Sudan denies military involved in ivory trade

NAIROBI, Kenya, May 13, 2005 (PANA) — The Sudanese government has refuted claims by a
UK-based conservation group that poachers of elephants were using state
military facilities to promote an illegal ivory trade.

The wildlife conservation body- Care for the Wild International, cited Khartoum-based ivory craftsmen as implicating the Sudanese government army of poaching animals from the war-ravaged Southern Sudan.

The Sudanese Embassy here said claims by the Care for the Wild
International that Khartoum was engaged in the killing of endangered
wildlife species to supply tusks to Sudan’s booming ivory trade, were
unjustified.

It said in a statement issued Wednesday that the East African country has
made numerous efforts to abide by international agreements to halt the
trade and save fragile populations of elephants from being completely
destroyed.

The UK-based group accused the Sudanese government of conducting open
trade in ivory from thousands of elephants being poached in the Southern
Sudan war-fields and transported to Khartoum in military convoys.

“The trade in ivory in Sudan is so expensive because of the high cost of
transport that no individual buyers would afford to transport the tusks
from the south to the north and still sell at a profit,” said Esmond
Martin, Care for the Wild researcher in Sudan.

But Sudanese authorities dismissed the report, saying it was not exact
and did not offer concrete evidence of government complicity in the ivory
trade.

“This means that it has a hidden agenda concerning this accusation
without giving out any material evidence,” the embassy statement pointed
out.

The Sudanese authorities strongly rejected the accusations, saying:
“Trade in elephant ivory was banned internationally in 1998. Since then,
no exports were made by the government, except by those involved in
smuggling.”

In February, investigators from the international conservation group
allegedly discovered over 11,000 ivory trinkets – ranging from pendants
to cigarette holders – openly on sale throughout Sudanese capital.

Dr Martin, who conducted the survey, estimated between 6,000 and 12,000
elephants are killed each year to supply the illegal trade.

“The government has seized several pieces of ivory destined for Egypt.
There is a considerable amount of ivory which has been impounded by the
custom authorities in Khartoum and in Port Sudan and several raids have
been carried out to control the local markets in the capital,” the
embassy statement noted.

The sale of ivory items in Sudan is legal if the shopkeeper has a
government licence, and if the ivory items have been carved from old
ivory, the government explained.

But no items made of tusks from recently killed Sudanese elephants are
permitted, nor are items from imported tusks dating after the 1990 ivory
ban under the Convention of International Trade in Endangered Species of
Wild Fauna and Flora (CITES), the embassy said.

There are no reliable figures of the elephant population in Sudan, but
the most recent figures suggest a decline from 133,000 in 1979 to 40,000
in 1992.

Overall, Africa’s population of elephants halved between 1979 and 1989,
largely as the result of poaching.

Care for the Wild predicts that today, there are estimated to be 400,000
to 660,000 elephants on the continent.

Numbers have recovered in some southern African nations since 1990, with
the CITES ban on international trade in ivory.