IUCN Tel. +254 20 249 3561165

Mukoma Road www.iucn.org P. 0. Box 68200 - 00200 Nairobi, Kenya

11 May 2012

Tom De Meulenaer

Scientific Support Officer

CITES Secretariat

International Environment House

11-13, Chemin des Anemones

1219 Chatelaine Geneve, SWITZERLAND

Dear Tom,

As requested by the CITES Secretariat, the AfESG Secretariat requested comments from the AfESG members

on the draft report by Martin et al. entitled "Decision-making mechanisms and necessary conditions for a

future trade in African elephant ivory." Responses were received from several of our members; namely Drs

lain Douglas-Hamilton, Max Graham, Fiona Maisels, Dan Stiles, Hilde Vanleeuwe and George Wittemyer, and

are attached to this letter.

I would like to take this opportunity to make a few summary remarks, which are reflected in the attached

set of comments and are being expressed widely across the broader African elephant conservation and

management network that we regularly interact with.

When reviewing the terms of reference for the consultancy, and the question of a possible decision-making

mechanism for a process of trade in ivory, two key issues present themselves: 1) Can the current laws and

enforcement capacity in the African elephant range States adequately control supply; and 2) Can the

demand be adequately estimated and, if so, can it be accommodated within the available legal supply?

Prior to adopting the system described or any modification of the mechanism recommended, it would seem

very important that the demand which needs to be fed is estimated in some meaningful way. In China

alone, it is possible that if only a nominal fraction of those entering the middle class each year become ivory

consumers, the scale of demand would potentially be so large as to outstrip any legally-sourced supply. I

raise this because, even with the greatest will in the world, a dramatically increasing demand could rapidly

exceed the legal supply and law enforcement efforts on the ground in Africa would very likely be

overwhelmed in the face of a challenge of this nature. It could indeed be considered a shortcoming that a

document of this magnitude does not really address this possibility. In fact, the assumptions (though

perhaps not as clearly articulated as they might have been) of a tightly controlled legal supply and a demand

that is comfortably accommodated within those amounts could well be challenged on the basis of current

demand, alone.

I appreciate you passing on these comments to the consultants, and hope that the CITES Secretariat and the

Standing Committee will continue to consult and give serious consideration to the views of AfESG's

members as this process and further discussion on the decision-making mechanism moves forward.

Very best,

Dr. Holly T. Dublin

Chair

f S S C Species Survival Commission

INTERNATIONAL UNION FOR CONSERVATION OF NATURE

Comments on the Draft Report “Decision-making mechanisms and necessary conditions for a future trade in African elephant ivory” Consultancy document for the CITES Secretariat (no 2011/046) By Iain Douglas-Hamilton The authors are well known, well respected, and dedicated to the concept of conservation through sustainable yield utilization. I have a problem about culling elephants for monetary gain, though in fairness that is not what they are advocating. Where ivory is concerned if there were a means to recover ivory from elephants dying naturally, and this was the only ivory to be sold in the world, this would not present a moral problem, though from reading this report it would appear this source would never to be able to meet current or future demands. As it is the principle source of ivory currently is from illegal killing. The authors acknowledge that the ivory trade historically has driven down elephant numbers in the late 19th century and that protective measures introduced in colonial times allowed a recovery. Once again they acknowledge the same process happened in the 1970s and 1980s, especially in East, West and Central Africa. They allow that in East Africa a considerable recovery was made following the ivory trade ban in 1989. However, this report comes at a time when there is a broad consensus within the conservation and scientific community that excessive demand for ivory is once again driving the illegal killing of elephants to unsustainable levels, and that most elephant populations in Africa are already in decline or soon will be so. The key to securing a future for elephants therefore lies in reducing demand for ivory overall. The draft report should be judged therefore in the light of whether or not it is encouraging or discouraging demand for ivory. The authors have made little attempt to consult widely, nor to consider views across Africa, alternative to their own, that consider any ivory trading a threat to elephants. Recent evidence that the one off sales permitted by CITES may have promoted demand within China (which along with Japan was registered by CITES as having adequate controls in ivory marketing) is not discussed. In fact recent studies by Esmond Martin, and ETIS, and investigations by the EIA, IFAW, and Panorama have shown that the majority of ivory on sale in China comes from illegal sources and demand is flourishing as never before. In other words the controls that were imagined to exist at the heart of the ivory importing, and which would justify the one off sales, have failed. The authors have not considered in any detail the evidence produced by MIKE that the illegal killing of elephants reached an all time high in 2011 in all parts of Africa, Southern Africa not excepted. This was matched by ETIS records that illegal seizures of ivory exceeded any previous year. Currently, in 2012 there is so far no let up apparent in the illegal killing of elephants. Unprecedented large scale killings have been reported from Cameroon, Garamba, Northern DRC, Kenya, Tanzania, Mocambique and many other countries. News reports and research results so far received suggest that this illegal killing widespread across

the continent at a greater level than year experienced since the ivory trade ban of 1989. The principle recommendation of the report is to set up an international Central Ivory Selling Organization (CISO), along the lines of the De Beers cartel. This is flawed because DeBeers only worked well so long as there were no independent diamond producing countries. There are some 34 or so elephant range states in Africa and it is improbable in the extreme that allowing a handful of states to trade in ivory would diminish the flow of illegal ivory and the incidence of illegal killing elsewhere, or that the illegal providers would be restrained by CISO. Governance in many of the range states is not at a level that would sustain the development of a CISO, and to restrict ivory trading to a handful of Southern African States would be destabilize the security of elephants continent wide. It should be remembered that the DeBeers model failed entirely in Sierra Leone where demand for diamonds led to abominable human rights abuses. Above all I fear that the Central Ivory Selling Organization (CISO) would promote demand for ivory, by trying to maximize prices just as DeBeers does for diamonds. To encourage demand for ivory will risk the destruction of the vast majority of elephants in most of their range in Africa. Finally the authors do not consider the possibility that once demand has exhausted the elephant reserves of West, Central and Eastern Africa the killing will then move to Southern Africa. There is already some evidence from MIKE that this is already taking place with record levels of illegal killing, measured as the proportion of illegally killed elephants in 2011 in Southern African. These PIKE levels exceeded 50%, the level at which it is thought elephant populations are no longer sustainable. Only three MIKE sites in Southern African are so far avoiding this trend, Kruger, Chobe and Etosha. In summary the report suffers several major flaws, not restricted to the following:

- it is parochial and focuses disproportionately on Southern Africa. - it does not consider the latest data, MIKE, ETIS and individual research

programmes, showing the current dire situation of elephants across their range.

- it does note acknowledge excessive demand as the main driver of illegal killing of elephants.

- it does not consider the dangers to elephants of stimulating demand for ivory.

- it does not consider the danger to Southern African elephants once Central and Eastern elephant stocks are exhausted.

Comments on the Draft Report “Decision-making mechanisms and necessary conditions for a future trade in African elephant ivory”

By Dr Max Graham (IUCN African Elephant Specialist Group member)

May 2012

1. Examination of the various processes and decision-making mechanisms related to ivory trade that are or have been operating under the provisions of the Convention, including compliance and enforcement provisions

• As an overall statement this section is highly skewed towards the philosophical justification for Southern Africa states’ desire to trade ivory and does not adequately describe the past and present situations in other African countries that contributed to previous decisions made by CITES members with regards to the legal trade in ivory. This makes this section very limited in its relevance outside of southern Africa. For example there is little consideration of the perceived positive impacts of the 1989 ivory ban on elephant populations outside of southern Africa and instead this report merely suggests that the ban was possibly premature (page 4) and occurred as a consequence of media pressure & the activities of NGOs (page 5) without referring to the published evidence of significant elephant population declines outside of southern Africa leading up to the decision to ban the ivory trade. I would like to see a report that provides a more balanced, continental, overview of decision-making related to the ivory trade.

• There is no reference to the current problems of compliance, monitoring and enforcement in elephant range states outside of southern Africa.

• There is no reference to the conditions of countries given ivory trading status and current problems of compliance, monitoring and enforcement in ivory consuming states, particularly China which was granted trading status but has a thriving domestic market for illegal ivory.

2. Evaluation of the strengths and weaknesses of international trade regimes and associated

controls, safeguards and monitoring methods for other high-value commodities in the context of future trade in ivory

• I am concerned that the case studies used to demonstrate the potential conservation benefits of wildlife trade are not comparable to elephants and ivory for several reasons:

o Elephants are wide ranging, long lived species and would be incredibly difficult to “farm” or “captive breed” for practical and ethical reasons.

o The supply of diamonds can be controlled by managing a relatively small number of static mines. In contrast controlling the supply of ivory from African elephants would require controlling and managing enormous areas of land. This isn’t realistic.

o An “ethical certification” system, such as FSC, relies on an ethical market. While this exists in Western Europe and North America, it has not stopped non- ethically sourced timber from being harvested and sold. Current consumers of ivory in the East appear to not be concerned with such considerations, further devaluing the proposal of a similar ethical certification system for ivory.

