NewScientist‘s Penny Sarchet reports on the recent Kasane Conference on The Illegal Wildlife Trade (11 April 2015 print “Consumers starting to reject ivory“) (paywall) held in Botswana where a change in the use of such things as ivory and rhino horn has been identified:
But the demand for wildlife parts is increasingly coming from the luxury goods market, rather than traditional medicine.
“Fundamentally it’s about luxury items and greed,” says Roberts. For example, where bear bile and gall bladders were once used for medicine, they are now added to luxury cosmetics. “Traditional medicine practitioners are becoming less important in the consumption of wildlife parts, and it’s transferring more to the big businessmen,” he says.
The phrase “less important” is relative, of course; if consumption by one audience grows while the other holds steady, or increases but more slowly, then the latter appears smaller while fundamentally, it’s growing. This report does not clarify that point. And since “traditional medicine” (TM) has a non-rational basis, it’s difficult to accurately deduce if TM practicioners would be able to substitute non-threatened wild life parts (say, deer horn) for those of threatened animals, unlike rationally based practices, where the emphasis is on efficacy rather than tradition, so if the substitution works, then all is well.
Back to the conference. Speakers at the conference feel they’re beginning to make headway:
According to [Adam Roberts of Born Free USA], the demand for ivory seems to be falling. Each year the Chinese government releases a portion of its stockpile of ivory for legal use, but only 80 per cent of the most recent allocation has been taken up.
At least publicly, my perceptions of efforts in this arena have been prevention of harvesting. But now the call is changing:
At a conference in Botswana last month, delegations from 32 countries called for a better understanding of the market forces that drive the illegal wildlife trade. It’s a big improvement on a similar declaration issued last year, which failed to discuss how to reduce demand for products like rhino horn.
It seems like common sense, but also an enormous effort.
The IFAW itself felt the last year has not gone so well, though:
While highlighting some important progress in the fight against illegal wildlife trade, a high-level government meeting in Botswana will most likely be remembered by the broken promises of almost half of the countries who just 13 months ago committed themselves to a global effort to end the scourge.
“It is appalling that countries like Chad, Cameroon and Democratic Republic of Congo, with elephant populations under extreme threat from poaching for their ivory, can’t show any headway whatsoever in slowing the slaughter,” said Jason Bell, Director of the IFAW Elephant Programme.
“In Garamba National Park in the DRC, 30 elephants were killed in the week running up to this conference, and 68 have been killed in the park in the past two months alone.”
(Update: Title change)
