elepht.
If all trade were made illegal, the scarcity
value of ivory would cause prices to rise. This would
provide more incentives to poachers and poaching would be
likely to increase, not decrease.
Furthermore, the
revenue from legal trade is often used by African
countries to improve measures taken to conserve their
elephants. Without the additional revenue they would not
be able to do this as effectively. It has not yet been
confirmed that a proposal to introduce a ban on ivory
trade will be put to the next CITES Conference; if,
however, such a proposal were put forward, we would
consider it very carefully in the light of the evidence
available and in conjunction with our European partners.
Hong Kong, as a party to CITES, is required to implement
the same controls as all other parties and Hong Kong
already meets all the CITES recommendations for controls
on the import and export of ivory. Hong Kong allows only
ivory from CITES approved sources to be imported or
exported. In 1988 the Agriculture and Fisheries
Department of the Hong Kong Government processed 636
applications for ivory imports and exports. Each
application was checked with the CITES Secretariat and
all but 16 met CITES requirements.
taken out in those 16 cases.
And prosecutions were
You will also wish to be aware that several steps have
been taken recently to reinforce and improve these
controls. CITES has established an African Elephant
Working Group to consider further ways of improving the
-conservation