Experts Report Highest Elephant Poaching and Ivory Smuggling Rates in Decades

Experts Report Highest Elephant Poaching and Ivory Smuggling Rates in Decades

Elephant poaching reached to a maximum level in a decade and recorded ivory seizures at their highest levels since 1989, according to a report by the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora (CITES).

The findings, largely based on information submitted by governments, will be presented and discussed at the 62nd meeting of the CITES Standing Committee to be held in Geneva from 23 to 27 July 2012.

The report analyses data from the CITES programme on Monitoring the Illegal Killing of Elephants (MIKE), IUCN’s data on the status of elephant populations, the Elephant Trade Information System (ETIS) managed by TRAFFIC, and the CITES trade database managed by the UNEP World Conservation Monitoring Centre (UNEP-WCMC).

These authoritative sources of information have shown a very close correspondence between trends in elephant poaching and trends in large-scale ivory seizures, detecting essentially the same patterns at different points in the illegal ivory trade chain.

According to ETIS data, three of the five years in which the greatest volumes of ivory were seized globally occurred in 2009, 2010 and 2011.

Posted by George Daniels on Friday June 22 2012, 4:24 AM EST. Ref: CITES/TRAFFIC. Link. All trademarks acknowledged. Filed under Featured News, Health. Comments and Trackbacks closed. Follow responses: RSS 2.0