CITES, the new King of Siam

CITES, the new King of Siam

Nevanji Munyaradzi Chiondegwa

Picture a gift that is typically cumbersome and large in size, difficult to dispose of and exorbitantly expensive to maintain, say, something that eats 200 to 600 pounds of food in a single day then let us get into our issue..

Conservation is important and so important that it has helped bring back near extinct species of flora and fauna into abundance. It mostly has positive results in a controlled set-up but does have its own drawbacks.

There was a time in the world when some species of flora and fauna almost became extinct. These species include among others the Big Five wild animals in Zimbabwe especially the rhinoceros and elephant. They almost became extinct from first big game hunting perpetrated by the now former colonisers from their days of voyages of discovery and exploration and big hunts.

Then came poaching and illicit trade in ivory and hides for tigers, lions, cheetahs and leopards. This led to African game especially elephants and rhino which are sources of ivory becoming almost extinct and a need to control the trade arose. And with that he Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora, CITES was born.

Needless to say, it was in a European country, in a European capital with mostly European and Western signatories that it came into being. After all, they were the ones who hunted and kept the hunting trophies. Africans do not hunt animals for fun but for food.

Not that conservation of the wild animals was bad, but after conserving them so well, elephants have become a threat to the ecosystem and the communities around them. Rhinos and elephants consume a lot of food in a day. In the wild, there are natural control mechanisms and food chains that help keep certain numbers of animals down to acceptable levels and carrying capacities of the ecosystems.

But with amplified conservation, the number of animals has ballooned and the pressures on the environment, communities living adjacent wildlife reserves, not to mention national purse has grown. There are many reports of human-wildlife conflict that are on the rise in Zimbabwe and getting worse by the year. But the controls imposed by CITES on the ban of ivory has remained.

The king of Siam would bestow white elephants upon his wilier courtiers, in hopes that the high cost of handling would bankrupt them. In old Siam, it would have been the grossiest of discourtesies to decline such a gift. If a member of the king’s court had somehow landed on his majesty’s bad side, and lacked the funds to properly care for such a beast, the status afforded by ownership was nonetheless too great to refuse. To reject a gift of a white elephant would have been illogical if you valued your reputation, and your head!

Zimbabwe and Botswana between them own 230 000 elephants, more than half owned by the whole of Africa which owns 415 000, 65 per cent of the world elephant population in the wild. Europe and America own none.
Zimbabwe sits on nearly US$1 billion worth of ivory stockpile, yet it is struggling to fund the upkeep of its national parks and reduce the number of human/wildlife conflict. Hwange National Park, the biggest game park in Zimbabwe, is arid and has no natural sources of water.

With sanctions in place, Zimbabwe cannot get grants from international conservation agencies and therefore, the cost of maintaining the elephants especially in the face of the CITES ban on their culling and ban on ivory trade, falls squarely on government coffers.

Yet the ban on ivory sales serves to defeat the conservation purpose as government can not sustain the conservation bill which runs into hundred of thousands of dollars annually for water provision and anti-poaching activities.

Zimbabwe has a national carrying capacity of 45 000 elephants but to date the country has more than 100 000 elephants, more than double the country’s carrying capacity. With the number of elephants growing at a rate of 0.5 per cent every year, it means that the pressure on Zimbabwe’s flora will increase, the cost on its national purse grow bigger, and human/wildlife conflict increase.

So while fighting to maintain the elephants, we will end up losing all the other positives as the elephants have already eaten through most of their natural feed in their natural habitats and as their other habitats have been taken over by humans, it means real and present danger looms for both humans and animals.

An imbalance on the ecosystem means death of certain species of flora and fauna. The Australians learnt this when they killed most of the dingoes on the continent. We cannot afford to think only of conservation but the cost of such.

Siam’s kings ruined their subjects by gifting them white elephants, CITES, like a modern day Rana V is ruining Zimbabwe and Africa by blocking the culling of its elephant and sale of its ivory stockpile!