NAIROBI, Kenya (AP) — The craft market just north of
Angola’s capital sells paintings, hand-carved wooden animals and newly
woven baskets. It is also sells more than 10,000 pieces of ivory, making
it the largest market in southern Africa to openly sell elephant tusks,
an illegal trade.
Across the African continent, in Kenya, two of
the country’s biggest tuskers, as the continent’s largest bull elephants
are called, were slaughtered by poachers. The phenomena are
interconnected.
The international ivory trade is threatening to
wipe out Africa’s elephants. Tens of thousands of elephants are being
killed for their ivory tusks each year continentwide. And while experts
say there has been a decline in elephant poaching, they say more needs
to be done, as the deaths of the beloved pachyderms in Kenya show.
At
the Benfica Market near Luanda, Angola, two animal researchers recently
counted 10,026 pieces of ivory for sale — necklaces, bracelets, carved
figurines and whole tusks. And that huge count didn’t include backup
inventory the sellers kept nearby.
"I was flabbergasted because it
was so big," said Esmond Martin, one of two researches publishing a
paper in an upcoming issue of TRAFFIC Bulletin, a wildlife trade
journal. "It’s completely illegal."
The huge demand for ivory in
China and the riches a relatively impoverished Kenyan or Tanzanian man,
for instance, can make by shooting an elephant and selling its tusks are
leading to the slaughter.
Kenya this month mourned the poaching
deaths of Mountain Bull, the patriarch elephant of the Mt. Kenya region,
and Satao, a 45-year-old bull some experts believe was the largest on
earth. Poachers killed him with a poison arrow.
"A great life lost
so that someone far away can have a trinket on their mantelpiece," the
Tsavo Trust said in announcing Satao’s death.
Achim Steiner, the
head of the Kenya-based United Nations Environmental Program, said
Thursday that such killings fill him with deep frustration.
"I
think it’s both a tragedy and a travesty that in this day and age we are
not able to contain and manage what ultimately is an act of
irresponsibility that can lead to the extinction of species forever,"
the official whose agency is charged with protecting the world’s flora
and fauna, told The Associated Press.
Earlier this month customs
officials in Hong Kong discovered 790 kilograms (1,740 pounds) of ivory
in 32 suitcases. The flight had originated in Angola, the South China
Morning Post reported.
Martin and Lucy Vigne have documented ivory
markets in Nigeria, Sudan and Egypt and at times had to flee angry,
threatening sellers worried the pair’s research would harm their
livelihood.
In Angola, though, no one seemed to care. They were
able to count all of the ivory, take dozens of photos and ask sellers
prices and how the pieces were carved. Chinese buyers appear in many of
their photos.
"Obviously it was a totally open trade. No pressure
to keep it under cover, and obviously all designed with the Chinese
market," said Vigne, whose trip with Martin was funded by the Columbus
(Ohio) Zoo Conservation Fund and the U.K.-based Aspinall Foundation.
The
two think Angola hosts such a large market because more than a quarter
million Chinese laborers live there. The ivory —straight and translucent
— appeared to have come from forest elephants in Congo, they said.
The
Luanda markets offer low prices compared to what buyers pay in China,
Martin said, based on his and Vigne’s trip to Chinese ivory markets in
2011.
A beaded ivory necklace that was priced at $30 in Angola
sells for about $450 in China. A medium size $100 bangle in Angola costs
$850 in China. A $500 human figurine in Angola costs five times that in
China.
Transnational organized crime, with vast financial
resources to buy their way past police and border guards, is behind the
ivory trade, said Steiner. Efforts are being made in Asia to raise
consumer awareness that buying ivory leads to the deaths of elephants.
Many Chinese consumers simply aren’t aware, Steiner said.
A sliver
of hope is emerging, Steiner said, because governments are taking steps
to fight poaching, such as deploying new technologies, passing tougher
laws, and adding military personnel to the anti-poaching efforts. CITES,
the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species, said this
month that some 20,000 elephants were killed in 2013, a lower number
than in 2012 and 2011.
"We are seeing in many African countries
the first signs of a turning of the curve and the beginnings of reduced
number of poached elephants," he said. "And that is perhaps the second
important personal reaction: Don’t just despair. It can be changed, it
is changing. And we need everyone on board."