Back in business

Banned in 1989, the trade is back on:

Nine tonnes of ivory went on the block on Tuesday in Namibia, kicking off the first legal sales of elephant tusks in nearly a decade -- exclusively for Chinese and Japanese buyers.
The first auction opened early on Tuesday, according to Namibia's environment ministry, beginning nearly two weeks of sales around the region that will bring a total of 108 tonnes of ivory into the two Asian powers.
Four African countries have been authorised by CITES -- the international convention that regulates trade in endangered species -- to make a one-off sale of ivory to the two Asian powers.
But some conservationists fear that the sudden arrival of so much legal ivory in China and Japan could provide a way for poachers to slip their ill-gotten wares past the eyes of regulators.
The Asian giants are among the world's largest markets for ivory, which is used for families' traditional seals to stamp documents as well as handicrafts.
Michael Wamithi, head of the elephant programme at the International Fund for Animal Welfare, said both nations are also among the top destinations for illegal ivory taken from poached elephants.
"Several multiple-tonne seizures have been made at Chinese ports in recent years. The lack of enforcement for the registration systems in both countries also provides a convenient loophole for illegal traders," he said.
The wildlife trade watchdog Traffic said it has confidence in the auctions, which after Namibia will move every three days through Botswana, Zimbabwe and finally South Africa.
"As far as we're concerned, it's a well-managed process," Traffic's national representative David Newton said in Johannesburg.
Despite concerns about China's enforcement efforts, Newton said Beijing had made real efforts to comply with international rules on ivory trade. "They are taking this a lot more seriously," he said. "We're always urging caution, and the ivory trade needs to be very strictly managed," he said. "For the one-off trade, we're confident that the monitoring mechanisms are in place."
The auctions, which are closed to the public and to media, are selling off tusks from government stocks. CITES says it agreed to the sales only in African countries where elephant populations are judged to be healthy and growing. More than 312,000 elephants are living in the four nations. Most of the tusks were taken from elephants that died from natural causes or from culling of herds, when animals are killed to prevent overpopulation.
CITES said in a statement that it has taken precautions to make sure that the auctions don't encourage poaching. Willem Wijnstekers, secretary general of the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora (CITES), will visit all four countries to supervise the sales. He will also meet on the sidelines of the auctions with Chinese and Japanese authorities about measures taken to monitor the ivory after the sale, CITES said in a statement. Profits from the sales must go towards elephant conservation projects, or towards programmes aimed at developing communities who live around elephant ranges, it added.
The ivory can go only to China and Japan, which then must track it to prevent it from being resold overseas, in compliance with CITES regulations. The international ivory trade was banned in 1989, but since 1997 CITES has authorised the four African countries to carry out occasional sales. The last sale in 1999 earned five million dollars. The four countries agreed not to hold a new sale for at least another nine years. South Africa will hold the biggest sale, with 51 tonnes on the block, followed by Botswana with 44 tonnes, Namibia with nine tonnes, and four tonnes in Zimbabwe.