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Mozambique: Thousands of Tonnes of Ivory Stockpiled
Maputo - Mozambique has stockpiles of over 6,000 tonnes of ivory, much of it seized from poachers across the country.

The ivory was seized over several years in Maputo, Manica, Tete, Niassa and Cabo Delgado provinces.

According to Bonito Mahanjane, of the Mozambican authority for CITES (International Convention on Trade in Endangered Species), the country has accumulated this large ivory stockpile because, under the convention, trade in ivory is banned.

Before the ban came into force, in 1989, Mozambique used to sell ivory for 166 US dollars a kilo, mainly to Japan.

Mahanjane said that the 6,000 tonnes of ivory should be placed in a single national depot, because special care is required, if the ivory is to keep its quality, and also to ensure that it is not stolen.

He said that the idea of bringing all the ivory to a single warehouse is not new, but there is the problem of the cost of transport.

AIM learnt that the government paid 180,000 dollars in 2005 to transport 2.5 tonnes of ivory by plane from a warehouse in Tete to Maputo. An alternative under study is to use road transport, this time to carry ivory from Manica to Maputo.

Unspecified quantities of ivory were stolen from a warehouse in Cabo Delgado last year.

"These quantities of ivory result from seizures from poachers, collection from carcasses of elephants that died of natural causes, or had to be killed for some reason, from instance to protect people in some villages", explained Mahanjane.

Mahanjane said the government has received proposals to purchase the ivory, and then destroy it. Such proposals have been rejected, in light of the value of the ivory.

Within CITES there has been disagreement between certain southern African counties with large elephant populations (notably Botswana, South Africa, Namibia and Zimbabwe) who want a controlled trade in ivory, and a group led by Kenya and India, who fear that any legal ivory trade will simply lead to further large scale poaching of elephants.

A deal reached earlier this year allowed southern African countries (not including Mozambique) to sell off their registered stockpiles of ivory in exchange for a nine year moratorium on any further sales.
 
http://allafrica.com/stories/200711190931.html
 

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