Southern Africa Seeks Right to Hold Elephant Ivory Sales

(Bloomberg) -- Five southern African nations that host most of the world’s elephants demanded the right to sell ivory as they say communities that live alongside the pachyderms, which destroy crops and occasionally kill people, must be allowed to benefit.

The presidents of Botswana, Zimbabwe, Zambia and Namibia, as well as Angola’s environment minister, met Tuesday in Kasane, Botswana to forge a common policy toward elephant management. Ivory sales currently require approval from the international community through the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Fauna and Flora. Elephant poaching has surged since ivory trading was banned and ivory stockpiles, most from natural deaths, continue to grow, they said.

“Let us resolutely affirm our position on elephant management and speak with one voice for our communities,” said Emmerson Mnangagwa, the president of Zimbabwe, which has the world’s second-biggest population of elephants after Botswana. “That one size fits all approach from CITES of banning everything disregards the good efforts of our governments and is neither sustainable or advisable. We must reject it.”

The number of elephants in Botswana has surged to 160,000 from 55,000 in 1991, according to the government, increasing conflict between humans and elephants. The larger population moves across the five countries in a border region twice the size of the U.K. known as the Kavango Zambezi Transfrontier Conservation Area, which comprises swamps, grassland and riverine habitat.

For charts on elephant populations in southern Africa click here

“We cannot continue to be spectators while others debate and take decisions about our elephants,” Botswanan President Mokgweetsi Masisi said at the summit.

Masisi has called for a lifting of the hunting ban in Botswana and his government has suggested selective “cropping” of elephants to benefit communities. Critics, including his predecessor Ian Khama, say the approach will damage the tourism industry and is geared toward winning rural votes for the ruling Botswana Democratic Party in elections in October. Tourism accounts for a fifth of Botswana’s economy.

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