The Sunday News
Dumisani Nsingo, Senior Business Reporter
ZIMBABWE will consider exploring markets for live elephant sales following its failed bid to have its embargo on the trade of ivory lifted at the just ended Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species (Cites) meeting in South Africa, an official has said.
In an interview with Sunday Business after a National Forest Policy validation workshop in Bulawayo on Friday, the principal director in the Ministry of Environment, Water and Climate, Mr Irvine Kunene said the country should seek ways to utilise its huge stockpile worth about $9 billion through adding value to it.
“It’s just a week since we came back from the Cites meeting. We thought that proposals which people put across so that we dispose off that ivory would be accepted but it became difficult, but now that we are back we have to sit down again and see how we utilise that ivory in the country.
“We might consider promoting domestic products like coming up with bangles and various other ornaments. We still have to sit down as a country and see how best that can be done so that we can at least benefit from the ivory which we have because at the moment it’s just costing us money because it’s difficult to look after that stock,” said Mr Kunene.
A nine-year moratorium was sanctioned by the Cites in 2007 in a bid to curb illegal trade in ivory, which threatened both elephants and rhinos with extinction. Mr Kunene said the country should also explore markets for live elephant sales.
In July the country sold 100 elephants to China with the Asian nation making further inquiries on more elephants, baboons, hyenas, lions, among others.
“If it (live elephant sales) is done properly with correct notifications with the Cites secretariat, it is a legal process because now we can’t utilise the stocks which we have. So in terms of live sales, I think that is acceptable. It depends on the market. If we are still having people who want to buy we will get into negotiations with them,” said Mr Kunene.
Zimbabwe’s elephant population is estimated at 84 000. The elephants sent to China in July were sold for about £26 000 each. Zimbabwe has been grappling with a financial crisis for more than a decade.
Speaking on the National Forest policy, Mr Kunene said it was at its finalisation process and would go a long way towards setting guidelines for players and stakeholders in the forestry sector.
“Today’s workshop is basically the last one where we are actually validating. We are looking at the document where the stakeholders from all the sectors which were consulted before having to confirm whether the current draft, which is the second draft of the policy, captures the issues which were raised during the consultations.
“It is important to have a National Forest Policy in the sense that we have never had one. We were using the Communal Land Forest Produce Act which is the only piece of legislation. So Government is in the process of formulating a document which is going to be guiding in terms of how the forest sector should be moving,” he said.
@DNsingo
