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Elephant poaching increasing

    JOHANNESBURG

    Elephant poaching has increased "sharply" since the 1997 decision to allow three southern African countries to hold one-off ivory sales, the Environmental Investigation Agency (EIA) said on Tuesday.

    The EIA was quoted by Reuters as saying that there had been an upsurge in poaching, ivory seizures and demand for ivory since members of the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species (CITES) agreed in 1997 to allow Zimbabwe, Namibia and Botswana to sell ivory to Japan.

    The EIA said that an aerial survey of Zimbabwe's Zambezi valley in late 1999 showed about 1,370 elephant carcasses, making up 11 percent of the population. It said that this contrasted with government figures which said only 84 elephants were killed in Zimbabwe in 1999.

    Namibia, Botswana, Zimbabwe and South Africa want to extend the sales and plan to petition the 11th CITES meeting which scheduled in Nairobi later this month.

    This article was produced by IRIN News while it was part of the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs. Please send queries on copyright or liability to the UN. For more information: https://shop.un.org/rights-permissions

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