KENYAN claims of an upsurge in ivory poaching do not stand up to close
scrutiny, according to the country’s own elephant experts. At the meeting of the
Convention on Trade in Endangered Species (CITES) in Nairobi next week, Kenya
will push for an end to the international sale of legally culled elephant ivory
because of a supposed rise in poaching. However, the country’s position is
weakened because of a dispute over its own poaching figures.
Nehemiah Rotich, the director of the Kenya Wildlife Service (KWS) and
custodian of his country’s elephants, has repeatedly claimed in recent weeks
that poaching is on the increase. He blames this on market forces unleashed by
the one-off sale of southern African ivory to Japan last year, and says he fears
a return to the rampant poaching of the 1980s.
That crisis, during which an estimated half a million African elephants were
killed, was halted by a global ban on trade in 1989. But southern African
countries, which have to cull elephants because of their soaring numbers, want a
return to a limited legal ivory trade, which they say helps to fund research and
conservation. The experimental one-off sale of 50 tonnes to Japan last year
raised $5 million.
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Meanwhile, Kenya and India, with the backing of many environmental groups
round the world, want this month’s CITES meeting—where the trade rules
will be agreed—to reinstate the trade ban. “The debate at CITES will, I
suspect, hinge heavily on the data, particularly Kenya’s evidence of a poaching
rise,” says David Western, a former director of the KWS.
Rotich painted a bleak picture of poaching when he visited London last month.
He told New Scientist that “we know at least 67 elephants were killed
for their tusks in Kenya last year. And there were another 40-odd that were most
likely poached.” He says that these figures are far higher than the number of
elephants poached in the 1990s.
But the country’s own scientific submission to the CITES meeting, where the
trade rules will be agreed, does not support these claims. The report, compiled
late last year, gives a tally of confirmed poached elephants of 57, in line with
Rotich’s figure of 67. But it puts the number of “likely poached” carcasses at
just two. These are cases where corpses have been found in suspicious
circumstances but it is impossible to confirm that poachers killed them. The
report puts the annual average toll between 1992 and 1998 at 49—not
significantly different from last year’s figure.
John Waithaka, head of the KWS elephant programme until last year, says:
“There is no real evidence of a rise in poaching.” Poaching, he says, was higher
in the middle of the trade ban in 1993, when 75 animals were killed.