TIME: Almanac 1990/1990 Time Magazine Compact Almanac, The (1991)(Time).iso/time/022089/02208900.009

Text File | 1990-09-17 | 7KB | 121 lines

ENVIRONMENT, Page 76

Last Stand For Africa's Elephants

Record ivory prices send poachers after the survivors

By Eugene Linden


    Striding majestically across the savanna, the African elephant
is an unmistakable symbol of power and strength. As recently as the
1970s, its numbers were so great that some conservationists worried
about overpopulation. Now the elephant is involved in a desperate
struggle to survive, and the reason for its peril is one of its
glories: the huge creature's magnificent tusks of ivory. Since the
early 1980s, the price of ivory has surged from $25 per lb. to $80
per lb. As a result, growing bands of wily and ruthless poachers
have taken to hunting down elephants illegally all across Africa,
killing the animals with everything from automatic weapons to
poison. About 10% of the remaining African elephants were killed
last year, reducing their ranks to fewer than 750,000. If the
slaughter continues at the present pace, the wild elephant could
be close to extinction within a decade.

    This week, to prevent such a tragedy, conservationists will
unveil the most elaborate and costly plan in history to rescue a
single species. Sponsored by the African Elephant Conservation
Coordinating Group, a coalition of several international
organizations, the plan calls for bolstering efforts to protect
elephants against poachers, a study of ways to crack down on
illegal trading of tusks, and a publicity campaign to alert people
and governments to the relationship between the trade in ivory and
the plight of the elephant. The AECCG hopes to raise at least $15
million in four years to finance its work.

    The effort may be futile, though, unless demand for the
animals' tusks is reduced sharply. Ivory is fashioned into
everything from billiard balls and knife handles to necklaces and
figurines. Craftsmen have even carved tusks into ornamental
replicas of AK-47 assault rifles.

    Theoretically, the business of taking ivory from animals alive
or dead is highly regulated and ostensibly restricted by African
governments. And under an international convention, there is a
quota system that puts limits on the number of tusks each country
can export.

    So much for theory. In reality, the quota system has been
ineffective in controlling the trade. Up to 90% of the tusks that
enter the marketplace have been taken illegally by poachers, and
smugglers have little trouble getting the ivory out of Africa.
Angolan rebel leader Jonas Savimbi has reportedly financed his
insurrection with ivory taken from more than 100,000 elephants.
Some countries seem to be conduits for the illegal trade. With
roughly 4,500 elephants of its own, Somalia has still managed to
export tusks from an estimated 13,800 elephants in the past three
years, evidence that the country has been providing false documents
for ivory poached elsewhere. In response, the U.S. is expected this
week to announce a ban on imports of Somalian ivory.

    The leading destination for legal and perhaps illegal ivory is
Asia. Hong Kong is a major manufacturer and exporter of ivory
jewelry, and 30% of the colony's output goes to Americans. "People
in the U.S. just don't connect ivory with elephants," says Mark
Stanley Price, a director of the African Wildlife Foundation, "but
every bracelet represents a dead elephant." Another top consumer
is Japan, where ivory has long been used for personalized seals
called hanko. But under pressure from conservationists, Hong Kong
and Japan have begun to check closely the documents on ivory
imports to weed out illegal shipments. Japan's legal ivory imports,
in particular, have dropped sharply in the past three years.

    Unfortunately, the decline in ivory trade in Japan and
elsewhere may not reflect a drop in demand so much as the
decimation of adult elephants. As mature elephants are killed, it
becomes harder to satisfy the world's appetite for ivory. Stephen
Cobb, who leads an ivory study for the AECCG, says the reduction
in trade "is a clear sign of the collapse of exploitable elephant
populations."

    Some conservationists would like to see a total ban on the
ivory trade. But that would be no easier to enforce than the laws
against selling cocaine and heroin. Dealers bold enough to defy the
embargo could anticipate higher profits than ever. Moreover, poor
African countries need the revenue from at least a limited amount
of legal trading.

    Realizing that if elephants vanish, so might tourists, some
African nations are determined to slow down the killing. In
addition, the animal is a vital part of Africa's unique ecosystem.
For eons, elephants have knocked down trees, helping to give Africa
its distinctive mix of forest and savanna and opening up the land
for other big mammals.

    Unwilling to let the elephant be wiped out, some governments
have declared war on illegal killing. In Kenya armed patrols have
orders to shoot poachers. Sometimes, though, the culprits are a
formidable force themselves. At Kenya's Tsavo National Park, scores
of poachers dressed in battle fatigues and armed with automatic
weapons killed one policeman and wounded several others.

    Besieged by armies of hunters, many herds are literally on the
run. Conservationists use the phrase "refugee elephants" to
describe animals fleeing Mozambique to crowd into protected areas
in Zimbabwe. The killing of older animals with the biggest tusks
threatens to reduce herds to what Tanzanian game manager
Constantius Mlay describes as collections of naive teenagers
without the wise old elephants needed as leaders in times of
drought and food scarcity.

    Conservationists cannot hope to protect elephants throughout
their African homelands. For that reason, the AECCG, which includes
such major conservation groups as the World Wildlife Fund, TRAFFIC
and Wildlife Conservation International, envisions a triage
approach. The group plans to concentrate its resources on about 40
populations that have the best chance of being guarded from
poachers. That strategy would focus on saving about 250,000
elephants and would reluctantly leave another 500,000 to their
fate.

    This prospect is not so dismal as it sounds. If protected well,
the remaining quarter-million elephants would be a large enough
population to thrive and multiply again. In fact, David Western,
director of WCI, asserts that if allowed to grow old and die
naturally, the elephants in these herds could probably supply
enough tusks to support an ivory market larger than today's illegal
business.