TNAG-2133-FCO40-3048-Hong-Kong-and-the-ivory-trade-1990 — Page 80

5. The amendments to the CITES Appendices came into force on 18 January. Under Article XV of CITES any Party could before that date enter a Reservation exempting itself from

applying the new listing. On 17 January the UK informed the

depositary government (the Swiss) that we were entering such

a Reservation but made it clear that it would be withdrawn

after six months and would not apply to the United Kingdom

or to any other Dependent Territory. Six other countries

also entered Reservations China, Botswana, Zimbabwe, Malawi, South Africa and Zambia. The stated purpose of the UK Reservation was to allow Hong Kong traders time to

dispose of their legally-acquired stocks in an orderly

fashion and to enable the carvers and workers to find

alternative employment.

6.

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The Reservation drew intense criticism from MPs, NGOs

and the general public. NGOS, including the influential Worldwide Fund for Nature, maintained that allowing Hong Kong to continue to trade would encourage more poaching in Africa and threaten the future of the elephant. We refuted

this. Hong Kong introduced a ban on imports of ivory in

June 1989 (as did the UK itself) and also introduced

stringent controls to ensure that no illegal ivory entered

trade. These included export licencing, possession licencing for quantities over 5kg, and the setting up of a

Customs task force and computer data base to monitor the

trade. We believed that the import ban and other controls

would prevent a loophole for the entry of illegal ivory onto

the market and would not provide an incentive to continued

poaching. We were in the main proved right and the Head of

the Kenya Wildlife Service was able to say at the end of

March that because of the lack of world markets for raw

ivory the price in East Africa had fallen to a level at

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