Zimbabwe moots withdrawing from CITES to sell US$300 million worth of ivory

Zimbabwe may consider withdrawing from the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species (CITES) because the organisation won’t allow it to sell its ivory stockpile.

The southern African nation with the world second-largest population of elephants has a stockpile of tusks worth an estimated $US300 million and needs the revenue, Fulton Mangwanya, director-general of the Zimbabwe Parks and Wildlife Management Authority, told lawmakers in the capital, Harare today.

While CITES has banned international ivory sales to curb poaching, frustration is growing over the fact that “other countries are prescribing how we should handle our animals,” Mangwanya told a parliamentary committee on environment and tourism.

Withdrawing from CITES would have the support of neighbours Botswana, Zambia and Namibia, which all have large elephant populations of their own, he said.

In recent years, Zimbabwe has raised money for conservation by selling elephants to China. The size of the elephant population, estimated at 84 000, is twice what can be supported by available food and land, according to the government.

Botswana in May lifted a hunting ban on wildlife because it says it has too many elephants, which destroy crops and sometimes kill people.

The last one-off commercial sale of stockpiles of elephant ivory from Botswana, Namibia, South Africa and Zimbabwe that CITES allowed was completed in 2009. Most of the tusks went to China and Japan.-Bloomberg

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