Word: african
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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Among those African nations whose herds have been hardest hit are Tanzania and Kenya. They lead the call for a worldwide ban, and are joined by conservation groups, including the World Wildlife Fund and Wildlife Conservation International. They argue that it will take decades for elephant herds to begin to recover, and that as long as there is any legal trade, the lure of profits will entice poachers and smugglers to beat the system...
...equally powerful coalition is opposed to a global ban. Those few southern African countries -- Zimbabwe, Botswana and South Africa -- that have not been beset by poachers cull their herds to maintain the elephant populations at optimum levels. That culling produces legally traded ivory. Those countries say a ban would punish them for the corruption and inefficiency of other nations. Ivory traders and retailers, of course, also oppose a comprehensive ban, hoping to save an industry with annual revenues estimated at $500 million to $1 billion worldwide. They are joined by the CITES secretariat, a Lausanne- based bureaucracy that monitors...
Even if the necessary two-thirds of the delegates at the CITES meeting vote to declare the elephant an endangered species, nations can exempt themselves from a trade ban without penalty. That is what the southern African nations have said they will do if a compromise cannot be reached. The real danger is that other countries may also break rank. The more porous the ban, the more the opportunities for illegal trading. Already South Africa and Botswana are on the smugglers' routes. An ambiguous result in Lausanne could embolden the trade and undermine enforcement efforts in Africa. Time...
...myriad forms, ivory has been a medium expressing both virtue and vice, creativity and crass extravagance. It has been used in rosary beads, pistol grips, lutes, dice, scepters, toothpicks, prayer wheels, fly whisks, mah-jongg tiles and chopsticks. In the past century, traders greedy for ivory attacked and burned African villages. Natives were sold into slavery and forced to shoulder the tusks out of the interior...
...cargo trucks, personal luggage and shipping crates. The rewards far outweigh the risks. The owner of a truck carrying $2 million worth of illicit tusks and rhino horns was fined a mere $2,613 by Botswa officials last year. His cargo was said to be bound for a South African firm with Hong Kong connections. Despite crackdowns, the poachers are undaunted. Just two weeks ago, in a predawn raid on a farm, Namibian officials seized 980 tusks...