ELEPHANTS & IVORY

© IFAW/Amboseli National Park, Kenya
Any proposal to reinvent our approach to
conservation and, in the present context, our
approach to the conservation of a single group of
animals such as elephants, requires leadership. 190
Individual people and non-governmental
organizations can only do so much. If the
traditional conservation community chooses to
reinvent itself, then members of IUCN – the World
Conservation Union, both its NGO and government
members, as well as its Specialist Groups; CITES
and the individual Parties to CITES; and the United
Nations Environment Programme (UNEP), among
others, all have opportunities to play an important
role in shaping a new, truly knowledge-based
approach to conservation – including elephant
conservation – for the 21 st Century.
IUCN, backed by its Asian Elephant Specialist
Group and its African Elephant Specialist
Group could begin – following the lead already
established by the Convention on Migratory
Species (CMS) – by recognizing that there are at
least two distinct species of elephant in Africa.
Once that step has been taken, they could
then take the lead in developing appropriate
conservation action plans to increase protection
for these species, individually and collectively.
CITES could return to its original mandate of
protecting vulnerable species from the threats
posed by international trade, rather than working
to facilitate legal international trade in elephant
ivory. 191 Any discussions and decisions about
the ivory trade must properly consider the links
between legal and illegal trade and assess the
feasibility of a new approach that treats elephants
as biological entities rather than political entities
defined by artificial national boundaries. 192 It
would stop any further discussions of downlisting
proposals for elephants, and any additional
“one-off” sales of elephant ivory, and ban the
international ivory trade immediately. Asian
elephants and those African elephant populations
currently on Appendix I have such protection,
at least on paper. International trade in ivory
from elephant populations listed on Appendix II
must also be banned because of the “look-alike”
problem, and because any legal trade provides
cover for poaching and illegal trade in ivory from
Appendix I populations. There is simply no way for
customs officials and merchants to identify ivory
in trade as coming from any particular population
or species, or to separate, unequivocally, legally
traded ivory from illegal ivory.
In their individual capacities, the Parties to
CITES – especially jurisdictions such as China, the
European Union, Japan, and the United States,
could take the lead and set the example by closing
down national markets in elephant ivory, and
tightening up national laws and enforcement to
cut down on illegal trade.
Given the rise in the illegal killing of elephants
and illicit trade in elephant ivory, governments
could use their influence to provide the necessary
support and technical capacity to work with
source, transit and end-user countries to combat
elephant poaching and illegal trade. 193 Unregulated
and uncontrolled domestic ivory markets should
be dismantled wherever they exist.
Governments must commit to and enact
legislative and enforcement reforms to curtail
internal ivory markets. Wildlife crime needs to
be treated with the same seriousness and level
of attention that we give to other transnational
organized crime, such as the drug and weapons
trade, and human trafficking, given the critical
links to national security and governance issues in
many countries. 194
UNEP, for its part, could play a leadership
role in putting knowledge-based conservation
of the environment and all its constituent parts,
including elephants, first and foremost on its
agenda. It could also stop promoting the false
promises of sustainable development, and the
“sustainable use” of wildlife, which these days
has become a euphemism for the commercial use
of wildlife. 195
One can see similar and complementary
opportunities for other intergovernmental
organizations and international conventions
including, especially, the Convention on
Biodiversity. 196
Of course, many in the mainstream
conservation community, especially those who
put economics first, and skeptics masquerading
as “realists” or “pragmatists”, will reject
such suggestions as unrealistic, idealistic and
naïve. Nonetheless, the problem remains that
conservation today is not achieving its objectives
and hasn’t for a very long time. 197
If we really want to conserve elephants and
offer them the protection they so clearly need
and deserve, we have to try new approaches. The
alternative, doing the same things over and over
again and expecting different results, is – to put it
bluntly – the very definition of insanity. 198
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© IFAW/S. Barbaruah/Kaziranga National Park, Assam, India