The 175-nation meeting voted down calls by the two nations, which say elephant numbers are rising and are a danger to people in rural areas, to ease trade restrictions to permit a sale of 112 tonnes of ivory.
"We do not think our sovereignty has been respected," Zambia's tourism minister Catherine Namugala said of the decision by governments at the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species (CITES) in Doha, Qatar.
"Many people have been killed by elephants. Even as we speak, children are not going to school because they are afraid of encountering elephants along the way," she said.
Conservation groups broadly welcomed the vote.
"Poaching of elephants and ivory seizures are escalating, not decreasing, this decision is a victory for common sense," said Jason Bell-Leask, Southern Africa director of the International Fund for Animal Welfare.
The last CITES meeting in 2007 agreed to a nine-year moratorium on any further trade in ivory, after a sale of 105 tonnes of elephant ivory from Botswana, Namibia, South Africa and Zimbabwe to China and Japan.
Elephants, the world's largest land mammals, are under pressure in many parts of Africa from poaching, loss of habitats to farms and towns, pollution and climate change. Numbers have fallen to 470,000-685,000 against millions decades ago.
But in some countries numbers are recovering.
"The wild population is large (about 27,000 animals) and steadily increasing," Zambia's proposal says. Tanzania says its wild population "has considerably increased (from about 55,000 in 1989 to 136,753 in 2006) ... and continues to increase".
But Esmond Bradley Martin, an authority on the rhino horn and ivory trade, estimated that Tanzania's elephant population had fallen by 30,000 over the last three years due to drought, migration and increased poaching.
"The main problem is unregulated markets that exist throughout tropical Africa and Asia," he told reporters. "In any city in west or central Africa, you can buy ivory. We need to close these illegal markets down. It's so simple, because they're out in the open, they're not hidden."
Ivory prices peaked in 1988 before a CITES ban in ivory trade, but plummeted by about 75 per cent during the early 1990s. Prices have increased recently as a result of new demand from China and Asia, Martin said.
Ivory can range from $25 to $150 a kilo throughout Africa. Prices in Asia are higher, ranging from $250 to $500 a kilo. Proceeds from one-off ivory sales are meant to be put into conservation and community development.
"My people definitely think that CITES has no human heart," said Christine Eva Mambo, tribal head of Zambia's Lusaka province, where she said more than 18 people have been killed by elephants in the last three years.
The CITES talks will consider trade protection for about 40 species during the talks. Governments have rejected trade bans for bluefin tuna and polar bears.
Reuters