• There are major assumptions made in this section with regards to the ability of a legal

system of trade to control supply and demand for ivory. Within the context of Africa, corruption, low enforcement capacity and insecurity means that controlling the supply of ivory is extremely challenging if not impossible. Furthermore there is growing evidence to suggest that demand for ivory in Asia is being driven by growing affluence which could make it increasingly difficult to control with China experiencing economic growth at almost 10 % per annum. Quite simply Africa’s ability to produce ivory cannot sustain China’s ability to consume it.

3. Impact of Harvesting and trade on elephant populations

• I am concerned that the models used in this section are based on assumptions and parameters that are not accurate. For example:

o Evidence from long term studies suggests that the parameters provided in this model for age at first birth, birth intervals, age-specific mortality rates are inaccurate, giving the impression of more favourable conditions for harvesting elephants for ivory than would exist in reality.

o Based on the available evidence, I find it hard to believe that a harvested population can be skewed towards males. Natural mortality among male elephants is known to be higher than females.

o These parameters have been developed from data on savannah elephants in Botswana. African forest elephants have very different parameters and therefore it is unclear how applicable these models are for this species.

o Many African elephant populations are far too small and heavily exploited for these models to be applicable.

• There is no discussion of the upward trend in illegal killing of elephants and associated seizures recorded across Africa that has continued since the recent one off sale of ivory. This creates great uncertainty as to the impact of the legal trade in ivory on illegal trade and the status of elephant populations across the continent.

4. Basic principles and factors that could guide future trade in ivory, and proposals on how an

effective, objective and independent decision-making mechanism could operate, taking into account the provisions of the African elephant action plan and experiences from Asia

• As an overall point, this proposed system seems idealistic and overly simplistic to capture the reality of the supply and demand sides of the ivory market.

• Giving responsibility to range states to control the supply of ivory to the proposed CISO effectively makes the argument that local communities will benefit from an ivory trade system redundant. In fact the opposite pattern could emerge where central governments control the supply of ivory at the expense of local communities. Similar concerns are being levied at emerging REDD projects in the carbon sector.

• There are some very unrealistic assumptions here: o How, in the context of some of the most corrupt states in the world with the

most porous boundaries in the world, is it possible to control ivory trade among African states and between Africa and the rest of the world?

o Why would raw ivory buyers exclusively purchase legal ivory when they are likely to have access to illegal ivory without the bureaucratic red tape? Recent research in China has already demonstrated that neither traders nor consumers appear to be bothered about the legal status of ivory.

• The authors of the report use the diamond trade as a model for the ivory trade. However they do not discuss the failures of the diamond trade to control the supply of diamonds sourced unethically.

Comments on Martin et al 2012- Ivory trade By Fiona Maisels, AfESG member The report is based on a number of assumptions which, although they may hold true for the elephant populations of Southern Africa, are not true for other parts of Africa. The report recognizes that there is a huge elephant poaching problem throughout most of Africa, but addresses only trade as a mechanism for stopping it, whereas there is no guarantee that legal trade would stop illegal trade. Many hughly pertinent points have already been made by Hilde Van Leeuwe and by the Amboseli Group, so I need not repeat them here. I list instead the assumptions made by the Martin et al report, and show how they are not actually held up in the region outside the very narrow Sothern African context (and perhaps not even there, especially Zimbabwe).

1. Assumption: the law is respected, enforced, and any deviation will be punished

The first assumption is that there is already workable, transparent, and responsible wildlife and economic management systems in all of the elephant range states. Unfortunately, when one looks at Transparency International’s Corruption Perceptions Index (Corruption_Perceptions_Index 2011), the range states of all the forested countries except Gabon are among the 30% most corrupt countries on earth. Many others of the West and East African countries, plus Zimbabwe, fall within the bottom most corrupt countries on Earth. By contrast, three of the countries that were allowed to trade in the 2008 one-off sale are in the top 15% least corrupt of the sub-Saharan African states (and in the top 35% globally). The Central African countries in particular have repeatedly shown an inability to maintain transparency in a variety of fields, of which the pertinent ones in this discussion are wildlife management, law enforcement, and economics. The most visibly dysfunctional state is the Democratic Republic of Congo, which has had a sharp decline in elephants in its protected areas in the last two decades, which shows no sign of slowing (Beyers et al. 2011). Military personnel have been involved in elephant poaching in all of the important Parks of the country, ongoing in the Okapi Faunal Reserve, Bili-Uere area, and Salonga National Park. The most recent publicized elephant poaching in DRC was a helicopter-assisted killing of 22 elephants in Garamba National Park in March 2012. Either this was directly assisted by the military or it was carried out by a powerful organized crime group (or both). The weapons used for elephant killing in DRC, northern and south eastern Cameroon, CAR and the Republic of Congo are almost always military weapons (AK47 and the like), and/or heavy duty rifles, arms available through collusion either with the military (or with militia groups in CAR, eastern DRC and northern Cameroon). The recent removal, by extremely well-organised poachers, of most of the elephant population of a well-known National Park in Cameroon (Bouba Njida) in the first three months of 2012 (Platt 2012) was in the Cameroonian and international press for weeks without the Cameroon Government actually implementing any action other than meetings in a nearby town. Only when foreign embassies (EU and USA) got involved did Cameroon send army personnel (and a helicopter!) to the site, but they were no match for the better trained, better armed, and doubtless far more highly motivated poachers, who appeared to be a militia group from the Sahel area of either neighbouring Chad, CAR, or Sudan (reports of their provenance are very varied). The end result is that the ivory (probably over 4 tons of it, at a conservative 10kg per elephant) has vanished, the Park’s elephants are mostly dead (or will die, as the non-ivory bearing young have lost their mothers), and the previously existing tourism business that employed local people will almost certainly have to shut down. If the Government is not interested in stopping poaching in one of its best known National Parks, from which it earned a regular revenue from tourism annually, how well would it be expected to manage an annual legal elephant kill without chaos and corruption ensuing?

In general in Central and West Africa, wildlife laws are not really seen as equivalent to laws against people or property. The law enforcement agents see animals as meat, and as “fair game” for everyone. The laws themselves are generally rather good, and would prevent wildlife crime of all kinds if enforced. They are generally not enforced at all, or a small bribe allows a hunter or trafficker to ensure the law is not enforced.

Here I repeat the section about Japanese complicity in illegal ivory sale, what I mentioned in the questionnaire (the rest you already have so I will not repeat myself);

Shortly before the last one-off sale, the official Japanese ivory delegation went to southern Africa to choose the tusks that they would like to buy. The delegation was composed of people who were experts on different types of ivory. They were surprised to see a great deal of forest elephant ivory mixed in with the savannah elephant ivory, but not so surprised that they didn’t choose the forest elephant ivory to be allocated to Japan. Forest elephant ivory is greatly valued in Japan for its superior carving properties (it is hard and compact and perfect for the names on hankos and for the plectrums for Japanese musical instruments) (Nishihara 2003).

This information from a Japanese conservationist who talked to the delegation later, in Japan.

Needless to say there was not supposed to be any forest elephant ivory in the lot available for the one-off sale. Therefore the tracking of the chain of custody does not work even at the beginning of the chain- the forest elephant ivory must have come from further north (DRC/ Congo/ Gabon/ Cameroon?) and been “laundered” into the available ivory for sale.

Profitable wildlife crime in Central Africa (especially ivory poaching and trafficking) is often organized or highly abetted by powerful government figures (Governors, heads of police, Generals or other high-up military officers, etc) who can ensure the impunity of poachers and their guns and vehicles. Many seized weapons come back into circulation time and time again after having been handed in to the relevant authority.

2. Assumption: Demand is lower than the potential production rate The report assumes that about 300-400 tons of ivory would be able to be sustainably produced by the whole of the African elephant population (which they erroneously assume is >500,000): the last African Elephant Database figures quoted are now five years old and evidence from West, East, and Central Africa shows that there is currently a reduction in elephant populations, rather than an increase or even a maintenance of numbers (Beyers et al. 2011; Bouche et al. 2011; Wittemyer et al. 2011). It also assumes that the current, badly poached and demographically skewed populations would have to be given time to re-establish “normal” population structures before being harvested (they ran the model for 300 years): in other words in the absence of poaching, a frankly impossible scenario in today’s economic and low law-enforcement Africa. The demand for ivory from China is increasing (Martin & Vigne 2011; Vigne & Martin 2011) as is its price (Wittemyer et al. 2011). In December 2011 the price paid for a kilo of ivory directly to a poacher was $200 in north-eastern Gabon. In April 2012 it is now $300 (and it is also the same rate in Kenya). In the early 1990s it was around %7. The price in China is currently thought to be only about $750, so the gap between price to hunter and price earned at the China end of the chain has been greatly reduced, and very rapidly. This is due to the economic boom in China, where the proportion of households classified as wealthy (earning over $24,000) comprises presently about 17% of the population, and will rise to about 43% in 2015 (McKinsey&Company 2011). If just 10% of the 2011 households wished to buy a 20 gram piece of ivory each year, this would require 153 tons of ivory. If they wanted a 50 gram piece, that would be 382 tons. In 2015, the relevant quantities will be 384 and 980 tons. If

average tusk weight is 6 kilos (Hunter et al. 2004) the smallest number of elephants required to fulfil this tonnage would be over 22,000 (20g piece weight in 2011) and up to 32,000 in 2015, for the 20 gram ivory piece.

