Cover Stories: Trail of Shame
By TED GUP
Nature's great
master-peece,
an Elephant,
The onely
harmlesse great
thing; the giant
Of beasts . . .
-- John Donne, 1612
Out of the gray Kenyan dusk, an elephant soundlessly advances to the edge of a water hole, its trunk raised high to catch the first scent of danger. Satisfied that the way is clear, it signals and is joined by a second elephant. In ritual greeting the two behemoths entwine their trunks, flap their enormous ears and clack tusk against tusk, sending the cold crack of ivory across the Ngulia Hills. That same sound is heard 10,000 miles away in Hong Kong and Tokyo, where ivory traders stack tusk upon tusk -- more than 800 tons, scrubbed clean of blood and connective tissue and laundered free of illegality.
Between Africa, littered with the bloated carcasses of elephants, and the huge stockpiles of the Far East is a trail marked by secrecy and deceit. It is a trail traveled by ruthless poachers, cunning smugglers, corrupt and inept officials, and the barons of the trade: a handful of men who have never seen an elephant in the wild. They and their wealthy customers do not understand -- or choose not to -- the high cost of this trade. They do not see the herds mowed down by automatic assault rifles, the tusks frantically hacked from the skulls and the orphaned and wounded elephants left to die. Ten years ago, 1.3 million elephants pressed the earth of Africa. Today there are perhaps 625,000.
A storage room in Kenya's Tsavo National Park, where poaching has been rampant, bears witness to this carnage. Tiny bloodstained tusks from infant elephants fill an entire shelf. Each is the length of a candle. They come from three-four- and five-year-olds who fell before a rain of automatic gunfire. In a corner of the room, elephant tails, rancid and maggot infested, lie in a heap. Behind the building, skulls bleach in the sun. And just up a slope, an orphaned elephant greedily nurses on a bottle of formula and suckles at the fingers of its human keeper. Unless led away, an orphan will linger by its fallen mother until it collapses from starvation or thirst. And a mature elephant coming across a carcass, even one streaked with vulture droppings, will try to rouse it to life with a gentle prod of its hind leg.
Such scenes of slaughter, a tragedy overlooked for years, are at last forcing their way into the public consciousness. Reports of the elephant's plight are now stirring outrage in every part of the world. This week delegates from a hundred nations are gathering in Lausanne, Switzerland, to consider how to save the giant of beasts. They represent the countries that have signed the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species (CITES), the treaty that regulates the trade in ivory and other products from threatened animals. The delegates must decide whether to declare the elephant an endangered species, an action that would trigger a global ban on the international ivory trade. The proposal has sparked rancorous debate, both inside and outside Africa, over whether such a ban could be enforced and whether it is the best way to save the elephant.
More is at stake than the survival of a single species. Conservationists fear that if they cannot rally to the rescue of earth's largest land mammal, there is little hope of preventing a multitude of lesser creatures from slipping into extinction. The elephant has become emblematic of the wild and the struggle to preserve it.
Repeated attempts to control the ivory trade have failed. The current system, set up under CITES in 1986, requires ivory-producing nations to adopt export quotas intended to safeguard existing elephant populations. In addition, each tusk in international trade must be covered by an export permit and marked with a unique serial number, which is recorded in a computer in Cambridge, England. Theoretically, that number allows nations to trace the tusk as it passes from country to country in trade. But many quotas have been ill-considered or ignored, falsified export documents have been discovered in numerous nations, and corrupt officials in collusion with traders continue to skirt the system.
In recent months the trade has been in retreat. Responding to growing public indignation, many industrialized nations have declared a moratorium on ivory imports. Among them: the U.S., France, West Germany, England, Canada and Australia. Japan and Hong Kong, the centers of the trade, followed suit. In Africa nations have declared war on the poachers. Thousands have been arrested, scores killed and tons of illicit tusks seized. Most significant of all, consumers are beginning to understand the link between their ivory baubles and trinkets and the mutilated carcasses from which they came. If regulation fails, consumer revulsion to ivory may be the elephant's last hope.
Among those African nations whose herds have been hardest hit are Tanzania and Kenya. They lead the call for a worldwide ban, and are joined by conservation groups, including the World Wildlife Fund and Wildlife Conservation International. They argue that it will take decades for elephant herds to begin to recover, and that as long as there is any legal trade, the lure of profits will entice poachers and smugglers to beat the system.
