which poaching was no longer worthwhile.
But he also said
that there had been a brief resurgence of poaching in East
Africa immediately after our Reservation was entered because
poachers had thought that world markets had opened up
again.
7. The stock of ivory in Hong Kong on 17 January stood at
474 tonnes 150 tonnes of worked ivory and 324 tonnes of
raw ivory. The difference of 196 tonnes from the original
estimate at the time of the CITES Conference was attributed
to the availability of more accurate data since the
introduction of possession licencing on 12 January (the 670
tonne figure was based on estimates) and the export of a small quantity of ivory in the intervening three months.
However, only some 358 tonnes was available for export as
the remaining 116 tonnes did not have CITES documentation.
There were a number of reasons for this, eg the ivory was
imported before the Convention came into force or
documentation was lost in the course of the numerous
transfers between traders. But whatever the reasons this
was embarrasing as we had previously stated that all ivory
had been imported in accordance with CITES procedures, and
we had no proof that this was the case.
8.
The Reservation was withdrawn as we had promised on 18 July. In terms of its stated objectives it was not very successful. Because of the collapse of the world markets for ivory Hong Kong was only able to export 8.59 tonnes. As a result, there is still pressure from the ivory traders for compensation from HKG or HMG. Legislative Councillors are
half heartedly supporting their case but we do not consider that any action will be required. A retraining scheme for ex-ivory workers has been established to place
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JE5AAY
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