3. Assumption: a legal ivory trade will replace the illegal ivory trade There has been no evidence for any kind of replacement activity in a parallel activity in sub-saharan Africa: the bushmeat trade. In many countries there is a flourishing, illegal, almost completely uncontrolled bushmeat trade running parallel to the legal trade. Legally traded animals are usually the rapid-breeding rodents and blue duikers; illegally traded ones are generally the larger ungulates (buffalo, pigs, large antelopes) and primates. Legally traded animals have been killed either with a gun during the day, or using traditional plant-based snares; illegally killed ones have been caught with wire or nylon snares, or by spotlighting. In many cases the officials who are supposed to control the trade are actually either turning a blind eye in return for a bribe, or are even organizing it. Why would legal ivory trade replace illegal trade? What would stop them both being carried out alongside each other? There is very little precedent for any wildlife law in the Central African countries being adhered to, with the recent an honorable mention of Gabon, which is now trying to control the excesses of the last couple of decades, but there is still some way to go. The train lines, roads, and aircraft of all the forested countries are in constant and profitable use for wildlife product transportation from the remote, more wildlife-rich provinces to the capital cities. The national rail company of Gabon has printed notices at its railway stations requesting passengers to package up their bushmeat properly so that the blood does not mess up other passengers’ luggage. The air companies of the Republic of Congo ensure that bushmeat does not get carried in the seating area of their aircraft, but rather in the hold, for the same reason. In both countries it is illegal to carry bushmeat on a plane, but this is not relevant to either passengers, the air company, or the Government forestry agents who “control” the luggage: a small fee is paid by the passengers and the baggage gets through. Why would ivory be any different?

4. Assumption: the economics have been worked out It takes a great deal of money to effectively protect wildlife from poaching, especially if the wildlife in question provides a very high profit to the poacher. The obvious example is the massacre of South Africa’s rhinos in the last couple of years, despite the nation having one of the best protection forces on the continent and being one of the richest countries in Africa. It costs roughly ten times as much to effectively protect wildlife from poachers in a forest than it does in a savannah (Jachmann 2008) due to the difficulties of visibility and travel through forests. It costs roughly $1,000,000 to effectively manage a forest park of 3-4,000 km2 in Central Africa (except in Gabon, where it costs almost three times as much, due to Gabon’s much higher salary and logistics costs), with a guard squad of about 20 people in the absence of serious organized-crime style ivory poaching. It will cost a great deal more to combat the new wave of poaching: many parks are now ramping up to 50 or more guards. All the National Parks in Central Africa are paid for by conservation NGOs (WWF, WCS, AWF, Africa Parks, etc) with either a small Government input (10% or so) or nothing. Some of the Central African countries could easily afford to pay for their Parks through their considerable oil revenue; they choose not do so. Why would they choose to pay for ivory trade management? The costs of enforcing the CISO do not seem to include the recruiting, training, and annual salaries of the (possibly hundreds of) additional officers who would be required to ensure that ivory from all the elephant range sites (Parks, Reserves) collected and transported to the central holding area was legal, documented and marked, and did not vanish in transit. An economic analysis of the possibility of opening up the bushmeat trade to legal exploitation was carried out in 2008 (Wilkie et al. 2006) and the results clearly showed that the costs of employing all the additional officers to monitor and enforce compliance with tax and wildlife law was far more expensive than the revenue gained by taxing the meat itself. Finally, the comparison with the diamond market is seductive, but there is a difference- there are actually huge amounts of diamonds available, but elephant numbers are extremely small compared to the growing Chinese market. It is true that if there is a demand for a commodity, the users will get hold of it whether it is legal or illegal. But even if there are legal tusks available, the cost of effectively protecting the elephants is so high that illegal

operators will still prefer to penetrate the protective net, poach elephants, and traffic their tusks to destination at a lower cost than the wildlife authorities (or the CISO) are paying. The real solution is to convince Chinese consumers that ivory is an old-fashioned material that no-one would admit to owning… who sees footbinding or pigtails as fashionable these days? There is a groundswell in China now that is changing hearts and minds- ivory is no longer sold on the Chinese Alibaba internet site; there have been various protests by youngsters against the use of live bear bile extraction, and there are over 3500 “green” NGOs in China today. References Beyers, R., T. Sinclair, J. Hart, F. Grossman, S. Dino, and B. Klinkenberg. 2011. Resource wars and conflict

ivory. The impact of civil conflict on elephants in the Okapi Faunal Reserve: 1995 - 2006. PLoS One 6:e27129.

Bouche, P., I. Douglas-Hamilton, G. Wittemyer, A. J. Nianogo, J. L. Doucet, P. Lejeune, and C. Vermeulen. 2011. Will Elephants Soon Disappear from West African Savannahs? PLoS One 6.

Corruption_Perceptions_Index. 2011. Corruption Perceptions Index 2011. Transparency International. http://cpi.transparency.org/cpi2011/in_detail/.

Hunter, N., E. Martin, and T. Milliken. 2004. Determining the number of elephants required to supply current unregulated ivory markets in Africa and Asia. Pachyderm 36:116-128.

Jachmann, H. 2008. Illegal wildlife use and protected area management in Ghana. Biological Conservation 141:1906-1918.

Martin, E. B., and L. Vigne. 2011. A report on the soaring demand for elephant and mammoth ivory in southern China. Elephant Family, The Aspinall Foundation and Columbus Zoo and Aquarium http://www.elephantfamily.org/uploads/copy/EF_Ivory_Report_2011_web.pdf.

McKinsey&Company. 2011. Tapping China’s luxury-goods market. Page 48. McKinsey Quarterly. Nishihara, T. 2003. Elephant poaching and ivory trafficking in African tropical forests with special

reference to the Republic of Congo. Pachyderm 34:66-74. Platt, J. 2012. Cameroon Elephant Massacre Shows Poaching, Ivory Trade Require an International

Response. Scientific American http://blogs.scientificamerican.com/extinction-countdown/2012/03/20/cameroon-elephant-massacre-poaching-ivory-trade/.

Vigne, L., and E. Martin. 2011. Consumption of elephant and mammoth ivory increases in southern China. Pachyderm:79-89.

Wilkie, D. S., M. Starkey, E. L. Bennett, K. Abernethy, R. Fotso, F. Maisels, and P. Elkan. 2006. Can Taxation Contribute to Sustainable Management of the Bushmeat Trade? Evidence from Gabon and Cameroon. Journal of International Wildlife Law and Policy 9:335-349.

Wittemyer, G., D. Daballen, and I. Douglas-Hamilton. 2011. Rising ivory prices threaten elephants. Nature 476:282-283.

Comments on the draft report regarding a possible decision-making mechanism for a progress of trade in ivory,

by Dan Stiles

I've made a few comments, but unfortunately don't have time to make a full critique. They have obviously put an

enormous amount of work into it. I suppose my main criticism is that the whole thing is basically a design for

trading from southern Africa exclusively - even though continent-wide ivory production figures are modelled - and

that no detailed suggestions are made of how the continent's ivory production could be incorporated and utilized.

They have also not adequately addressed the demand problem. They haven't even tried to estimate it. They say

only that demand will be controlled by raising prices to push it down to fit supply, as is done by De Beer's with

diamonds. The problem is that De Beers controls the mines and production release onto the market. CISO will not

control elephant habitats. If ivory prices are raised too high, there will be incentives to produce illegal ivory.

Many of the assumed quantitative figures used in modelling have no sources referenced. Where did all those

elephant demographics, mortality rates, prices, etc. come from?

Nevertheless, it's a pretty impressive piece of work.

