Search results

In response to valid concerns that increasing the demand for rhino horn by wealthy consumers in Asia (which far exceeds any possible supply from dehorning live rhinos), particularly over the last decade, has led to the killing of rhino and the decimation of many African rhino populations, the international trade in rhino horn is banned under the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species (CITES). Unquestionably, the devastating loss of thousands of rhinos in South Africa particularly over the past two decades is not only due to the illegal killing of rhinos.

Six years ago, on the 21st August 2018, Michele Pickover, Executive Director of the EMS Foundation and Dr Smaragda Louw, Director of Ban Animal Trading, jointly presented their findings of an eighteen month investigation and research project about South Africa’s role in the international lion bone trade at a Colloquium held in the Parliament of South Africa.

Southern African nations are at it again. Nyasha Chingono reported in late May that those “hosting the largest elephant populations in the world made a fresh pitch…to be allowed to sell their $1bn ivory stockpiles”, purportedly to allocate it towards conservation. How they derive this figure is unclear, and the report doesn’t question its veracity. Current ivory prices are around US$400/kg in illicit markets in the East and averaging about $92/kg across Africa (except for Nigeria which has now become the continent’s major export hub).

The convicted clearing agents, according to the prosecutors, David Ereh and Mike Osong, was arrested on January, 2021, at Apapa Port, Lagos, for being in possession of 1X20ft Container marked CSLU 2362640, containing 158 sacks of pangolin scales and 57 sacks of elephant ivory, horns and bones.