*NEWS*EUROPE IS " FUELLING IVORY TRADE"

[Anonymous]

 Europe is ‘fuelling ivory trade’

Europe’s thriving ivory retail market is threatening an increase in elephant poaching, conservationists have warned.

More than 27,000 ivory
products were found on sale in five major European countries where
investigators went: the UK, Germany, France, Italy and Spain.
Global conservation groups Care for the Wild and Save the Elephants say an active ivory market spurs poachers on.
Elephant populations in Africa were halved in the 1980s, after more than 500,000 animals were slaughtered.
Although the ivory trade has shrunk in Europe since the 1989 ban passed
by the UN Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species
(Cites), the groups’ investigators found a worrying number of artefacts
on sale.We mustn’t forget that every item represents a dead
elephantBarbara Maas, Care for the Wild,German and UK markets now rival
East Asian giants such as China and Japan, they claim.Their report also
warned that all ivory, even if legally sourced, contributed to the
slaughter of elephants.
Care for the Wild’s chief executive, Barbara Maas, said the trade in Europe was predominantly in old ivory.
“Although technically legal, we mustn’t forget that every item represents a dead elephant.”
Poor record Co-author of the report, Dr Esmond Martin, said he was
shocked at the scale of the UK’s ivory market, which was believed to be
relatively small.Despite having one of the harshest penalties in Europe
for trading illegal ivory, he found that the UK had the poorest law
enforcement record of the countries surveyed.Dr Martin also found that
many dealers did not bother with the mandatory EU and Cites
documentation, claiming it was too much red tape.Illegal ivory out of
Africa is now bypassing Europe and being shipped to East Asia where
high demand is inflating prices, according to the report authors.China
has an unregulated ivory market and they warned that unless something
is done to control demand, nothing would change in Africa.Iain
Douglas-Hamilton, head of Save the Elephants, said that in unstable
countries such as the Democratic Republic of Congo and Central African
Republic, the demand was fuelling “a poaching holocaust”.Mammoth
problem As Europe’s legal ivory stocks dwindle, some craftsmen are
using mammoth tusks as a substitute. The tusk is brittle and
discoloured but prized by collectors.
Another co-author of the report, Dr Dan Stiles, said that in north-east
Siberia the permafrost was melting as a result of climate change and
exposing large numbers of mammoth remains.”There is no way of
quantifying stockpiles but we found 3,424 mammoth ivory pieces in
Germany and France alone,” he said.The mammoth is an extinct species
and requires no documentation for trading – a fact already being
exploited.In order to disguise items carved from the ivory of recently
killed elephants, some retailers are said to be colouring it – passing
it off as mammoth ivory.Dr Martin said: “Illegal products are coming in
that are being mixed up with the antique stuff.
“People don’t know whether what they are buying has come from poached elephants.

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September 29, 2005 at 10:53 AM