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Kafue National Park

The Ivory Market

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"Tickling the ivories" was the slang term for playing the piano. The keys of many pianos were made from the ivory tusks of hunted elephants. Many drawing rooms contained ivory ornaments and pieces of art.

Wildlife Management

The attraction of elephant ivory is that it can be carved relatively easily and has a number of qualities such as its lustre, texture and durability that make it an ideal material from which to produce decorative and beautiful ornaments and articles. Indeed it used to be called "white gold". The demand for ivory goes back hundreds of years. In Africa it peaked at the beginning of the 19-century when hunting and exporting ivory became an enjoyable and profitable pastime for the white colonialists. The 1950s saw growth in the level of exports from 200 tonnes till it reached an all time high of 1,000 tonnes in the 1980s. The rapidly growing newly industrialised countries of East Asia provided the engine for this growth in demand.

Now the demand for ivory comes from mass-produced souvenirs such as hanko. Hanko are small carved seals used in Japan and other East Asian Countries to validate official documents. This does not mean however that the countries of East Asia on the only customers. Middle Eastern and European markets generate demand too.

Moving on to the supply side of the market. As the demand for ivory grew the hunting of elephants for their tusks grew too. Demand brought forth supply. It has been reckoned that 70,000 elephants were being killed every year from the mid-1970s through the 1980s. The elephants of Zambia were particularly badly hit. They lost over 80 per cent of their herd. Since the 1960 the population has declined from 250,000 to between 22,000 and 24,000 at present. In the Luangwe Valley, between 1973 and 1987, an estimated 56,000 elephants were killed by poachers. Indeed as the elephants were killed ivory became scarcer, driving the price up, increasing the incentive to find and kill all remaining elephants. The free market and the price mechanism is driving the elephant towards extinction.

Under the CITES agreement the supply of ivory is very carefully regulated. Since 1989 the exporting of ivory and other elephant products has been banned, however the stocks of ivory that existed before the ivory ban was introduced can be traded domestically providing it is done through licensed traders. The effect of this is that the ivory industry has gone into decline. However there is some evidence that part of the ivory trade has been driven underground. If the legal channels cannot satisfy the demand then illegal ones will.

Kafue National Park

Much of the illegal ivory poaching is organised by powerful ivory barons who employ teams of poachers who have sophisticated weaponry and vehicles far in advance of anything the anti-poaching units of the authorities. Some poaching is undertaken by individuals who view killing an elephant and then selling its tusks illegally as the only way of feeding their family. A good pair of tusks might be worth four head of cattle so the temptation is great.

Some countries such as Botswana, Namibia and Zimbabwe are calling for their population of elephants to be downlisted from Appendix 1 status to Appendix 2 status on account of their large and growing population of elephants. However conservationists argue with the support countries such as Zambia that allowing international trade in ivory will simply encourage poaching to increase throughout the whole of Africa.

There is evidence that poachers have been stockpiling ivory in the hope that the CITES ban on ivory trade will be lifted at some point in the future and the price rises. Some sources suggest that stocks of over 500 tonnes of ivory exist.

Next issue - The Impact of Structural Adjustment Programmes on Poaching >>