Page(s) Paragraph Comments

vi I am not staff of TRAFFIC. Better to put me under IUCN AfESG or independent.

vii 2 “all trade in ivory and elephant products was banned.” – except for antiques

vii 2 “A sale which was approved in 2002 did not take place.” - Zambia and Zim rejected, Botswana, SA and Namibia only delayed until criteria met. The sales were in 2008.

vii 2 “However, countries in West, Central and East Africa continue to experience high levels of illegal killing of elephants and do not support a trade in ivory. ” - TZ does.

viii 6 “Botswana, Malawi, Namibia and Zimbabwe entered reservations against the listing but did not export ivory until the CITES supervised a sale of their stockpiles in 1999. ” - Not Malawi

ix 1 Any further sales by those already listed under Appendix II. Appendix I countries could propose listing under Appendix II, allowing sales.

ix 2 “These provisions were ignored when Botswana, Malawi, Namibia and Zimbabwe attempted unsuccessfully to transfer their elephants back to Appendix II in 1992 at the 11thCoP in Kyoto in 1992.”– the 8th

ix 3 “Resolution Conf. 10.10 was further amended in 2007 to prevent any further sale of ivory for nine years after the 2008 sale.” - Only by those already Appendix II

ix 3 “These requirements clearly departed from normal trade practices and have resulted in a net cost to range states to which the provisions were applied and to those living with elephants.” - Are you saying the two 'one-off' sales were normal trade practices?

xi 2 I have many questions and comments on this section, but will defer them to the main chapter 4 below.

xi Section 5, Para 1

You could also look at resolution Conf. 8.3 and its Revs.

xii Section 6, Para 1

CISO: Headed by Rowan Martin? Sounds like a good idea, depending...

xii Section 6, Para 1, Item f

What about tusk marking?

xii Section 6, Very important. China govt controls the ivory bought in 2008 and has marked it up 500%

Page(s) Paragraph Comments

Para 2 and is rationing it.

xii Section 6, Para 2, Item b

Since China govt owns large ivory factories, conflicts with principle of not selling to govts.

xii Section 6, Para 2, Item e

And CITES, already a requirement.

xii-xiii Section 6, Para 2, Item f

A heavy admin burden. Maybe annual or semi-annual.

xiii Para 2 Re: spot-audits: Made by whom, and who pays for it?

xiv Point 1 Don't understand at all why these countries are singled out. Is it because of the one-off trades in the past? What about other countries that might satisfy CITES criteria? Seems to be putting the cart before the horse if this exercise is to establish a new decision-making mechanism..

xiv Point 3 For worked ivory? They can't resell raw ivory. If it's to buy raw ivory, should be called Central Ivory Buying Organisation.

2 4 “In order to avoid continually having to qualify every statement about trade in the writing that follows, the discourse assumes that a decision to trade internationally in African ivory has been taken.” - This sentence should go in Exec Summary, as I was wondering about why your approach was as if decision had been made.

35 Section 4.1 Ivory's Ghosts (2009) by John Frederick Walker gives an excellent recount, probably the best to date.

35 2 40,000 b.p. worked ivory found both at Grotte du Renne, France, and Kostenki, Russia.

37 2 Should make distinction between demand by traders and that by consumers. The former probably exceeds that of latter, because of attempts by traders to maximize imports because of uncertainties.

38 1 It would help greatly if the model could explain in more detail the offtake mechanism(s), i.e. natural mortality, culling, cropping. Or does it matter? Cleaning out from the top would suggest trophy hunting.

42 1 This para looks quite sensible and is a key contribution.

44 1 “We stress that there is nothing desirable about this management scenario ... but it does belie ITRG’s statement that it is necessary to reduce the offtake to 1-2% of the population to reverse the decline. ”. - Just depends what rate of reverse one thinks is desirable. The graph seems to show 150,000 too many eles in 2005-2010 (550,000 vs 700,000).

45 Fig 4.8 Mean tusk weight – where did these figures come from?

45 Fig 4.8 % offtakes from the population - Where did 1.34% p.a. come from? Where did any of

them come from? Almost no country permits culling now, even SA. 45 Fig 4.8 Ivory price US$ per kg - These are prices in China/Japan that factories pay. You are

assuming CISO would realize same prices without deducting current circuitous shipping costs, compensation for seizure losses that traders include in mark-up,

paying of bribes and other smuggling costs. 45 2 Re; Culling: Maybe I'm being fussy, but I thought culling refers to non-commercial offtake

and cropping is commercial offtake.

46 Para 2, 1st

sentence

This is after 300 years of perfect management?

46 Para 2, 2nd

sentence

It is now more than your earlier model predicted because of 300 years of management?

46 4 I also examined the effects of the 1999 sale in Stiles, D. (2004) the ivory trade and elephant conservation. Env. Cons. 31(4):309-321.

Page(s) Paragraph Comments

49 2 There was almost certainly collusion between the bidders to keep prices low.

64 Fig. 6.1 Director (Producers), Item 4: Move as quickly and as often as possible to remove temptation to steal from govt. stores.

67 Discussion, Para 2

Not that simple. De Beers controls the mines, CISO will not control elephant habitats. If prices get too high, incentive to poach and undercut CISO. Maybe could control for this by monitoring ivory sources in factories. Demand exceeding supply will be biggest challenge of any legal trade regime.

67 Discussion Another problem it addresses is certainty of supply for factories. If factory owners are assured of acceptable supply they have no motivation to buy illegal ivory.

76 Point c ETIS and MIKE would have to be completely re-mandated and reorganized.

TO the CITES secretariat

Comments on the report : « Decision-making Mechanisms and Necessary Conditions for a Future Trade

in African Elephant Ivory »

By Hilde Vanleeuwe

I recommend amending the title with “for four select southern African countries”. Even then, the document

needs considerable work, requiring the addition and then analysis of opposing views in a more equable

manner. In its current form the document reads like propaganda, with one very persistent theme imposed

throughout, that elephants are a commodity that should be maximally utilized, irrespective of basic biology

or current management uncertainties. The report focuses on select Southern African countries and is

littered with statements by people mainly working in the richer part of that region and who support the

general view that legal trade will deter illegal trade. Opposing views (i.e. those who believe legal trade

actually enhances illegal trade) are treated in a derogatory fashion. I believe that there are very intelligent

people supporting both sides of this argument, but this document addresses only one, in a far-from neutral

or constructive manner.

At no stage does this document mention current poaching levels in the greater part of Africa, which are

equivalent in scale to the elephant massacres of the late 1970’s and early 1980’s (Maisels et al., in review).

These currently affect Central Africa, most of the East African range states and even southern strongholds

that are difficult to control, such as Niassa in Mozambique. The document doesn’t analyze or even mention

the varied causal factors of illegal killing in these different regions.

Proposed strategies for the management of ivory trade include the creation of a controlled central ivory

sales system (CISO) that can only work with the improbable assumption of no illegal killing and markets on

the side. This assumption can “very arguably” be achieved in only a very select number of southern African

countries, which are not isolated, but are connected to a large number of range states where this cannot be

achieved. There is no explanation of how this model would accommodate ingrained institutional corruption

and poaching in many areas. The proposed model also assumes that importing nations will not purchase

illegal ivory, which is equally far-fetched given current practices. The authors speak of returns from sales to

local communities; honorable as this may be, it is never explained how those benefits would reach

communities.

The authors are frequently inconsistent: In their example of how much ivory 100,000 elephants can

generate, their price of ivory (page 39) is estimated at 1,264 US$/Kg (1.327 billion$/1,050 tons), the natural

population rate of increase is stated to be 4.73% (page 43) and “sustainable” offtake for 650,000 elephants

estimated to be 283 tons/annum (page 44). However, in fig 4.8 (page 45), the proposed “sustainable” ivory

offtake is 5.77% (more than natural population increase?) and assumes zero illegal killing of elephants. Also

the average ivory price is now estimated at $393/Kg, meaning that the earlier estimate of benefit of 1.327

billion$ that 100,000 elephants would generate, reduces to 412,650$ a few pages later.

For the decision-making process the authors suggest that the MSE applied by the International Whaling

Commission (IWC) to evaluate the “Revised Management Procedure” (RMP) could serve as a model for

elephant management. The RMP, designed to assess safe catch limits for whales, was formulated during an

extensive (and ongoing) whaling moratorium, and is founded on extensive research and extensive

simulation testing of candidate management scenarios. A key aspect of the RMP is that uncertainty has to

be realistically reflected in simulation trials. The RMP is innately conservative, and incorporates the best

available data, or where lacking, identifies explicit data needs and cannot compensate for poor data inputs,

particularly those founded on assumptions.

Although suggesting that the conservative approach used by the IWC would be applicable here, the authors

criticize (and reject) the conservative ITRG conclusion (page 44) that sustainable ivory trade could in the

best case represent an offtake of max 50 tons per annum for the entire continental population. The

alternative proposition of 383 tons per annum ignores key realities of elephant biology (including,

discussion of elephant culture, varying regional ecologies, highly variable reproductive success and any

mention of stochasticity), elephant management (including uncertainties associated with management-

critical data) and assumes zero illegal killing/trade. Their proposed percentage offtake is in fact higher

(5.77%) than the average population increase (4.73%).

The loss of elephants to ivory poaching currently exceeds many fold any ”sustainable” offtake levels in all

Central African and several East African range states. This is due in large part to a lack of financial capacity

to protect elephants and associated institutionalized corruption. These factors are not mentioned

anywhere despite the feedback we gave on strengths and weaknesses of international trade regimes and

associated controls via contributions to the ToR of the consultants.

According to the ITRG, ivory offtake cannot exceed 50 tons/annum in order to be sustainable, and the

proposed central sales system CISO would cost 6M$/ annum (page 67), leaving the total benefits at less

than 14M$/annum (50,000 tons * 393$/Kg, - 6M$) for all range states combined on the continent. As a park

manager in Central Africa, I know that to effectively manage and protect elephants in a PA of ~5000km2,

costs (easily) 1M$/annum. The costs of protecting elephants exceed by a very large margin what

“sustainable” ivory could ever generate, and unlike the authors in this document, there are at least an

equally large number of people who believe that the proposed legal trade will enhance illegal trade by

keeping the market/demands alive. Relying on Government stockpiles is by no means a security against

illegal killing/trade in many range states. On the contrary, a large number of people believe it would open

the floodgates for illegal ivory entering government stockpiles, further encouraging institutional corruption

that is already rife in many of the range states, banditism and associated cruelty and bloodshed (both for

elephants and people). Until there are control measures in place to control illegal killing/trade (MIKE, ETIS,

TAG, TRAFFIC “monitor” but do not “control”), “sustainable” offtake is impossible without wiping out

elephants in many range states of Africa.

