Round the horn

Campaigners’ fear for elephants, and their own credibility

BANNING almost all cross-border trade in ivory, as the United Nations did in 1989, doesn’t seem to have achieved its stated aim, that of ending a smuggling business worth hundreds of millions of dollars a year. Soon the world will be able to assess the effects of a move in the other direction: a decision to let China bid at a one-off auction of legal ivory from four African countries whose elephant populations have stabilised. Hitherto Japan is the only country to have been authorised to make legal bids.

After some hard talking by Chinese officials who say they have clamped down on the black market, and campaigning by environmental groups that disagree, the decision went China’s way at a meeting in Geneva of the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species (CITES).

The International Fund for Animal Welfare (IFAW), a lobby group, said this condemns “the world’s elephants to slaughter” and plays “Russian roulette” with a species whose numbers in some places, at least, are unknown but might be worryingly low. The campaigners’ line is that legal sales merely abet the illegal kind, especially when the black market is way beyond officialdom’s control.

Nobody can deny that China’s black market was rampant until recently. In a report to the UN leaked by the Environmental Investigation Agency (EIA), a campaigning group, this month, Chinese officials admitted that between 1991 and 2002 they had lost sight of 121 tonnes of ivory, the equivalent of the tusks from 11,000 elephants.

Is China observing the CITES rules now? A brief visit to China in 2007 by inspectors from the CITES secretariat suggested that things had improved: they said that ivory was becoming harder to find, though they came across a shop in the city of Xi’an with ivory carvings of dubious provenance. A bigger investigation was carried out by TRAFFIC, an independent British-based group that monitors wildlife trade. After studying 10,000 shops between 2006 and 2008, it reported a progressive decline in the availability of illegal ivory. This had coincided with greater police vigilance.

The idea that China is cleaning up its act got another boost in March, when over 750kg (1,650lb) of raw ivory was seized in Guangxi Province. As CITES notes, the penalties for illegal trading include life imprisonment and death. But the EIA, which uses undercover methods to probe the trade, says things are not as good as they seem; in 2007 its researchers found a roomful of illegal ivory, including an uncut tusk, for sale in the city of Dalian. Last month they made a small find in Gansu province.

A more interesting question is how the legal sales now in prospect will affect the black market. A fresh supply of legal ivory may depress the price, and reduce the incentive to poach. TRAFFIC notes that after a legal auction in 1999, the price fell; this led to a decline in poaching over five years. For doctrinaire types, who oppose all trade in ivory, the forthcoming sale is not just a challenge to endangered animals; it could be a threat to the credibility of their best-loved arguments.

The Economist

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So China is legally allowed to buy ivory now. Good. Supply and demand rules every market, and if there's more of a supply of legal ivory, there won't be as much demand for illegal ivory. Pretty simple, really. Poaching is terrible, but legal trade is quite different. If elephant populations are stable, then why not?