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Extracts from CITES Bangkok meeting in October 2004The African elephant was the subject of extensive debate. The conference agreed to an ambitious action plan for cracking down on unregulated domestic markets in elephant ivory. These markets serve as major outlets for poached ivory, particularly in a number of African and Asian countries. Under the action plan, all African elephant range states will strengthen their legislation and their enforcement efforts, launch public awareness campaigns and report on progress by end-March 2005. A request by Namibia for an annual quota for ivory from its national elephant population was not accepted. However, Namibia did receive permission for the strictly controlled sale of traditional ivory carvings known as ekipas as tourist souvenirs. In addition, in 2002 Namibia, Botswana and South Africa were each authorized to make a one-off sale of their existing ivory stocks, with the precondition that baseline data first be established on population and poaching levels throughout the elephant's range. The Bangkok meeting was informed that this data should be available in 2005, which could permit the sales to proceed by 2006. The meeting agreed that Namibia and South Africa may open up trophy hunting of the black rhino for the first time in many years, with an annual quota of five animals each. Swaziland may also open up strictly controlled hunting of its population of white rhino and export some live animals. The intent of these decisions is to allow the range states to manage their rhino herds more effectively and to earn income for rhino conservation. The Namibian population of the Nile crocodile was transferred from Appendix I to Appendix II to facilitate trophy hunting. |
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