Proposal
is intended to protect African elephants from being poached for their tusks
Thu 10
Jan 2019 18.36 GMTLast modified on Fri 11 Jan
2019 12.45 GMT
The
long-extinct woolly mammoth could gain protected status in an unprecedented
attempt to save the African elephant from the global ivory trade.
If
approved, the protection of the mammoth under the Convention on International
Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora (Cites) could prove vital
in saving its modern relatives. The proposal by Israel would close a loophole
that enables the trafficking
of illegal elephant ivory under the guise of legal
mammoth ivory, which is almost identical in appearance.
“They are
often intermingled in shipment and retail displays, and are fashioned in a
similar style. To the untrained eye it’s very difficult to distinguish between
them,” said Iris Ho, senior specialist in wildlife programmes and policy at
Humane Society International (HSI). “There is currently no international
regulatory regime to track and monitor the commercial trade in mammoth ivory.”
An
Appendix II level of protection for the prehistoric mammoth, which has been
extinct for 10,000 years, would subject the mammoth ivory trade to strict
regulation. It would be the first time an extinct species has been listed as
protected under Cites.
The
international trade in elephant ivory has been banned since 1990, but demand
for it still leads to the deaths of 30,000 African elephants every year.
Kitty
Block, the president of HSI, said: “With ivory traffickers exploiting the
long-extinct mammoth so they can further exploit imperilled elephants, nations
must unite to end the poaching epidemic and ensure all ivory markets are
closed. The time to act is now, before we lose them forever.”
A number
of jurisdictions have already prohibited the sale of mammoth ivory products
altogether, including New York and Hawaii. India has also banned the import of mammoth
ivory.
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