Environmental Investigation Agency response to National Geographic Magazine's Blood Ivory - By Mary Rice, EIA Executive Director and Head of Elephants Campaign
September 2012. With 2011 acknowledged as the worst year for elephants since the international ivory trade ban of 1989, it should come as no great surprise that there has been considerable interest and a raft of articles in the media featuring dead elephants in recent months.
Blood Ivory
The latest is National Geographic Magazine's investigative report Blood Ivory, the lead feature in the October issue. Researched and written by Bryan Christy over three years, this is the most thorough and comprehensive assessment of the crisis affecting the world's elephant populations to be published in a long time. It provides clear insight into the enormity and extent of the illegal international trade in ivory and should prove to be a major game-changer in advance of the next meeting of the Conference of the Parties to the Convention on the International Trade in Endangered Species (CITES) in Bangkok in March 2013.
Christy is also highly critical of the global ivory trading system operated by CITES and offers some measure of vindication for the longstanding and frequently articulated view of the Environmental Investigation Agency (EIA) that the CITES ivory-trading mechanism is profoundly flawed, empirically unsupportable and has itself become a major driver of poaching and the illegal international trade in ivory.
Two one-off ivory sales have done nothing but perpetuate demand for ivory, both legal and illegal.
Continued: http://www.wildlifeextra.com/go/news/blood-ivory.html
September 2012. With 2011 acknowledged as the worst year for elephants since the international ivory trade ban of 1989, it should come as no great surprise that there has been considerable interest and a raft of articles in the media featuring dead elephants in recent months.
Blood Ivory
The latest is National Geographic Magazine's investigative report Blood Ivory, the lead feature in the October issue. Researched and written by Bryan Christy over three years, this is the most thorough and comprehensive assessment of the crisis affecting the world's elephant populations to be published in a long time. It provides clear insight into the enormity and extent of the illegal international trade in ivory and should prove to be a major game-changer in advance of the next meeting of the Conference of the Parties to the Convention on the International Trade in Endangered Species (CITES) in Bangkok in March 2013.
Christy is also highly critical of the global ivory trading system operated by CITES and offers some measure of vindication for the longstanding and frequently articulated view of the Environmental Investigation Agency (EIA) that the CITES ivory-trading mechanism is profoundly flawed, empirically unsupportable and has itself become a major driver of poaching and the illegal international trade in ivory.
Two one-off ivory sales have done nothing but perpetuate demand for ivory, both legal and illegal.
Continued: http://www.wildlifeextra.com/go/news/blood-ivory.html
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