The closure of China’s ivory market, the foremost destination for ivory from poached African elephants, is widely considered the single most important step to securing a future for elephants in their current range’
A COALITION of 15 African countries including Tanzania has applauded China’s commitment to closing its domestic ivory markets by the end of this year. According to a statement availed to the media yesterday by the Elephant Protection Initiative (EPI), the announcement signals China’s goodwill and cooperation in protecting Africa’s fast-dwindling elephant population.
EPI is a pledge by African leaders to actions to protect their countries’ jumbos while putting the ivory trade aside, including pushing for the closure of domestic ivory markets in source, transit and consumer countries.
“The closure of China’s ivory market, the foremost destination for ivory from innumerable poached elephants, is widely considered to be the single most important step to securing a future for elephants in their current range,” the EPI statement reads in part.
According to the Great Elephant Census that studied the situation in Africa, in the last seven years over 144,000 African elephants were slaughtered for ivory, with the majority of that ivory heading for China.
In 2015, a Tanzanian government census revealed that the country had lost a whole 60 per cent of its entire elephant population to poachers in a span of just five years.
The statistics came as a shock to the world because Tanzania’s elephant population was known to be one of the largest in Africa. The staggering data showed that between 2009 and 2014, the number dropped sharply from 109,051 to just 43,330.
The frightening number prompted action whereby the country has in the recent past tightened its war on wildlife poaching and ivory trade with a number of actions, punitive and preventive.
Mid-last year, the government received eight drones from the World Wide Fund (Sweden) to allow better monitoring of wildlife movements and poaching activities in the country’s game parks.
Through the drones, clear images from exact locales can be transmitted to the command headquarters where action can be immediately taken through the deployment of units of elite game rangers.
EPI which released yesterday’s statement was established in February 2014 at the London Conference on Illegal Wildlife Trade by leaders from Tanzania, Botswana, Chad, Gabon, and Ethiopia as an urgent response to the Africa’s elephant poaching crisis.
They have since been joined by 10 more states: Uganda, The Gambia, Malawi, Kenya, Liberia, Congo, Angola, Sierra Leone and Somalia.
In recent years, consignments of illegal ivory, many of which could be weighed by the tonne, were intercepted en route from Africa to Asia. The involvement of highly organised criminal networks is clear, as is the devastating effect of their lucrative trade on elephant populations, local communities and national security.
Natural Resources and Tourism minister Prof Jumanne Maghembe announced that by the end of last year, six poaching barons who had inflicted huge damage to the country’s natural resources had already been arrested.
According to the minister, the six netted poaching barons were not frontline people in the crime, but had for years been sending smaller fry to kill the elephants and collect the ivory for them.
And last week, Director of Public Prosecutions (DDP) Biswalo Mganga told The Guardian that some 200 people were last year jailed for possessing government trophies and other wildlife items, and over 800 million/- paid as fines to the government during the year.
DPP Mganga said the already convicted offenders were currently serving jail time ranging from 15 to 20 years in various local correctional facilities.
EPI is a pledge by African leaders to actions to protect their countries’ jumbos while putting the ivory trade aside, including pushing for the closure of domestic ivory markets in source, transit and consumer countries.
“The closure of China’s ivory market, the foremost destination for ivory from innumerable poached elephants, is widely considered to be the single most important step to securing a future for elephants in their current range,” the EPI statement reads in part.
According to the Great Elephant Census that studied the situation in Africa, in the last seven years over 144,000 African elephants were slaughtered for ivory, with the majority of that ivory heading for China.
In 2015, a Tanzanian government census revealed that the country had lost a whole 60 per cent of its entire elephant population to poachers in a span of just five years.
The statistics came as a shock to the world because Tanzania’s elephant population was known to be one of the largest in Africa. The staggering data showed that between 2009 and 2014, the number dropped sharply from 109,051 to just 43,330.
The frightening number prompted action whereby the country has in the recent past tightened its war on wildlife poaching and ivory trade with a number of actions, punitive and preventive.
Mid-last year, the government received eight drones from the World Wide Fund (Sweden) to allow better monitoring of wildlife movements and poaching activities in the country’s game parks.
Through the drones, clear images from exact locales can be transmitted to the command headquarters where action can be immediately taken through the deployment of units of elite game rangers.
EPI which released yesterday’s statement was established in February 2014 at the London Conference on Illegal Wildlife Trade by leaders from Tanzania, Botswana, Chad, Gabon, and Ethiopia as an urgent response to the Africa’s elephant poaching crisis.
They have since been joined by 10 more states: Uganda, The Gambia, Malawi, Kenya, Liberia, Congo, Angola, Sierra Leone and Somalia.
In recent years, consignments of illegal ivory, many of which could be weighed by the tonne, were intercepted en route from Africa to Asia. The involvement of highly organised criminal networks is clear, as is the devastating effect of their lucrative trade on elephant populations, local communities and national security.
Natural Resources and Tourism minister Prof Jumanne Maghembe announced that by the end of last year, six poaching barons who had inflicted huge damage to the country’s natural resources had already been arrested.
According to the minister, the six netted poaching barons were not frontline people in the crime, but had for years been sending smaller fry to kill the elephants and collect the ivory for them.
And last week, Director of Public Prosecutions (DDP) Biswalo Mganga told The Guardian that some 200 people were last year jailed for possessing government trophies and other wildlife items, and over 800 million/- paid as fines to the government during the year.
DPP Mganga said the already convicted offenders were currently serving jail time ranging from 15 to 20 years in various local correctional facilities.
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