Washington, DC, 28 February 2003: The seizure of 350 kilograms of ivory from poachers in Kenya should prompt a fundamental policy review by the country's new government about how it manages its elephant populations, according to IWMC World Conservation Trust, a leading international conservation organization.

Kenya has followed an isolationist policy for many years, acting in unison with wealthy western animal rights groups and against the stance adopted by other African nations. When Namibia, Botswana and South Africa successfully persuaded the CITES parties last November to allow them to sell stockpiled ivory to gain income for elephant conservation, Kenya alone stood against them.

On 25 February 2003, US Assistant Secretary for Fish and Wildlife and Parks, Judge Craig Manson, testified that the U.S. worked with other delegations at CITES, "to ensure that the conditions of any sale of ivory included effective safeguards to prevent adverse impacts on elephant populations in other countries."

IWMC believes that the prohibition of carefully managed ivory sales by Kenya undermines conservation efforts by starving programs of much needed funding. Kenya was forced to half its budget for enforcement against poaching, from $600,000 in 1997 to $300,000 in 1999 because it derives no income from sales of ivory stocks.

IWMC expects a detailed assessment by CITES (the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species) to conclude that there is no evidence of a link between lawful ivory sales and illegal trafficking, as alleged by campaigners and the previous Kenyan government.

Eugene Lapointe, President of IWMC and a former Secretary-General of CITES, said: "The inevitable result of Kenya's rigid policy on elephants is an increase in poaching. On the one hand, they deny their citizens the right to utilize local resources and, on the other, they have no money to enforce the prohibition. It is time Kenya rejoined the African consensus."

Mr. Lapointe added: "The biggest threat to wildlife in Africa is poverty and the lack of social order. It is time that Kenya woke up to the truth that it needs to manage its wildlife resources in a balanced and considered way and that policies of over-exploitation and zero-exploitation are as bad as each other.

"It is extraordinarily disingenuous for Kenyan authorities to continue blaming everybody else for their own problems. Kenya's current policy simply helps sustain the campaigners and does next to nothing for conservation."

For more information and interviews, contact Eugene Lapointe
Email: iwmc@iwmc.org