Ivory trade ban imperils elephants and rural citizens

The past few weeks have seen a bit of a tussle play out in the $71bn-a-year SubSaharan African wildlife economy. Namibia, Botswana, Zimbabwe, Zambia and Tanzania, which sustain more than half of the world’s African elephant populations, have been squaring off against developed countries at the African Elephant Summit in Hwange National Park, Zimbabwe.

The aim of the summit was to try to coax some of the 32 national members of the African Elephant Coalition into the camp that supports trade in elephant products.

While the conference was not hailed as a success, the goal remains for these five countries to pressure the UN’s Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species (CITES) to revisit its ban on elephant products at its meeting in November.

While on the surface most people would think the lack of support for the trade in elephant products is a good thing, taking the moral high ground in this situation could well lead to the extinction of species of animals and sustained impoverishment of rural populations.

Groups supporting the sustained ban on trade argue that allowing it would restimulate the black market and highlight the 2008 example in which CITES granted an exception for countries with ivory stockpiles to sell them off.

In this case, the Chinese government bought and held the bulk of the stock and sold it off piecemeal at up to 10 times the purchase price, which only helped fuel the black market. This is economics 101. Reducing supply and setting a high price floor on legal supply will always fuel black markets.

How interesting, then, that it was precisely the opening up of trade in rhino and rhino products in the 1950s and 1960s by then iMfolozi Game Reserve warden Ian Player that enabled him and his team to take the last 40 remaining white rhinos and repopulate their numbers to the current 18,000. In an interview a few years before he died, Player said: “Ranchers were buying rhino at a very low cost and then selling them to overseas hunters. That money was being reinvested back into the purchase of more land for wildlife and consequently the purchase of more rhino. The rhino population exploded ... and there is no doubt in my mind that it is because hunters were brought in and that there was an economic incentive for game ranching.”

How interesting, too, that despite the public outcry the absolute peak in rhino poaching in SA was in 2014, with 1,215 rhinos poached, just before the 2015 high court ruling that set aside the moratorium on the domestic trade in rhino horn, increasing exports of live rhino.

Since then, we have seen year-on-year decreases in numbers poached, down to 451 in 2021.

It is not for nothing that the position of the WWF, the world’s premier wildlife conservation organisation, on trophy hunting is: “Trophy hunting — where it is based on a clear scientific understanding of species’ population dynamics and is properly managed — has been proven to be an effective conservation tool in some countries and for certain species, including threatened species.

Trophy hunting can generate substantial economic benefits, community and political support, and have direct benefits for threatened species and biodiversity.”

Leaving aside the patriarchal attitude of the developed world in dictating what the developing world can and cannot do with its resources, an important reality check is required. At the global population, the world’s carrying capacity is 1.6ha per capita, without any land left for conservation. However, current resource consumption averages 2.5ha per capita.

Consuming more than the carrying capacity erodes the natural resource base, resulting in a current estimated species extinction rate of 1,000-10,000 times higher than natural extinction rates. Without viable economic outputs from conservation land, we ride the high road to wildlife extinction.