West Africa Fuels Illegal Ivory Trade

The west African states of Nigeria, Senegal and Ivory Coast were named and shamed yesterday for allegedly fuelling the illegal ivory trade.

Having largely wiped out their own elephant populations, the three were now importing and selling tonnes of ivory which had been poached in nearby countries, according to a new report from conservation watchdogs.

It accused the countries of undermining the worldwide campaign to stamp out a lucrative trade in the tusks of an endangered species.

Investigators found more than four tonnes of illegal ivory openly on sale in nine cities in Nigeria, Senegal and Ivory Coast in breach of the international ban, said the report by Traffic, a group which monitors trade in endangered species, and the international conservation group WWF.

"These studies show just a snapshot of the problem," said Tom Milliken, director of Traffic for eastern and southern Africa. "When we factor in all of the uncontrolled manufacturing, buying and selling over a year, these numbers climb to frightening dimensions."

After years of debate the United Nations Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species, or Cites, banned the ivory trade in 1989 - a ban which applied to 164 nations.

At first the ban worked well and the massacres of the 1980s which halved Africa's elephant population became less frequent, keeping the population stable at around 500,000.

But a spate of large African ivory shipments intercepted in Asia earlier this year prompted warnings that demand was rising.

Conservationists pointed the finger at China, Singapore, South Korea and Thailand as well as western expatriates and tourists who were seduced by the beauty of the polished curios, often as small as keyrings, or by the possibility of selling them on for profit.

Yesterday it was the turn of the governments of Nigeria, Ivory Coast and Senegal, which signed up to the international ban, to be accused of failing to draft adequate laws and to provide the leadership for effective law enforcement.

"Not only is there a lack of political will to implement CITES, allowing traders to act with immunity from prosecution, corruption is preventing effective controls on the ivory trade," said Susan Lieberman, director of WWF's international species programme.

The report estimated there were fewer than 550 elephants in Nigeria and Ivory Coast but the ivory displayed in markets amounted to around 760 elephants - suggesting much was imported and the report's title: "More Ivory than Elephants in Three West African Countries".

Large suppliers were said to be the Democratic Republic of Congo, Cameroon, the Central African Republic and Gabon.

Gangs of poachers with machine guns can kill an entire herd in one day. They are powerful enough to intimidate or bribe their way through borders. "It is time that Nigeria, Ivory Coast and Senegal took concrete steps to effectively implement Cites in their countries," said the 78-page report.

Singling out Nigeria as the most worrying case, the report hinted it may face a ban on legal wildlife trade. "If Nigeria fails to comply with Cites requirements to regulate internal trade in ivory by March 2004, it could find that all legal trade in Cites-listed wildlife species to and from the country is suspended."

Sharp exchanges between conservationists and African governments are nothing new. Botswana, Namibia, South Africa, Zambia and Zimbabwe, among others, recently pressed for a partial lifting of the ban so that they could sell legal ivory stockpiles.

Maintaining an outright ban, they said, was a western-driven demand which deprived them of a chance to raise badly-needed funds for wildlife protection agencies.