To not criticize only but also offer an alternative, I’d suggest for example the creation of a “grey helmet”

control unit that pulls out to range states for observation and if need be control, to remind range state

governments of their responsibilities, to conduct control monitoring in order to check if proposed

“exploitable” numbers match reality – which is necessary even for Zimbabwe, where many argue that the

Government extrapolated populations greatly exceed real numbers.

Nowhere in this document do the authors consider the effect of killing on group structure and reproductive

success. We all know that elephants are a slow-breeding flagship species that, considering their large

biomass, shape the environment and thus other species depending on this environment. It is short sighted

to assume that one can exploit elephants like crocodilians and diamonds and that people opposing ivory

trade only do so because of the “cuddly” effect (page 25).

To conclude, I approached this document in an unbiased manner (not knowing the authors), but as the

document reads like a manifesto, I decided to look up previous work of the authors. I found that lead

author, Mr R.B. Martin, is famous for his radical views on ivory trade, opposing the 1989 ban based on the

speculation that 500,000 elephants were hiding in Central African forests and would represent a reserve for

the species. A survey by P. Mathiessen & D. Western and subsequent ground surveys confirmed this to be

very far from the truth. When dealing with a threatened flagship species it is advisable to be conservative. If

this project aims to develop an analytical constructive unbiased document on future trade in ivory, one

needs opposing views with more authority on the reality of what is going on in other range states and

regions. Surely it is not the goal of CITES to analyze how four Southern Africa range states can enjoy

benefits from “sustainable” ivory sales at the cost of continued bloodshed crime, and elimination of

elephants from the rest of the continent.

Comments in more detail

Page(s) Paragraph Comments

xi & 1 1 No reference to the not unimportant detail that Africa lost at least 50% of its continental numbers from ivory poaching in 1887 and again in 1985, nor the fact that we are currently living a repeat of the situation of the early 1980’s in Central Africa (parts of East Africa and southern Africa).

xi 2 a) ONLY after it falls below 5kg? elephants, long before age of reproductive success, can have tusks of that caliber

xii 1 b) Government stores? What about institutional corruption (rife in many range states) and illegal ivory entering Government stockpiles? Elephants are killed with machine guns, often meaning by military and other official armed forces! The current illegal traffic/ trade happens with direct or/and indirect support of corrupt Government authorities.

xiv all There are proposed “PLANS” but no proposed “ACTIONS/ CONTROLS”. Many other essential conditions are needed to stop illegal trade and killing to render ivory trade “sustainable” The CISO is not a control mechanism but a means of trade. It may well be used in the less developed range states as a means to whitewash illegal ivory. “sustainable” offtake is unknown and not applicable in countries with poor monitoring records of elephants, with records of illegal trade or killing of elephants.

Before even thinking of a sales system like CISO, there should be a warning system and a control system, reminding range states of their commitments to conventions and spur them to take action when reported numbers differ from reality or when records of illegal trade/ killing reach numbers that exceed natural population growth (~5%) of the countries AED registered elephants. Why not a “grey helmet unit” to carry out independent control surveys of elephant numbers and of information on illegal killing/ trade on the ground because:

numbers of elephants that countries claim to have don’t necessarily reflect reality –Zimbabwe counts are rumored to be very biased numbers of elephants one year are not necessarily the same the next year–Zakouma’s population in Chad reduced by 90% in 3 years

Allowing “sustainable” ivory sales in range states with very low elephant numbers is fueling the likelihood that elephants will disappear in those range states. Countries shouldn’t be considered for ivory sales until their elephants reach numbers that are stable and in balance with the countries PA elephant carrying capacity.

1 2 Inset 1: is a strongly arguable statement since one cannot question those statements that discourage trade when there is equally no reliable data on elephant numbers etc to sustain trade

2 6 Your “underpinnings and positions of polarized views: Recognition of the intrinsic value of elephants and their ranking as sentient beings underpins the position of those who oppose, for any reason, the killing of elephants and the trading of their products.” is by far not the only reason why people oppose to legal trade! What about …

Those who believe that legal trade provides whitewash opportunities and stimulates illegal trade Those who recognize that sustainable legal trade cannot happen without reliable numbers on elephant populations and reliable control systems to stop illegal trade Those that argue that the costs to put control mechanisms in place to ensure sustainability of an ivory market will outweigh economic benefits from sustainable (and therefore limited) ivory sales for most range states in Africa.

5 Last What is known about illegal trade = only the data on ivory seizures and killings What is known about legal trade = only the data on legal ivory sold The argument of unreliable data goes both ways, which is not clear in the text.

6 4 Despite all those measures taken for the countries allowed to trade it still resulted in the unarguable disastrous situation we have today. Clearly statements and plans on paper are not enough! CONTROL is needed

6 5 15.4 million $ for the 4 countries (from piles collected over several years) is perhaps only just enough to introduce reliable control mechanisms and monitoring systems to avoid that legal trade becomes unsustainable. i.e. protecting elephants in a PA of ~5000km2 cost ~$1M/ year (I manage a PA in Congo, where only 7 of 18PAs have any form of protection and management due to international investment, the remaining PA’s only exist on paper ). Surely it costs about the same for the 4 select Southern African countries.

10 2 Last sentence… I understand with this that the insisting of withdrawing this from the proposal suggests that they don’t want the outcome to state that an Appendix I listing would be appropriate (rather than inappropriate) Although that the terms of ref for this report clearly state that it is NOT about whether trade should or not exist, I am a bit surprised to find most statements and interpretations do exactly that and when it does, the anti-trade view is highly criticized in favor of the pro-trade view. This doc needs work if it’s meant to be neutral!

15 Table Global trend Stable for elephants? You really need someone with authority over the other African regions! It is currently a disaster! Very unstable and numbers dropping incredibly fast! We actually provided the authors with the necessary information on current events. Why is nothing of this mentioned? Notes 1. … declining in MOST! How many elephants need to be slaughtered before the authors recognize we are currently re-living an elephant holocaust? Inset 19: Have you not been following the news?

This document is upsetting. What’s the purpose of this propaganda in the middle of the harshest times for elephants since the early 1980’s? How and who chose the consultants to develop this document?

16 1 Again those statements are NOT neutral. TAKE OUT YOUR PERSONAL VIEWS

16 last Why not invest in stopping Asia using the product instead of allowing legal trade?

17 3 There is proof that legal trade does NOT stop illegal trade in ivory because this is happening as we speak. There IS legal trade in the form of one-off sales for 4 select countries since 1997! When you revive a market, its needs to be fueled and you open a window for abuse! I agree with Kenya, TZ and UK on this. Finally some sense!

19 1 “The purpose of inserting this section relating to rhino is not to advocate a legal trade in rhino horn: that falls outside the terms of reference for this study. “ You cannot make such a statement when this document is full of propaganda for legal trade and it cannot be more obvious that the authors are NOT neutral on this issue. Again the so-called more-of-the-same approach goes both ways. There IS legal trade in ivory for 4 countries and see how effective this is? There’s a massive illegal market because there IS a market (feeding demand). No matter how much you try to ignore it, the illegal market did crash with the ivory ban. How much proof do you need.

19 last Lindeque’s & Reuter’s (Southern African of course) statement: Why not also a statement of those with opposing views. This report is shockingly un-neutral! “demand will not disappear as long as some people see the value of it”. So feeding the markets with legal trade will change that? Some people will always see the value of it. Slavery also still happens but that doesn’t mean it is justified.

22 I agree with this type of trade but don’t see any link to the elephant problem. It is so Totally different I have difficulties to comprehend why it’s chosen as an example for the ivory trade issue…. Until now you haven’t mentioned how the ivory sales benefits would go to the communities. There is no logical link.

24 2 How disgusting! We’re not talking car parts! Cannibalism still exists today but it is not accepted for moral reasons. Moral sense is supposed to make us more special than the rest of the animal kingdom. If Asians would consider human body parts of other races to have potent powers, wouldn’t agree that they breed them for parts. We don’t all believe in a radical line between people and other living beings. Isn’t civility of a society valued by the way it treats its animals and the weaker? Wiping out a species for parts for medicine that have no proven effect?

