Ivory Trade

Lord Jones of Cheltenham Excerpts

Thursday 5th December 2013 Grand Committee

[Lord Jones of Cheltenham (LD)]

My Lords, I congratulate my noble friend on securing this timely debate. It is timely because the Independent newspaper group, along with the Evening Standard, have launched a campaign on the subject, and made Space for Giants their Christmas appeal. It is also timely because last week the International Fund for Animal Welfare, IFAW, launched its briefing, Criminal Nature, to which my noble friend has already referred. It is timely, too, because this week an international conference has been held in Botswana on the subject.

Ivory—its acquisition, transportation and sale—is a complex, brutal and horrifying process. My noble friend has tried to answer the question of how the world can protect rhinos and elephants from the ivory trade. There are only two ways: stop poaching or eliminate the market. Elephants, rhinos and many other species need protection. Elephants are invariably killed for their ivory, and, as I do not believe any are on licence right now, they are invariably poached. This is a situation of which the locals may or may not approve, but it is hard to show disapproval of a gang of poachers with AK47s at the ready.

So how do you crack down and eliminate the poachers? First, you have to put up a tangible reward for information on poachers and their whereabouts. Incentives need to be scaled and relevant to those on the receiving end. If you seek information on poachers, sooner or later you will get some. Then there has to be an immediate and appropriate reaction, otherwise the information flow will become tainted or tail off due to lack of interest. This means that park rangers, game wardens and other law enforcement agencies need to be trained and equipped for the task. This costs money and a long-term commitment, although the finances are marginal in global terms—you could save all the elephants in Africa for a small portion of the feed-in tariffs generously paid to the renewables industry.

Secondly, penalties for those guilty of poaching must be severe. Some recent small fines are frankly laughable. Two Irish smugglers who were found with eight rhino horns were find €500 each, whereas the street value is €500,000. It is good to see that Zimbabwe has introduced heavy fines for poaching—$120,000 for a rhino, $20,000 for an elephant—and if you do not or cannot pay you go to a Zimbabwean jail.

I am not in favour of the death penalty. However, poachers do not think twice about killing wildlife rangers if they get in the way, so it is likely that you are going to have to kill a few poachers before the message sinks in that poachers are effectively on licence all day, every day, of every year, from now on. This worked for a while in Kenya, but poaching has been overtaken by terrorism on the security agencies' priority list, although—as we have heard—in Kenya, as in Tanzania, the two crimes are probably closely linked.

The Minister of Environment, Wildlife and Tourism in Botswana, the honourable Tshekedi Khama, received flak recently when he said:

“When we meet the poachers, we do not negotiate”.

It follows, therefore, that declaring war on terrorists and terrorism by removing sources of income extends to eliminating the poachers, and this could most usefully be tasked and funded from anti-terrorism budgets. The conference held in Gaborone in Botswana this week has agreed more tough measures to cut wildlife smuggling. It is to be classified as a serious crime, and gangs risk having their assets seized.

In some countries poachers with machine guns use helicopters in their murky exploits. They shoot elephants and rhinos from the air, land, take the ivory or horns and take off again. This is not random poaching: this is organised crime, highly financed. There is now hard evidence that these helicopter missions, in particular, are linked to terrorism, drug money-laundering and arms smuggling. They kill for ivory to fund terrorist activity or gun-running or drug activity elsewhere in the world.

I favour the bazooka option for the helicopter raids. It only needs a few of these aircraft to be blasted out of the sky to ram home the message that the poachers are not going to win. Next year the United Kingdom will withdraw its Armed Forces from Afghanistan. Perhaps we could offer to help train wildlife rangers to combat poaching. I know two members of our Armed Forces who would jump at the chance to help.

Finally, the market needs reform, preferably by elimination. A recent poll showed that seven out of 10 Chinese did not know that ivory comes from dead elephants. They seemed to think that it was some kind of mined mineral. Education is the key, not the elephants-are-lovely “Blue Peter” stuff but more along the lines of, “You are ridiculous idiots who need to get a life”. Now, as a realist, I suspect that the Prime Minister is unlikely to have had that sort of discussion on his visit to China this week, but it is encouraging that, according to this month’s National Geographic magazine, the Philippines has become the first non-African country to destroy its ivory stock. The Department of Environment and Natural Resources Secretary, Ramon JP Paje, said:

“The Philippines will not be a party to this massacre, and we refuse to be a conduit to this cycle of killing”.

Education is also needed as to the efficacy, or otherwise, of ingesting the powdered teeth or horn of elephants, rhinos and the like. Frankly, those who indulge in this practice need to be told that they would get as much benefit from consuming their own toenails, and they are free of charge. China and its inhabitants are both changing at a rapid pace, arguably for the better. As a state, it is buying up much of Africa and therefore should have a cultural interest in preserving what might, one day, become its playground. Education, in the final analysis, is the only solution to the demands of the market. Remove the market, and you stop poaching.

It is not all bad news; there is hope out there. Elephant and rhino populations have plummeted in recent decades, but they still exist. They have not yet become extinct and gone the way of the dodo and numerous other species. In some countries, populations are growing. A shining example is Botswana, and I draw attention to my declared interest in that country. At the end of 2012, Botswana’s elephant population was 207,545, which is more than one-third of all African elephants. The number has almost quadrupled in 20 years and is currently growing at 5% each year. This time next year, there will be more than 10,000 extra elephants in Botswana. The reason is not hard to find. Botswana’s rulers pay attention to and love their wildlife. The country’s first president, Sir Seretse Khama, and successive presidents since, knew and know the value of wildlife, not for its ivory and skins, but to attract visitors from around the world to see these magnificent creatures. Botswana has banned so-called trophy hunting. I recommend that noble Lords visit Botswana to see for themselves the most incredible wildlife on our planet in its natural habitat. If noble Lords wish to have elephants on their estates, I understand that the Government of Botswana will let you have as many as you like free of charge. You just need to arrange the transport.

I shall end with this personal experience. A few years ago I was on a boat on the River Chobe near Kasane in northern Botswana. In the distance I could see a large dark object in the river—it was a very large elephant. As we got closer I asked the guide why the elephant was there. “Oh, she’s dying”, he said. “She’s in the water to keep cool”. He added, “She’s the matriarch”. All around there were hundreds and hundreds, maybe thousands, of elephants of all shapes and sizes. A few weeks later I went back and asked what had happened to the elephant. I was told that she died. The wildlife wardens had dragged her onto the river bank and removed the tusks. That is what they do in Botswana with dead elephants; the Government take control of the ivory. Then, for hour upon hour, elephants had filed past her in an orderly fashion, touching her body with their trunks. They were her family paying their last respects. Elephants are amazingly intelligent creatures with feelings just like humans. In my view they are far more intelligent than poachers, the organisers of poaching, those involved in the ivory trade and the end consumers. Bad humans have caused the current crisis. It is now up to good humans to ensure that the species survive by eradicating once and for all the trade in ivory which has led to the horrible and indefensible crime of poaching.