Published: 28 Mar 08 - 0:00

South Africa recently announced that it had lifted the ban on the culling of elephants. This news then received a mixed reaction. Some foreign groups promptly criticizsed the South African authorities, and followed familiar lines, such as introduce birth control, and so on. These solutions may sound great but they are not that easy to implement.

It is important to appreciate that the best scientists in the area of elephants, their habits, habitats and expansion patterns, are right here in South Africa. Our guys are the best people to make the decisions.

What the South African government has effectively done is to pass the decision-making to our environmental specialists in the area. Bear in mind, too, that the elephants live in habitats together with other species, and the wellbeing of all of them has to be taken into account.

Some years ago, the Control on the International Trade in Endangered Species (CITES) organisation banned the international trade in ivory; in fact, trade in any elephant products, which included hides and meat. The idea was to protect elephants, but the results were debatable. What actually happened was that poachers and the international black market were given a free hand to control the international trade in ivory.

Responsible countries like South Africa, Botswana and Namibia were able to control poaching to an absolute minimum, whereas, in some East African countries, poaching became rife. One reason appears to be that many of the authorities in those countries turned a blind eye to poaching activities, possibly because some of the authorities personally gained from the no-see attitude.

In the meantime, in South Africa elephants continued to die naturally, as their natural lifespans ended. The ivory was collected to the point at where South Africa now sits with a huge stockpile of the valuable commodity.

At the same time, South Africa is constantly in need of money to further its fauna and flora conservation activities, in which it is a world leader. So South Africa asked the CITES for permission to sell some ivory and, after a long, hard battle, South Africa and a couple of the other responsible countries were given grudging permission to make a one-off sale.

This idea is crazy from an economic point of view. It is well known from economic theory that the worst way to make a sale is to execute a one-off large dump into the market. This type of action merely confuses the market and drops prices. To make matters worse, there is no recognised legitimate market for ivory – it has been banned for years. So one cannot open a newspaper and look up the ivory price of the day, as one can do for gold, oil, tin, copper and any other regularly traded commodity. In fact, one would imagine that the black market bosses, hiding in their lairs, would do everything in their power to prevent such a sale and, no doubt, they have significant power in that arena.

So the principle of one-off sales is wrong. What should actually happen is that South Africa should ensure that no uncut ivory leaves South Africa. All ivory should be partially worked in South Africa. This would provide jobs here at home, and also, if managed correctly, will start a legal local ivory industry. After all, every elephant has to die naturally at some stage, so there will be a continuous supply of ivory. The strict control of the movement of uncut ivory would also act as a control against poachers and illegal traders.

What the CITES should ensure is that all ivory is handled by responsible authorities, and the best process is to allow continuous, controlled sale – not one-off dumps onto the market. It is quite possible for South Africa to partially work all ivory. For example, one constant source of demand from the Far East is for ivory 'chop marks'. A chop mark is a stick which has a person's signature engraved on one end – it is then used like a rubber stamp to stamp a person's personal mark. The basic blanks for the chop marks could be cut and polished here.

The South African conservation authorities are very good at conservation, but they are not international commodity traders. They are not on familiar ground when it comes to selling ivory into international markets. They should stay away from this area, and stick with their core business of conservation.

Other people should be employed to work and trade ivory under the general supervision of the conservation authorities. The conservation folks must develop the strength to do what is necessary to ensure that a grand plan works for the benefit of the elephants and for conservation as a whole.

http://www.engineeringnews.co.za/article.php?a_id=129255