CITIES CoP15. (Photo Credit: ElephantVoices)
March 25, 2010–Like many of our fellow elephant supporters, we’ve watched and read the updates coming out of the Convention on International Trading in Endangered Species (CITIES) in Doha this month. Today we are happy to report that the requests from Tanzania and Zambia to down list their elephants populations from Appendix I to II and to begin to trade in ivory were both rejected.
We’ve followed the Facebook updates from ElephantVoices since the conference began on March 13, 2010 and they report:
Tanzania and Zambia amended their proposals when they realized that they might lose the vote, but despite well orchestrated interventions by supporting parties they did not succeed in achieving the two-thirds majority required. We firmly believe that down listing and ‘one-off’ sales would have further stimulated the market for ivory, and led to more killing of elephants. They did succeed in getting another vote in the plenary session today, Thursday 25th, but the victory for elephants was upheld.
This success is largely due to the extraordinary collaborations between the African Elephant Coalition (AEC, with 23 African Elephant range states as members) and the informal group Kenya Elephant Forum (KEF), which includes key stakeholders in Kenya (Save the Elephants, Amboseli Trust for Elephants, Kenya Wildlife Service, Youth for Conservation, ElephantVoices and others) co-ordinated by Pat Awori.
For more information about Elephant Voices, please visit their website and become a fan of their Facebook Page.
We’ll continue to keep you posted on how this and other elephant news effects Asian Elephants, particularly the Friends of the Asian Elephant (FAE) Elephant Hospital featured in The Eyes of Thailand.
-Windy Borman
Director & Producer, The Eyes of Thailand
P.S. Documentaries are expensive undertakings. Please help us continue our work on the film–and be a voice for Asian Elephants–by making a tax-deductible donation to The Eyes of Thailand through the film’s fiscal sponsor, the San Francisco Film Society. Click on “Donate Now” here and it will take you to the secure online donation page for the SFFS. Thank you so much!
