Debate on lifting ban on ivory trade / 華盛頓公約大會 象牙貿易禁令陷拉鋸　　　　　　　　　　

The Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species is currently being held in Johannesburg, South Africa, and one of the hotly contended issues is whether African countries should lift the ban on ivory trades. While several countries claim that this will help combat the black market, animal conservation groups say the issue is a lot more complicated than that. This is Kenya's Tsavo National Park, police and conservation specialist used a single engine plane to patrol over 10,000 square kilometers of Africa plain. They were trying to spot illegal poaching of elephants. According to the report from the International Union for Conservation of Natures (ICUN), Africa's elephant population fell from 526,000 to 415,000. It's a 20% reduction and it's equivalent to 50 elephants being poached per day. Asian countries including China have a high demand for ivory. This demand encourages illegal poaching. South Africa, Namibia and Zimbabwe made a joint proposal for legalizing ivory trade in order to reduce national inventories and marginalize illegal poaching. But conservation groups have different views. ==FRANK POPE, Elephants Rescue Organization== When ivory reaches the demand markets to the world, you can't tell which savannah population that ivory came from. It's just ivory. And for that reason, if one of the nations that wants to sell the ivory, decides to sell ivory and managed to put that on to the market. That creates a smoke screen for the legal trade to flourish. It crossed the whole to the rest of the (African) Continent. Although the proposal was not passed, obstacles remain in elephant protection. International treaties are not workable in war zone and terrorists dominated area, conservation groups are not able to save endangered species such as elephants and rhinoceros. TRANSLATED BY：ANTHONY LIN 肯亞的札沃國家公園，巡警和保育專家搭乘小飛機，巡邏超過1萬平方公里的非洲大草原，他們可是要取締非法盜獵大象的走私客。 根據國際自然保育聯盟IUCN的長期調查，過去10年來，非洲大象的族群數目，從52萬6千頭，減少到41萬5千頭，估計減少20%，也就是每天有50頭非洲大象，死在盜獵者的槍下。 亞洲國家包括中國在內，對於可做高級裝飾品的象牙有很大的需求，才造成盜獵如此猖獗。包括主辦今年CITES大會的南非，以及鄰國納米比亞、辛巴威，在大會上共同提案，呼籲重新開放合法的象牙貿易，一方面消化各國的庫存，並壓縮非法盜獵的市場。但保育專家的看法剛好相反。 ==搶救大象組織代表 法蘭克波普(Frank Pope)== 當象牙運送到有需求的市場去 你不可能去分辨貨是哪邊來的 你只會知道那是象牙 所以如果想賣象牙的國家賣得出去 就是在掩護非法的(象牙)貿易 讓盜獵橫行整個(非洲)大陸 儘管這個提案在大會上沒有通過，但保護非洲大象的行動，仍然存在諸多阻礙。例如南蘇丹、賴比瑞亞、中非共和國，以及西非等地，因為戰亂或恐怖攻擊，讓保育團體的調查人員無法進入。換句話說，要在這些地方執行國際公約，保護大象、犀牛這些瀕臨危險的野生動物，變得更加困難。 記者 徐家仁 報導