Wildlife group calls for complete ban on ivory trade
0 Comment(s)
Print
E-mail
Xinhua, January 12, 2012
The seizure of an illegal ivory consignment shipped from Cape Town has prompted the International Fund for Animal Welfare (IFAW) to call for a complete ban on ivory trade.
The IFAW made the appeal after police seized a large amount of ivory in Malaysia, according to the South African Press Association (SAPA) on Wednesday.
"The operations with Interpol are vital for saving elephants now, but ultimately we need a complete ban on ivory trade, if we are to stamp out the trade," said Kelvin Alie, the director of IFAW's wildlife crime and consumption program.
Customs officers discovered elephant tusks, weighing 500 kilograms and worth 6.1 million rand (about 770,000 U.S. dollars), hidden in a container labelled "polyester and strand matting" in Port Klang, Malaysia, SAPA said.
In mid-November a consignment of 33 rhinoceros horns, 758 elephant ivory chopsticks and 127 ivory bracelets, with a street value of 140 million rand (about 18 million dollars) was intercepted in Hong Kong in packages labelled "scrap plastic" from a vessel that had departed from Cape Town.
The report quoted the organization Traffic as saying that 2011 was the worst year ever for ivory seizures globally, with 23 tons of ivory confiscated. There had also been a dramatic increase in the number of seizures weighing over 800 kilograms.
"It's too soon to label Cape Town the latest transit point for illegal ivory en route to Asia, but the seizures and arrests of the last eight weeks are large enough to be sufficiently worrying and demand the immediate attention of local authorities," IFAW's Southern Africa director Jason Bell-Leask was quoted as saying.
Go to Forum >>0 Comment(s)