24 4 Only diamonds do not have to die, they don’t move, play no role as shapers of the environment, do not influence other species, do not suffer when taken

24 6 Crocodile trade is not the same as ivory trade. Crocs have many young at a time. Hypothesis testing applied to crocs cannot be extrapolated to ivory, which is a commodity product of which the communities have no benefits whatsoever and only a very tiny select group of people benefit at the cost of serious bloodshed, the keeping alive of institutional corruption in poorer range states and crime gangs that

kill anything on their tracks to get what they need (incl. people). This document is 100% PROPAGANDA, totally ignoring that the SA picture does not apply to most other range states. Of course legal trade opens a window of abuse in range states where there is no fair governance and no money for proper controls. We are in the middle of it, witnessing it, having lost about half the population in the last 3 years from poaching, just like in the early 80’s…. speaking of more-of-the –same? What about the forest elephants as a species? Don’t they count? Is this report only about the 4 countries benefits or is this supposed to make an assessment for elephants as a species? Not a single opposing view, except for mocking other opinions by writing that anti-trade supporters only do it for the “cuddly” animal effect?

26 3 A total ban doesn’t stop illegal killing 100%, but imposing a legal harvesting of a certain size would?

28 2 Nobody knows what a listing on Appendix I of CITES would do to tuna…. Bad example

29 1 And China feels any moral obligation towards the environment?

30 1 The ban does not stop illegal trade but you cannot possibly argue that legal trade does! You argue there is no legal trade. How do you call the sale of stockpiles then? According to me that is legal trade and yes, we do have a lot of poaching because of it.

31 Again, aside the fact that diamonds don’t require to be shot, disrupting and killing families, diamonds don’t need large habitats to survive, habitats don’t depend on them (i.e. un negligible seed-dispersal role of eles for commercially logged tree species and dependence), don’t have other species depending on them (killing eles also changes a forest and the entire array of species of selective feeders depending on them).

32 2 This is a totally one sided view that can go both ways. i.e. We burn confiscated bushmeat in the Park I manage, which drives prices up for bushmeat in the local markets, which in turn affects the demand. Everybody used to eat bushmeat which was very unsustainable. Because it drove prices up, consumers are reduced to the middle and higher class (much smaller in numbers) and because education is higher at that level of society, it is easier also to reduce this through sensitization efforts. Some will never stop eating bushmeat but some do an effort to not teach their kids the same habit. It will never be eradicated but it is reduced to sustainable levels. Here increased prices have a positive effect on poaching pressure. In many C. African range states, local hunters rarely hunt elephants, because one needs an automatic gun to kill an elephant. It is mostly done by armed forces like militia or even guards equally responsible for protecting elephants (which blows your assumption that Government stocks will only contain legal ivory) and specialized heavily armed bandit groups. Ivory as a sustainable product sold at very

high prices like diamonds will feed institutional corruption and crime.

32 3 How will the benefits actually arrive at the community level?

32 4 Single outlet depending on Government stockpiles only! What about most of the rest of Africa where institutional corruption IS the main cause of the problem? By saying those countries would be prohibited you’d contradict your own statement about the effects of prohibitions.

32 5 Irrelevant to ivory trade

32 6 I believe you claimed earlier that restrictive measures have negative effects on illegal markets. Again this is very Southern African proposition. Unfortunately Southern African isn’t an island, but connected to range states where laws and regulations on paper are used and abused and neglected according to which approach will bring along most cash.

35 2 Slavery and witchcraft also existed since time memorial. You forget to mention the important detail that it wiped out half of the continents number of elephants and that a decline after 1983 might be natural when you’re dealing with less than half of the population. You conveniently ignore to mention that the drastic poaching levels dropped to very little after the ban. These data suggest…. Honestly! We’re dealing with a repeat of the early 1980’s in C. African and this is all you say about it? Do you realize we may have lost half of the regions elephant numbers in the past 5 years? A peer reviewed article is on its way out on this subject btw. You better take this more serious.

36 last Yes, 1000 tons out of millions of elephants. There were MUCH more elephants then than now!

37 last You make wild comparisons and personal interpretations and statements based on no data when it concerns promoting trade but when it comes to Identifying the Chinese demand as the main root cause, you find a quotation that states there is no appropriate data? All that confiscated ivory destined for China, the obvious positive correlation between growing Chinese investment and growing ivory traffic in C. Africa as well as the catching of Chinese traffickers by organizations as PALF, LAGA, … in C. Africa is not enough data?

38 last Something is wrong with this calculation. If the natural increase is 4.73%, the sustainable offtake cannot exceed this figure in order to be sustainable. It can only be quite a bit less because you’re also removing the largest tuskers, thus the reproductive success decreases and we know that when an elephant gets killed, other elephants often die too. Disrupted families are dysfunctional for a while and more prone to lose other members of the group. Calves may die and young mothers are also not so successful at keeping their calves alive. … more important, you assume zero illegal offtake?

39 1 False! Here you make the assumption that for any elephant that gets killed no other elephants will and the assumption that there is zero illegal killing and trade. Elephants below reproductive age often carry tusks of 5 KG. If your target is sustainability, the 5Kg threshold makes no sense.

39 2 Something is wrong with this calculation. Assuming that 1050 tons (=1,050,000Kg)

ivory is worth 1,34 billion US$ is assuming that 1 KG of ivory brings 1,276US$ (1,340,000,000 / 1,050,000) which is excessive. On page 45 you contradict yourself and state that the average price would be 393 US$/Kg. The calculations are only weighted between sexes, as if a simple model like this could be applied to a species with a complex social structure.

43 3 The more conservative estimate of maximum 50 tons per annum for the whole of Africa seems more reasonable but implies that sustainable trade would generate less than 20M$ / annum for the whole of Africa. Lateron you speak of CISO costing also 6M$/ annum to run, reducing benefits to roughly 14M$. AND this is assuming zero illegal killing! Most African countries that house elephants are economically unstable and many (i.e. C. Africa) rely almost entirely on the international community to finance their typically largely understaffed and underpaid personnel in PA’s. In Congo alone, over 5M$ is invested annually to manage 7 PA’s, consisting essentially of trying to stop poaching! For this amount, Parks are still highly understaffed and control is far from tight. An estimated minimum of 1M$/ annum is needed for a PA of ~5000km2 Assume that half of that money remaining benefits (7M$/ annum) is divided between the 4 Southern African range states, does that really outweigh the cost of putting your “blood”diamond-style control system in place? Is it worth stimulating institutional corruption and terrible crime in most central African countries and beyond? And are the local communities really going to benefit? AND all this, only for the benefit of a wealthy minority both on the buyers and consumer side? I have worked in C. Africa for almost 2 decades and I can assure you that the introduction of legal trade will be handled as 1 + 1 = 2 over here. As is the case for the wood and fisheries industry, legal ivory trade is not going to be handled as a replacement for illegal trade in C. Africa. Your system relies on Government stockpiles, which you assume are clean! You cannot rely on that for most African range states. How would institutionalized corruption be handled with the proposed legal offtake? It doesn’t work for wood or minerals or any other product. What makes you think it would work for ivory? And how would these benefit local communities instead of rendering corrupt rich officials even more rich and powerful? By which way would these 4 countries stop legal trade is not affecting illegal trade in Central Africa? If the purpose of this document is an analysis of trade and of the effect of trade on elephant populations, you have totally failed to give any other views than that of the better established and managed Southern African countries. What is to happen with the rest of Africa? Do forest elephants not matter? Should the other countries follow Sudan, Ethiopia and Somalia so that the 4 southern African countries can enjoy their marginal annual benefits?

44 last You speculate dangerously with numbers of offtake, rejecting conservative models for the benefit of models that do not take into account the effect of social disruption on family groups and other factors that may lead to a much larger death toll than your modeled elephants culled for ivory. Worst, you assume throughout that there is zero illegal off take (which is more than insane as a hypothesis! You have no proof whatsoever that legal trade will stop illegal trade of ivory. In fact there IS legal trade and we’re living a huge killoff!). Despite your own statement of an overall natural increase rate of 4.73% a few pages later you allow your

“sustainable” offtake (Fig. 4.8) to be 5.77%? Your figures are inconsistent and you criticize conservative models!

46 1 You cannot ignore elephant experts with other opinions. To me it is scandalous how you treat the whole affair as if you’re dealing in car parts. And for what? To satisfy who? It is not the local killing for meat that is worrying but the massive killing for ivory. Centuries of studies on social structure and intelligence and impact of flagship species on the environment and other species have no place in your evaluation. Do you really want to risk wiping out half of the continents elephants, feed associated crime, atrocities and even death of people for these marginal benefits (and for who?)?

47 Here we go again. PROPAGANDA. “Until we have….. “ You can argue exactly the opposite too. As long as there is no sound evidence base to show that legal trade does not enhance illegal trade, it shouldn’t be adopted. Again, in my opinion there IS legal trade (even if its one-off sales of stockpiles for 4 countries) which is exactly why there is so much illegal trade on the side. You cannot say there is a ban in place when you have one-off sales! They are keeping the market alive (markets are driven by demand – a very rooted and tested concept). Of course you support the approach of Burn. We wouldn’t have expected otherwise but maybe readers are not interested in your PERSONAL opinions.

50 1 The results indicate that: Your models are very one-sided and conflicting Your numbers conflict even between pages Your results are not tested, total speculation and unreliable

(1) B. The oldest surviving males would be 22? Reproductive males of that age are rarely successful before they are 30. C. your figure keeps on rising as the document proceeds. Now it’s not 283 tons anymore but 300 tons for 550,000 elephants?

