Will Tanzania Destroy Seized Ivory Stockpiles?

Kenyan Prime Minister Mr. Raila Odinga is recommending that Tanzania destroy their stockpiles of ivory.  Tanzania petitioned CITES in March to allow them to sell ivory stockpiles to the Asian market, but CITES refused citing the escalating poaching problem in Tanzania and saying the government was not doing a good enough job deterring poachers.  Mr. Odinga says that in the 1990s when Kenya was trying to really clamp down on poaching they destroyed stockpiles of seized ivory; he is adamant about this demand as he feels that the poaching of elephants in Tanzania that cross back and forth across the Tanzanian-Kenyan border is negatively impacting the tourism trade in Kenya.  Tanzanian officials, however, are accusing Kenya, and Mr. Odinga in particular, of working against East African Solidarity, which Mr. Odinga strongly denies.

Rooms full of seized elephant tusks in Tanzania

Two recently removed, bloody tusks left behind by poachers

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Bleak News from the bush….Poaching is back BIG time in Tanzania

In Tanzania’s Selous game reserve an age-old scourge has returned to haunt Africa’s biggest wildlife stronghold. Poaching is back, big time, with an average of 50 elephants being killed every month to fuel the ivory trade.

Tanzania has become the leading source of illegally exported ivory, with Dar es Salaam as its major transit point. Yet even as the slaughter continues, sending black-market prices soaring to more than $1,000 (£636) a kilogram, Tanzania is urging CITES (the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species) to lift the worldwide ivory trade ban ???

Unless Tanzania shows the same determination to secure its wildlife heritage as it have shown in the past, the elephants could soon be gone and the Selous will drop off the tourist map.

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Dar es Salaam to continue push for ivory sale in teeth of Nairobi opposition

Tanzania has said it will soldier on seeking a temporary lifting of the ivory trade ban to enable it to sell its 60 tonne-stockpile which it has been holding for the past two decades — despite its neighbour, Kenya, trumpeting for a total ban.  Shamsa Mwangunga, the minister for Natural Resources and Tourism told The EastAfrican in Dar es Salaam last week that Kenya’s argument that relaxing the ban on a one-off basis would increase poaching in the region, “does not hold water” because the number of elephants in the country had increased over the past decade.  Mrs Mwangunga said Tanzania and Zambia had already secured backing from the Southern African Development Community for their bid to allow their ivory to be auctioned.

Dr Kalumbi Shangula, permanent secretary in Namibia’s Ministry of Environment and Tourism, told The EastAfrican from Windhoek that his government will back a proposal by Tanzania and Zambia during next month’s Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species (CITES) in Quatar, to be allowed to conduct a one-off ivory auction, saying the proposal is in line with Namibia’s philosophy of utilising natural resources sustainably.

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