An equally powerful coalition is opposed to a global ban. Those few southern African countries -- Zimbabwe, Botswana and South Africa -- that have not been beset by poachers cull their herds to maintain the elephant populations at optimum levels. That culling produces legally traded ivory. Those countries say a ban would punish them for the corruption and inefficiency of other nations. Ivory traders and retailers, of course, also oppose a comprehensive ban, hoping to save an industry with annual revenues estimated at $500 million to $1 billion worldwide. They are joined by the CITES secretariat, a Lausanne- based bureaucracy that monitors the ivory trade. Together, the industry and regulators argue that a legal trade based on ivory from natural elephant mortality and culling produces revenues for wildlife management and for the benefit of local African communities as an incentive to protect the herds.
Even if the necessary two-thirds of the delegates at the CITES meeting vote to declare the elephant an endangered species, nations can exempt themselves from a trade ban without penalty. That is what the southern African nations have said they will do if a compromise cannot be reached. The real danger is that other countries may also break rank. The more porous the ban, the more the opportunities for illegal trading. Already South Africa and Botswana are on the smugglers' routes. An ambiguous result in Lausanne could embolden the trade and undermine enforcement efforts in Africa. Time is not on the elephant's side. If the slaughter continues at the rate of the past decade, 1,000 elephants will be killed during the week of the debate.
For more than 5,000 years, ivory's creamy luminescence, durability and grace under the carver's blade have fascinated humanity. Ivory anklets and combs have been found in ancient Egyptian tombs, and King Solomon is said to have sat upon an ivory throne. In its myriad forms, ivory has been a medium expressing both virtue and vice, creativity and crass extravagance. It has been used in rosary beads, pistol grips, lutes, dice, scepters, toothpicks, prayer wheels, fly whisks, mah-jongg tiles and chopsticks. In the past century, traders greedy for ivory attacked and burned African villages. Natives were sold into slavery and forced to shoulder the tusks out of the interior.
This century saw ivory become a raw material for industry. In the 1920s thousands of elephants were butchered to meet U.S. demands for 60,000 ivory billiard balls a year and for hundreds of thousands of piano keys. In the 1970s ivory was a hedge against inflation, stockpiled and traded like bullion.
Over recent decades the trade became concentrated in the Far East, where ivory ornaments are highly prized. Until this year's trade curbs, Japan, the largest consumer, took in some 40% of the world's ivory, in contrast to about one-third for the U.S. and Europe together. Last year Japanese carvers turned an estimated 64 tons of tusks into as many as a million hanko, or personalized name seals. Much of this ivory was bought from Hong Kong, which has long been the world's ivory marketplace. Between 1979 and 1987, Hong Kong imported 3,900 tons. That represents the death of more than 400,000 elephants.
There is considerable mystery about how the ivory gets from Africa to the Far East. Over the past decade, as much as four-fifths of that ivory has been of illegal origin -- poached, then smuggled. Sometimes the poachers cross borders to hunt, as from Somalia into Kenya or Zambia into Zimbabwe, then carry the tusks back by night. Some poachers are tribal villagers, illiterate and poor, who stalk their prey on foot, walking for weeks, living off game. A poacher in Kenya says he believes tribal charms make him invisible to antipoaching units. He buries his tusks in the village latrine or hides them in a nearby cave. He sells them for a pittance (as little as $40 for a tusk that may eventually bring $1,000 in Japan) to a respected businessman in a nearby town, who sells them to someone else for three times what he paid.
But many of Africa's poachers operate with the cold precision of a crack military unit. They are well armed and organized into gangs of up to ten men. Their weapons, often AK-47 assault rifles, can pepper a herd with 30 rounds in less than five seconds. Frequently they are ex-army men. When they run into antipoaching units, they respond as trained soldiers would, withdrawing and firing, then scattering and rendezvousing hours or days later at prearranged sites. In Angola rebels help finance military operations with ivory. Among the larger bands of poachers, some men are designated as cooks, others as porters, assigned to lug the ammunition, mosquito netting and axes for cutting off tusks. Those who cross their path, be they ranger or tourist, risk death.
The tusks go to collection points, and from there are carried across the continent, hidden in gas tankers and cargo trucks, personal luggage and shipping crates. The rewards far outweigh the risks. The owner of a truck carrying $2 million worth of illicit tusks and rhino horns was fined a mere $2,613 by Botswa officials last year. His cargo was said to be bound for a South African firm with Hong Kong connections. Despite crackdowns, the poachers are undaunted. Just two weeks ago, in a predawn raid on a farm, Namibian officials seized 980 tusks.
