Saturday, 25 April 2015

Questions remain over UK’s support for Tanzania’s ivory stockpile


As more details are finalised and publicised on the deal between the UK and Tanzania the more it supports the fears we first raised back in July 2014. When the UK said it was only going to support a count of the ivory the information we were provided with from Tanzanian sources was that the UK was going to do far more than this.

The information we were provided with was that the UK would fund the counting of the ivory, the building of high-tech storage for keeping the ivory in good condition and for the treatment of ivory and tusks to help prevent the stockpile from deteriorating in quality.

While the government and Minister for Africa fervently denied this investment in Tanzania’s ivory stockpile it’s quite clear now which information is correct and that raises question of should the UK be paying multi-million pounds in grants to protect the economic value of tusks and ivory when across the world other countries are destroying their stockpiles.

The UK has announced that it will be giving Tanzania £10 million towards an African elephant action plan the bulk of which is designated to be used by Tanzania to count, store and monitor its estimated 112 tonnes of tusks.

This story has issues that keep coming up that indicates that there is something not quite right with the situation.

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