THE government has expressed its disappointment over the decision by the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species (CITES) to reject its plea to sale 100 tonnes of stockpiled ivory while blaming Kenya for spearheading negative propaganda.
The Permanent Secretary in the Ministry of Natural Resources and Tourism, Dr Ladislous Komba, said that the government was therefore planning to renew the request, saying that misinformation had failed the proposal.
“We were right and confident but what happened is that Kenya spearheaded negative campaign and all other nations relied on wrong information from Kenya and that is why the conclusions were not in our favour,” he said.
Dr Komba noted that the country was doing better in preventing elephants from being killed and that could be proven by the fact that it has a big population of elephants than any other country in the Southern and Central Africa.
Last Saturday the government blasted the CITES Secretariat for its report on the Tanzania's wildlife survey, saying it was biased, inadequate and incorrect, hence unsatisfactory.
Reports say that the 175-national convection also rejected a similar proposal from Zambia to sell off its ivory stocks which were considered later in the day (yesterday).
The Minister for Natural Resources and Tourism, Ms Shamsa Mwangunga, said earlier that the country is committed to conservation of its wildlife including elephants. Ms Mwangunga noted that the government planned to use proceeds from the trade for strengthening anti-poaching activities.
She argued that elephant population had reached the point where they were trampling crops and killing too many people. The proposal also said preventing selling of the stocks which come from natural deaths or controlled culling of problem animals would increase anger toward the beasts that are seen increasingly as pests by affected communities.
The country was asking to sell almost 90,000 kilogrammes of its stockpiled ivory that would have generated as much as 20 million US dollars (over 23bn/-). It was noted in the proposal that the elephant population has risen from 55,000 in 1989 to 110,000 last year.
The neighbouring Kenya and six other African countries, proposed a halt in what limited international trade in ivory is currently allowed and a 20-year moratorium on any attempts to relax international trade controls on African elephant ivory.
Opponents led by the United States, the European Union and several central and west African countries say the country has not done enough to combat poaching and slow the illegal trade in ivory.
They also wanted more time to assess whether a 2008 ivory sale by Zimbabwe, Botswana, South Africa, Namibia had contributed to the illegal trade. Ivory sales have in recent years been among the most contentious proposals at CITES and this time around African countries, and even some environmental groups, are divided.
The ivory would be sold to China and Japan — the only countries which have asked to purchase it. The proposal would have been the third ivory sale following ones in 1999 and 2008.
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