As the Natural Resources Consultative Forum advisory note on sport elephant hunting sent to the Minister of Tourism, Environment and Natural Resources goes some way to explaining, elephant should not be hunted in Zambia for the following reasons:
1. We lack the necessary scientific information on populations to support it
2. Zambia does not maintain proper records of poached elephant (MIKE: Monitoring of the Illegal Killing of Elephant), nor are elephant protected
3. CITES refused Zambia permission to sell its stockpile of ivory or to change the endangered status of elephant in the country
4. The application to CITES to hunt 20 elephant a year was based on the fact - according to government, that some specific elephant were raiding village gardens and therefore needed to be controlled. CITES apparently agreed to this ludicrous claim, though I have not yet been able to confirm that they gave permission for the kill
5. Elephant permits were issued for three areas, one of which has some 30 or so lodges. Icon bulls, the basis of much of our photo and eco tourism, have already been shot within this area - the Zambezi tourist area.
6. The Us Fish & Wildlife Service refuse to allow elephant ivory in to the country; America being our main source of hunting clients, solidarity is therefore required.
7. Elephant poaching is ongoing, and in one part of the Luangwa river government wildlife scouts are part of a poaching syndicate and are currently being investigated
8. No arrests have been made as a result of the Singapore seizure of 6 tons of ivory which came from the Luangwa; and now that we know that another 123.5 tons (14, 500 elephant) went out through the same route between 1994-2002, the failure to investigate points to major failings in the investigative machinery.
9. The hunting fraternity voted for the ban
10. Given all of this, our ratification of the Biodiversity Convention requires us to invoke the precautionary principle and ban any hunting
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
No comments:
Post a Comment