Africa struggles to reach compromise solution on elephants

0 Comments | AFP, June, 2007

THE HAGUE (AFP) — African nations at loggerheads on how best to manage the continent's endangered elephants failed Monday to hammer out a compromise after three days of tense meetings, conservationists said.

The debate has transfixed a meeting of the 171-nation Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species (CITES), the UN body charged with regulating commerce in threatened wildlife.

Twenty African nations led by Kenya and Mali have called for a 20-year moratorium on the ivory trade, arguing that a total ban was the only way to guarantee the long-term survival of the species.

Limited trade simply encourages poaching and smuggling, they say, pointing to a sharp increase in illegal commerce since occasional sales of ivory resumed in 1997 after an...