TNAG-1953-FCO40-2782-Trade-of-rare-and-endangered-species-in-Hong-Kong-1989 — Page 97

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