TNAG-2131-FCO40-3046-Hong-Kong-and-the-ivory-trade-1990 — Page 137

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MAR 1990

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RADIO 4

0630

21.2.90

Macht

SUE MACGREGOR:

Dr Richard Leakey, the conservationist and palaeontologist, is in London to talk about elephants and other animal matters, as the Director of the brand new Kenya Wildlife Service. All is not well in the world of the African elephant. Well, Dr Leakey is with us in the studio. Last September on this programme you said that elephants could look forward to a better future, and poaching had virtually stopped; now that has changed completely, that situation, hasn't it?

DR RICHARD LEAKET:

At that time we had lost less than 10 elephants; poaching had reduced to perhaps one a month, and the situation was looking very, very promising. There was talk of an international trade ban, there was indications that the Hong Kong stockpile and the Japanese would join the ban, and the heart had gone completely out of the market in poaching.

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the

In the last few weeks the situation has changed very dramatically. With the freeing of the Hong Kong market decision taken by Mrs Thatcher and her Government

ivory is moving, and because it's moving out of Hong Kong, it's moving cut of Africa, and because the stockpiles in Africa are being reduced again, the poachers have started and we've lost 25 elephant [sic] in the last month in Kenya alone.

S.M:

But as I understand it, the Hong Kong ivory carvers are only allowed to just use up what they've got, they're not allowed to buy in any more.

R.L:

There's no fault in the detailed print; the fault is the message, and the people who are poaching and the middle men in the Middle East and Africa simply have heard that ivory can be sold, and there are international buyers now re-buying ivory, and in the last few weeks, both Tanzania and Kenya have intercepted