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CITES Crisis : Canadian Action Alert for Elephants

We have provided an On-line Form you can use to submit your comments to Jean Chrétien and David Anderson. Please click here to send them a message regarding this issue. It is really easy, and the elephants need your voice.

The Battle over the ivory trade – and the survival of the African elephant – is heating up again.

This April, 150 Parties to the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora (CITES) – including Canada – will meet at the headquarters of the United Nations Environmental Programme (UNEP) in Gigiri, Kenya. On the agenda are eleven items relating to the African elephant – including rival proposals to, on the one hand, allow more ivory into legal trade, and on the other, to re-impose the ban on the ivory trade that was partially lifted in 1997.

In that year, at a contentious CITES meeting in Harare, Zimbabwe, three African countries – including Zimbabwe, Botswana, and Namibia – won permission to ship some 50 tons of ivory in their government stockpiles to Japan, provided they meet certain conditions. Despite warnings that the sale could revive poaching in Africa, and despite arguments that the conditions imposed by CITES Parties were not entirely fulfilled, the ivory was shipped to Japan in the summer of 1999.

Now, the three countries – joined by South Africa – are asking for approval to ship more ivory to Japan. Without that approval, no further ivory can be traded, but the elephants of Zimbabwe, Namibia and Botswana remain on the treaties less stringent Appendix II. A new proposal, however, sponsored by Kenya and India, asks that all three populations be re-transferred to Appendix I – restoring the international ivory ban first imposed in 1989.

Though the Kenya / India proposal has met strong opposition, it has been supported by many environmentalists and African elephant range states in the east, west and central Africa. The reason: poaching, suppressed for many years by the ivory ban, is once more on the increase.

According to conservationist / author Dr. Ronald Orenstein, "In the past twelve months, the Kenya Wildlife Service has seized at least four times as much poached ivory as in the preceding two years. Since the 1997 downlisting, poaching levels have risen in Tanzania, Cote d'Ivoire, Ghana, Zimbabwe and other countries. People have already been killed in fights over ivory. It's time to admit that resuming the trade was a mistake, and to restore the ban. We shouldn't have to wait until matters get completely out of hand, the way they were in the 1980s".

In the 1980s poachers killed half of the Africa's elephants. The ban reduced poaching to manageable levels over most of Africa.

Canada has not yet announced its position on the Kenya / India proposal.

Please write to Jean Chrétien and let him know you support the Kenya/India proposal at the next CITES meeting:

Jean Chrétien, Prime Minister of Canada
House of Commons
Ottawa, Ontario
Canada
K1A-0A6

E-Mail: Send an E-mail and Fax using our form provided.

Please also contact your local member of parliament to pass on your concerns to Jean Chrétien .

Other Links:

1. Fax the Feds: Send you message to other Members of Parliament: http://www.net-efx.com/faxfeds/
2. Elephant Information Repository CITES Crisis Centre: This is packed with a great deal of links and real audio information on the crisis
3. Jean Chrétien, the Prime Minister of Canada's Web Site: http://pm.gc.ca/
4. Environment of Canada's Web site: http://www.ec.gc.ca/envhome.html

The above textual alert source is in part from Zoocheck of Canada at http://www.zoocheck.com