Petition against the lifting Ivory Trade Ban

Tanzania and Zambia will be asking to reduce the level of protection their elephants afforded by CITES (by downlisting their elephant populations from Appendix I, which bans commercial trade, to Appendix II, which allows regulated trade subject to certain conditions). They are also seeking approval for a one-off sale of over 110,000kg of ivory.

Sign the petition here.

I like Elephants.

Done

i am, as any right minded human being, against the ivory trade BUT surely if they were to release that 110,000 kgs of ivory into the business the whole supply demand curve would alter thus flooding the market with ivory cheapening the product causing less profits to be made from the actual poaching and rasing money for anti poaching teams ( well if zimbabwe actually do put the money towards elephant conservation )
the elephants from which that ivory has come are already dead it seems criminal to burn the ivory that those animals died for
in south africa they are actually culling elephants because their numbers are getting too high

again, don't get me wrong here i am 110% against poaching animal trade fur etc i was born in africa and have seen these magestic creatures roam the masai mara, amboseli, ngoronogoro, queen elizabeth national park, samburu, but that ivory gives wildlife authorities a chance to raise money for good causes and to help try and stop poaching going forwards

i do hope that 110,000 kgs are in a stock pile rather than on the elephants currently
otherwise my arguement above makes me look very silly and i will retract

if they want to ban the ivory trade they should ban all trade in the finished articles
that would cut the demand
when i was in china they had massive shops containing massive amounts of ivory products
that is where we should start

Good call jaygee, i love Elephants.

Most of the ivory that has been sold recently is from culling programmes which need to be carried out to avoid over population in the limited habitat still available. The ivory should be burned.

Any trade in ivory is bad for elephants as it encourages poaching by perpetuating the trade. If there is no supply, there will be no demand. Eventually.

signed. could i just say, doesn't matter if the 110,000 kgs are in stock pile or not, the ivory trade should be banned completely. there are other ways of raising money for good causes, and ripping out the tusks of these magnificient creatures should not be one of them.

You bastards. I was going to have a bicycle frame made out of that ivory.

dicki,

You have a good argument there and the case for ethical ivory (from pre-existing stock and good management of population levels through organised and planned culling) isn't unreasonable. If that were the only way that it came on the market I wouldn't object to it and may even consider owning some myself.

Alas this isn't the case. The one off shipment may impact on the supply demand curve, but only in the short term. Following that, it's recent presence in the market would generate more demand and if acceptable sources are insufficient, then less acceptable and unacceptable sources will inevitably meet demand (People still buy diamonds that are mined by small children under conditions that are horrific and abusive). If the industry could put in place mechanisms that could prevent poached ivory entering the market over the long term then that might be OK. However, until that happens, then ivory must be seen as an unacceptable commodity and banned.

Poachers don't care about the fate of their victims and so don't go for the clean kill. Therefore you can pretty much take it that any new piece of ivory in the market means that a beautiful, intelligent, sensitive ceature has spent many hours, possibly days, in extreme agony before dying far from it's family that would probably wish give it a burial (they really do this in their own way) and for those family members that hang around, unwilling to leave the vicitm alone, they will be considered a bonus to poachers.

Signed, we're not the only species that live on this planets, it is not our for the taken.

Elephants are very nice in pictures and on television but try riding down the near side of a left turning one at a traffic light....

Q What's the red mushy stuff between elephants' toes?

A Slow cyclists.

I think we can tell if ivory has been poached illegally through DNA samples.

http://www.africagoodnews.com/environment/scientists-use-dna-to-trace-illegal-elephant-poaching.html

Unfortunately that only comes after the animal is dead and doesn't make it any easier to trace those responsible for the killing.

I think it quite clearly does. Every time they intercept an illegal shipment of ivory can pinpoint the region of Africa that it originates from, and so can concentrate their efforts in fighting this trade in the most poached areas.

Signed, we're not the only species that live on this planets, it is not our for the taken.

Well said mate

Pinpointing a region of the continent really doesn't do anything to determine the people responsible for the poaching. We already know the areas most poached in and where to focus efforts on fighting poaching, it's the areas with all the tuskless corpses in.

Don't you think we already know the most illegally poached areas precisely because of these DNA forensic techniques?

more here. http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/2009/jun/28/elephant-dna-illegal-ivory-trade

I think it may clarify matters more and give an indication of the ways in which the ivory trade happens, but DNA evidence is like a piece of string, it has to have two ends. At the other end of this string is the corpse of an elephant which doesn't have it's tusks.

DNA has only added to information that we already knew and cleared up a few logistical details. It is still only a reactive measure that can't fully eliminate illegal ivory from the market. If you focus anti-poaching efforts in one area, the responsible cartels will only move to another area and with national borders in the way responding to this is timely and expensive. Better to decommodify ivory at the consumer end of the market.

Right .. but it's still better than having absolutely no idea of the source of illegal ivory shipments. At least it introduces an element of accountability, and it tells us certain governments are dealing with illegal poaching better than others.