The trade could not continue on such a scale without the collusion of African officials. "So many of Africa's functionaries are corrupt," says K.T. Wang, one of Hong Kong's major ivory traders. "If they get money, they say it's legal ivory. If they don't get money, they say it's poached." Over the years, senior African officials, their spouses and close friends, and wildlife authorities have been implicated in ivory scandals.
Some of the most blatant corruption has occurred in Tanzania. Last year a member of the country's parliament, Alli Yusufu Abdurabi, was discovered with 105 tusks. Abdurabi is now serving a twelve-year prison sentence for trading in illegal ivory. Indonesia's former Ambassador to Tanzania, Hoesen Yoesoef, was found trying to smuggle more than 200 tusks out of the country last January. Other illegal ivory was found in the hands of a Catholic priest, a leading local journalist and officials of the Iranian and Pakistani embassies. More than 280 tons of illegal ivory has left Tanzania in the past three years, says Costa Mlay, director of the country's wildlife department.
Tanzania is now getting tough. Since June 1, units of the police, army and wildlife department under Operation Uhai -- Swahili for life -- have arrested 1,840 people and seized more than 1,000 illicit tusks. Some frightened poachers dump their tusks into the Ruaha River rather than risk getting caught. But it is late for Tanzania's elephants. Between 1979 and 1987 their & population plummeted from about 316,000 to 85,000.
The ivory trail leading out of Africa varies according to the latest regulation and the current loophole. In recent years ivory has been smuggled aboard every mode of transportation, from commercial jetliners to the single- masted dhows that ply the ancient sea routes of the Indian Ocean.
Over the decade, traders outmaneuvered attempts to regulate the trade by taking their tusks through nations that had not yet signed the CITES accord. In 1985 CITES agreed to register previously undocumented tusks in countries that promised to comply with the rules in the future. Such arrangements were made with Singapore and Burundi, which together had more than 390 tons of ivory. Traders' ivory, once suspect because it lacked documentation, suddenly quadrupled in value. In countries intent on barring illegal ivory, customs agents have found thousands of tusks in crates marked BEESWAX, BONE MATERIAL, MARBLE and JEWELRY. But most illicit ivory slips through.
Hong Kong has long been the crossroads of the ivory trade. Government figures show 675 tons of ivory stockpiled in scores of factories and about 300 shops. Ten families or syndicates account for three-quarters of the ivory Hong Kong imports each year. One of those is headed by Poon Tat Hing, whose ivory network has extended from Africa to Dubai and Singapore, and into Japan. His shop, Tat Hing Ivory, displays 6-ft.-tall ivory figures that sell for $15,000 and up. When asked where the ivory comes from, salesmen simply say "Africa." The Lai family's Kee Cheong Ivory Factory boasts in a brochure that it can produce 30,000 ivory bangles, 40,000 necklaces and 100,000 rings every month. In its squalid sixth-floor shop, high-speed drills send up plumes of ivory dust, and tusks registered in Singapore and Sudan are stacked like firewood.
K.T. Wang, 66, a businessman with silver hair and impeccable manners, is the dean of Hong Kong's ivory trade. He has never been to Africa, and the only elephant he has seen was in the Paris zoo. Yet he is a major conduit for ivory entering both Hong Kong and Japan. In February he helped Tokyo's largest trader, Koichiro Kitagawa, purchase nearly five tons of Sudanese ivory for $1 million from another Hong Kong dealer. In 1987 he engineered the purchase of 26 tons of Congo ivory by the Osaka trader Kageo Takaichi. The $3.5 million shipment contained 2,052 tusks.
Wang built up huge inventories of ivory in Singapore in anticipation of the CITES registration. On Oct. 31, 1986 -- the last day that importation of ivory without CITES papers was allowed -- more than ten tons of Wang's ivory arrived on a Boeing 707 from Burundi. When Chris Huxley, then a CITES official, examined some of the more than 50 tons of tusks Wang owned in Singapore, he found evidence that suggested some of the elephants had not died of natural causes: "A few had light-caliber bullet damage. Some still had considerable bone attached and had obviously been removed rapidly and/or by amateurs . . . a few had been buried."