The ITRG 50 tons is rejected in the favor of 300 tons just based on personal opinion and highly arguable speculations?

50 2 There IS a legal market today and poaching is rampant.

50 3 By now we wouldn’t expect you to say otherwise. I think your views are clear, only very personal and not in line to produce an unbiased report and analysis.

53 5.1 1. Which is not the case in Central Africa 2. idem 3. Which is currently not the case in Central Africa 4. b) impossible to achieve in C. Africa at this stage 4. c) idem 10. b) which this report currently ignores 12. Until now, no reference to how ivory trade would help local communities

54 1 Inset 33. This statement is based on outdated information. With rapid human expansion throughout Central Africa and the enormous rising of poaching pressure in recent years, elephants outside PA’s are reduced to some individuals on the move between PA’s. Most law-enforced PA’s suffer large losses in C. Africa. Elephants have largely been erased from PA’s that only exist on paper but that lack law enforcement due to lack of finances to manage them. Areas outside PAs are largely depleted. Let’s not repeat your wild 1985 speculation about 500,000 elephants in Central Africa to function as a reserve and which proved to be wrong. There is no point ignoring reality for the sake of winning your argument, as it will come out!

55 4. So once in a while an elephant is killed by local communities and meat and hides are shared. Everything on the animal is consumed. In Congo elephant meat is not high on the bushmeat consumers’ preference list. This type of elephant consumption is rare compared to elephants that are hunted with machine guns (illegal weapons or owned by legal armed forces) only for their tusks. The first type of use cannot exclude the latter type of use which doesn’t have any benefits for local people.

55 7 Wow! This is sooo far from reality in C. Africa. You really need a C. African authority on that author’s team and at least one author with opposing views.

55 8 In C. Africa this is the idea behind all exploitation (minerals, wood, fisheries) but as long as corruption suits the exploiting countries who are keeping it in place because everything is possible and buyable, the situation cannot change. Returns only fill the pockets of the corrupt elite, unfortunately often Government officials. Nothing goes back to the people. Positive changes (hospitals, roads, airports etc ) are essentially financed by the International community. Why would it be different with ivory?

56 9 There is no law enforcement other than what NGO’s pay for. Note that Positive and Negative Feedback loops as illustrated in Fig 5.1 are equally possible when a ban is or not in place.

56 5.2. 2. Backed up by legislations? In C. Africa? Since legislations are not re-enforced, what would that do different from the current situation?

57 4 Unfortunately this wouldn’t work in C. Africa.

57 5 But we’re talking about China as the major consumer. It is universally known (and very well felt on the ground here) that they are not very concerned about the environment. All the illegal trawler fishing boats in our Park are Chinese, the logging company that got caught repeatedly with bushmeat, great apes and ivory is Chinese, the two illegal gold mining companies we discovered in the park are Chinese.

57 6 Very easy condition to forge and DNA Analysis are very expensive. The most active organization in Congo trying to enforce existing environmental laws, PALF, are not even allowed in the airports. Chinese businessmen all have diplomatic passports and ivory leaves the country without a problem. For many years now the Congolese National website advertises that you can get a shooting license for large mammals at 30€ and you can shoot your first elephant at roughly 20 € AND it adds that tourists can take their ivory out without paying a patent (despite the legal docs that

say elephants are integrally protected). http://www.congo-site.com/Tourisme-Chasse-en-Republique-du-Congo_a37.html Now how do you propose to deal with such levels of institutionalized corruption?

57 8 Operating at appropriate scales would mean what for Congo? It could only be the Government but that would also mean that it wouldn’t work

58 5.3. As outlined above, there are very valid reasons of concern that your proposed system will never work in C. Africa and would likely only help wipe out the existing population more efficiently and faster. The catch 22 goes both ways. You also used as an argument, many times in this report, the lack of proof of the ban reducing illegal trade. You should treat the current poaching situation as a situation happening whilst there IS legal trade. All your examples of other trade systems are not very applicable to elephants (crocodilians? Is really not a convincing comparison for reasons explained during that section). Your views are VERY biased towards the SA situation. Perhaps you should add to the title of this document. “for SOUTHERN AFRICAN COUNTRIES” and this document would make much more sense and fit your examples and figures. This being said, I’m sure that even many Southern Africans would disagree with your propositions and speculations.

60 6.1. par 3 You ARE proposing to kill 5.77% of elephants for this purpose. Culling, trophy hunting and problem animal control represent killing of elephants, whether you phrase it differently or not. …. “ as long as it doesn’t result in undesirable age structures ONLY?” What about adding …. as long as it doesn’t result in …. illegal hunting, unnecessary cruelty, family disruption and skewed population growths, skewed revenue benefit sharing between elite in charge and communities living with elephants, weakly controlled monitoring allowing abuse, institutional corruption, greater costs than benefits to make the system work (introducing of control and monitoring systems and elephant protection costs more in most countries than sustainable ivory could ever bring in), etc. C. African states are sovereign states. Don’t you see the danger in allowing states to decide such a thing? CITES would have no function. There wouldn’t be any elephants left if this was the choice of states. Not all states (and actually bitterly few states in Africa) are managed like the ones you use as example throughout this document

61 6.1.1. d) receive from the range states? You will let corrupt governments decide about their own quotas? CITES is a Convention that regulates trade and should NOT get involved in the trade business in order not to lose impartiality! e & d) Assuming CISO set up at 10M$ (as stated in 6.4), a CEO, 3 directors, support staff, vehicles, stores, equipment, running costs, management, security, and external audits = roughly 6M$/ year (the price of running three well managed Protected Areas)

61 6.1.2. b) … and there we totally fail for C. Africa and many other range states because

illegal trade wouldn’t exist if there were no institutional corruption

c) How will you control this in countries where in general there is no controls to enforce existing regulations on resource exploitation?

61-62 6.1.3. a) rather…. Adherence to an imposed management plan by CISO (… throughout this document you don’t take into account the reality conditions of range states other than the southern African ones). CITES has no function if range states can decide themselves what to submit as their management plans for elephants

a) “not to engage in trade in raw ivory with individuals or countries within and outside Africa” ? HOW is this different from the current situation? How does illegal ivory currently enter Asia? Haven’t all these range states signed the CITES? It is not clear at all in which way you can insure that this would work, even within Southern Africa!

c) Letting C. African countries decide about their own stockpile quotas will

make stockpiles legal?

d) Doing so will be very expensive and ups the estimated annual CISO running costs

You are forgetting an important business point. Assuming that CISO is located in a well protected country in SA, the cost of shipping to and from range states further away will differ from those near the CISO site, which would be unfair. To make this work CISO would have to subsidize (from sales benefits) to allow fair trade per KG of treated ivory for all range states.

e) Marking ivory only works if the users respect it. The main user is China, infamous for not respecting any environmental certification! Good luck with that!

f) Certifying and marking ivory will equally cost money – your benefits are reducing by the minute

62 6.1.4. c) impossible to control d) idem e) idem

g) idem, and CITES management authority? No! You cannot involve CITES in this. Also focal points tend to be Government officials and from experience they are not only not aware of what happens on the ground in their country due to a lack of financial means to do so, but the risk that he/ she may be enriching him/her-self is not negligible

h) And who will do the control? Laws exist to protect the environment but

they are not enforced. The eternal problem! All resource exploitation has control mechanisms of which none are reinforced. For example, loggers are supposed to pay for guards but bitter few of them do. In Congo industrial fishermen are supposed to be controlled and the area between 0 and 6 marine miles is set aside only for local fishermen. Not only is there no control, but we arrest Chinese trawler fishing boats in this zone, carrying letters signed BY the Ministry declaring their boats “improved artisanal dugout canoes”! How will you assure that ivory gets controlled?

63 6.1.5. d) How can the number of buyers increase when the market is to be fixed at a sustainable level? Where is your plan to deal with associated illegal markets? Your proposed system would make ivory sales and buys easier but it doesn’t deal at all with measures to stop illegal trade. How would this process reduce illegal markets in C. Africa given the reality of the field? Your system would have to be associated with thorough law enforcement which brings us back to exactly where we are now and you are against law enforcement because you stated earlier that the effect of prohibition enforces illegal markets! By this stage you still have not mentioned HOW the local communities would benefit from all this although it is one of the main objectives.

64 Fig 6.1 You propose existing monitoring teams (ETIS/ MIKE/TRAFFIC/TAG) whom, as we know, are “monitoring” but not stopping illegal poaching and illegal markets today Where are the controls? How is this going to reduce illegal markets? Where in this diagram is there evidence that at least the benefits will go to local communities?

65 b) These decisions already exist and clearly are not having influence on illegal trade

c) That’s quickly said but how would you do that? Management plans do not equal reinforcements. They are ideas on paper, just like laws. Without reinforcement the situation cannot change. On the contrary you are opening new routes for abuse and whitewashing of illegal markets

d) and how does that insure in any way if the ivory in it is legally taken? e) Redundant! given the many different ways that illegal ivory can enter

Government stockpiles

66 (4) How will this stop the illegal markets? All the species on the integrally protected list are found on any meat market in Congo for sale! Again, you provide nowhere in this document a system to avoid illegal markets. b) idem c) idem d) idem because your control systems do not take into account the millions of ways illegal ivory enters the chain before subjected to the proposed CISO controls. Therefore you provide a perfect system to whitewash illegal ivory.

67 6.3 x6.4 experts cost money…. By now your CISO will absorb a good chunk of the benefits (~6M$/annum) and using the ITRG estimate you’ll end with 14M/annum for the total continent of which perhaps 8M$/ annum for the 4 most benefiting southern African countries (~2M$/annum each). This is far below the cost required for the control and monitoring systems that will be needed to control illegal trade… AND how much of this benefit will go to the local communities and how? Benefits for local communities is bravely mentioned before but totally forgotten in the rest of the document.

67 Discussion Increasing the value of ivory (like diamonds) with time will only encourage illegal markets (you said yourself that price rise = increased illegal activities). Diamonds and elephants cannot be compared for reason described earlier. You have outlined a system for ivory within the system to be controlled. There is however not any suggestion on how you will avoid that illegal ivory enters the chain at the beginning. It addresses corruption? How? How will you control what’s in the Government stockpiles? How will you control markets on the side? How will you make sure the Chinese respect the certification and don’t import other ivory? What’s different from what exists today?

70 2. What about the killing of half of the continental elephant numbers? Is that not a powerful statistic upon which to base a decision? A good reason to stop it? Speaking of misinformation and objectivity. It is not to be found in this report and you are not in a good position to criticize the people with opposing views.

72 b) I’m a park manager specialized in elephant monitoring and surveys. My opinion and that of many people I know, and of the NGO I work for and of many people in developed countries, is not based on “speculations” that elephants are OK (such as claimed by yourself) but based on results, collected data from the field, and observations in the field. I live in the middle of it and am in a very good position to know what is true and not true on the ground. Your statement is almost hostile and far from neutral. You just produced a document littered with personal interpretations – which you do here again. The popular media picks up on a massacres in Tchad, Cameroun, CAR, ... which is the role of the media. Zakouma’s elephants reduced from 4000 to less than 400 in 3 years. Because the media picks up on this, doesn’t mean it is not true because the massacre is not peer-reviewed. Peer reviewed articles do come out and one will very soon actually, but meanwhile you cannot ignore the media who informs the public (who doesn’t necessarily read peer reviewed papers). You criticize people with opposing views claiming their arguments are based on data that is not peer reviewed whilst you permit yourself to make wild speculations not backed up by peer reviewed data.

72 3. Modeling to explore outcomes under different management regimes? What for? You really think this will change management in CA? Of course all sites can be managed better if there is the financial means to do so. Also, MIKE might be useful in some range states but in Congo for example the MIKE representative is a park conservator appointed by the Government who is posted in the middle of nowhere in the north. He knows absolutely nothing about what happens in the rest of the country and many of his colleagues are involved in ivory traffic. This IS the reality of the field. The damage you do by ignoring this is enormous for elephants as a species, and especially forest elephants as a sub-species.

73 Fig 7.3 You still haven’t explained how you will avoid that this doesn’t happen aside your CISO operation, how you will avoid that this encourages corruption at the government levels and how you will assure your system won’t be used to whitewash illegal ivory by illegally entering Gov. stockpiles.

74 1 Speaking of data manipulation …. The majority of elephants occur outside PA’s is a story sadly not true anymore. You cannot base your arguments on the situation in 2007 and we have no idea why we filled in confidential forms to inform you about the current disastrous level of killings in C. Africa when you totally ignore the info we sent to you. The sheer existence of laws and regulations in any society is because you cannot just let everyone decide whether they want something or not. International conventions have an important role to play. If you are very poor and you don’t even know what you will eat next and whether your kids will become adults, you will opt to kill elephants, sell ivory, cut trees, (in some cases even sell your kids) to survive. This doesn’t make it justified. It’s the story of many of the poorer African range states.

74 4 That is a destructive proposition! IF a country only has 200 elephants, surely you would want to encourage it to better protect its elephants (they are few in numbers due to poaching) to increase its population to a viable size first instead of disrupting it a bit more for minimal effect in benefits from ivory?

75 7.4. 1. and if you introduce the CISO Southern Africa will soon have much more than 50% of the elephants because it is going to allow whitewashing of elephant killing in most of the other range states. At the same time that will get rid of your burden of other range states to be taken into account. 3. You better change the title of this document as proposed before. After all, it only addresses issues that are advantageous for the Southern African countries.

77 last How will you decide which country the ivory belongs to if elephants cross boundaries? We conducted a survey of MSR (Mozambique) in 2009 and to our astonishment were woken up every night by poachers driving around in 4 wheel drive vehicles shooting anything they see with machine guns. Who is wealthy enough to own a 4-wheel drive jeep and have machine guns? Armed authorities? Organized bandits? We were criticized for mentioning it in our report that there seemed something very wrong between the management “plan” and the reality situation in the field (the area is part of a long-term study that includes many management steps as you describe them in your scenario planning and was meant to be at the stage of planning to reintroduce wildlife in the bufferzone between MSR and South Africa). We were told off for meddling with management when our task was just to survey the area, so we ended up removing our statements and just showing the survey results (which spoke for themselves because it included LOTS of poaching evidence). The conservator, a respected conservationist but new there at MSR, was angry and didn’t believe what we had found, - although we had absolutely no reason to invent data on a commissioned survey. Three months later we received the sad news that the conservator was shot dead by poachers! According to the “model” and “plans” of the project in this area, all was well, a win-win situation. Despite our warning that was conveniently ignored, the project went ahead. Given the situation, IF animals were ever released there, they are dead by now. Theoretical Models are useful in guiding management principles but field studies are essential to find out whether they work. Decision making mechanisms

based on theoretical models only, can be very detrimental.

80 MSE The success of the MSE is based on knowledge and TRUE parameters in resource dynamics. How do know what your TRUE parameters are for elephants? You haven’t mentioned any of the C. African applicable parameters anywhere in this document. Their offtake estimated are VERY conservative, whereas you criticize the ITRG conservative estimate of max 50tons of ivory for the continent/ year and increase it to 300 tons based on speculations. Good density estimates in C. Africa still have a CV% of around 21 (for an offtake of 5% how will you control this?). One other major parameter elephant’s deal within C. Africa is illegal killing to extents that localized populations are wiped out in raids, in a question of months.

81 Monitoring and oversight. The cost of this (rigorous monitoring and management) will outcost the benefits of your “sustainable” ivory sales by a very large margin.

Comments on the draft report regarding a possible decision-making mechanism for a progress of trade in ivory, by George Wittemyer

I have only been able to look through the modeling chapter. I wanted to offer a couple comments on the harvest modeling chapter 3 that I hope can be incorporated. Presumably this modeling exercise was to assess the ecological and economic sustainability of ivory trade. I think the model fails to do this for the following reasons: 1) Little if any detail on the data on which the model is based is presented in Chapter 3 or its annex, which makes it very difficult to review. Variance is not incorporated into the model of demographic processes nor ivory production. A few problems with the assumptions in this model: -Why is no information on fecundity probability or age specific mortality rates provided or referenced? -Count data from Botswana indicates the rate of growth has decreased, therefore it too should be subject to density dependence. Do you really think any natural population does not at least periodically experience density dependence? Is there any evidence of a population where male mortality is less than or equal to that of females? I am not aware of it, the authors do not provide any support for this assumption, and they then model the population starting with more males than females. This is not biologically realistic. -Why not incorporate variance on vital rates and ivory growth in the model? -Tusk weight again seems oversimplified and then boosted with procedural alterations such as larger tusk weights will be selected. Isn't there is highly reliable data on tusk weights from culling that can be directly used rather than the modeled data? -Essentially, none of the data used in this model is presented and therefore it is not possible to assess the accuracy of the model. 2) The figure legends lack sufficient explanation, no-descriptive legends or labels are provided, making interpretation unnecessarily difficult. 3) Broadly, the authors employ a simple deterministic model for their projected harvesting regime. The data used to parameterize this model are not explained nor referenced. Apparently no stochasticity is included in the model, despite recorded high levels of variation in both annual natality and mortality. Therefore there is no variance in their estimates. This work is far below the standards of current publications on harvesting modeling. 4) In choosing to model an MSY harvesting scenario with a simple deterministic model without stochasticity, the authors are ignoring the substantial evidence that such an approach is a recipe for overharvest. As such, the model is simply not credible. 5) In one projection, the authors suggest harvesting at MSY would remove all males over the age of 23. The social repercussions of such a heavy harvesting scenario are not considered or discussed. In setting up any harvesting regime on elephants, the social ramifications must be considered. 6) The valuation of the ivory in the theoretical population is totally out of line with recent legal prices and appears to be based on end prices in China. Therefore the model appears to address the commercial value of the ivory in China rather than the potential revenue stream in Africa. Again, the rational for this is unclear.