For years, ivory of questionable origin flowed into Hong Kong. Until mid- 1988, the importation of carved ivory was largely unregulated, and so tusks lacking documentation were diverted through the Middle East and elsewhere, where they were lightly carved so they could enter Hong Kong as legal ivory. Last June, as nations moved to ban ivory imports, Hong Kong set up a special customs task force aimed at smugglers, as well as a 24-hour hot line. It has closed its borders to ivory imports for the time being.
Hong Kong's traders, retailers and carvers -- about 3,000 people in all -- are already suffering from the U.S., European and Japanese bans. Kwong Fat Cheung Ivory once employed 100 carvers. Now there are five, all old men, who at night can be found sitting around a table eating a silent dinner of silvery fish, cabbage and egg. Behind them is a wall of ivory tusks in burlap sacks that were destined for Taiwan until that country declared a ban in August. "There is nothing to give them to do," says Eddie Huen, one of five brothers who run the business started by their father. "They are just sitting, waiting for the future." The carvers are family to each other and have little life outside the factory. They live in the showroom, sleeping there on boards.
By the time even registered ivory reaches Japan, the link with Africa is all but lost. On the wall of the Fuso Trading Co. in downtown Tokyo is a photograph of a lone elephant standing in silhouette against a red sunset. "We don't know exactly what country the ivory originated from, very sorry," says company accountant Miyako Yoshida. Last year the company imported 4.5 tons of ivory from Singapore, of which 2.5 tons went for making piano keys. Once Yoshida and a customer saw a film in which an elephant was shot. She said they covered their eyes in horror.
Until the early 1980s, the flow of undocumented ivory into Japan went virtually unchecked. The country was awash in bogus documents used to launder ivory smuggled out of Africa. International protests grew, and Japan's traders began to realize that the extinction of the elephant would eventually put them out of business. Since 1985 Japan has complied with CITES rules and earned high marks from some conservationists. Its imports fell from 475 tons a year in 1983 and 1984 to 106 tons in 1988.
But Japan's ivory industry is determined to stay alive. In the two weeks before the country's June 19 ban on imports from non-African nations went into force, traders arranged for 35 ivory shipments to Japan, weighing 29 tons -- a fourth of 1988's imports. (Hong Kong officials worked overtime to approve the flurry of export permits for Japan-bound ivory.) In September Japan announced it was, "for the time being," adopting a zero quota for ivory imports. A government spokesman said Japan will follow closely the events at the Lausanne meeting before deciding whether to resume limited ivory imports. Japan's major traders have enough ivory to last a year or more.
As many as 30,000 Japanese draw their living from ivory -- as traders, carvers and merchants. But the import trade is controlled by a few. Two men, Takaichi in Osaka and Kitagawa in Tokyo, have accounted for as much as half the ivory entering Japan in recent years. Kitagawa, 47, is a stern man who presides over an industry in turmoil. He was twelve when he was introduced to what has been his family's business for nearly a century. His showroom, scanned by video cameras and kept moist by humidifiers, features a towering ivory pagoda and cases filled with ornate carvings. His computers track the movements of tons of ivory. Half of Kitagawa's stock goes to making figurines, about a third to name seals and the rest to jewelry.
Only once has Kitagawa been grazed by the ivory scandals of Africa. That was four years ago, when he paid millions for 30 tons of ivory bearing Ugandan documents. The papers were false. Kitagawa says he believed the documents were valid and trusted the ivory's seller, whose name he no longer remembers. There is no evidence that Kitagawa violated any laws, but the rules allowed him to purchase ivory that had been confiscated or whose origins in Africa were lost in the myriad transactions between that continent and Japan. Under "country of origin," some of the export permits say only "unknown" or are blank. Kitagawa bought 13 tons in Singapore last year and twelve tons from Burundi in 1987.
Until now, the ivory trail has flourished under the less than watchful eye of the CITES secretariat. In 1985 when the organization announced its plan to register all tusks as part of an ivory-control system, conservationists hoped the illegal trade would be curbed. But the deals that CITES officials struck with Singapore, Burundi and other nations, under which undocumented ivory could be registered, moved a mountain of ill-gotten ivory into the marketplace.
In Burundi alone, 90 tons was registered. "The sheer volume was mind blowing," recalls Ian Parker, an ivory expert who helped handle the registration for Burundi. "There were rooms -- bathrooms, kitchens, garages, you name it -- stacked with ivory to the roof." But Burundi did not keep its promise to get out of the business; instead it accumulated another 90 tons. Says Joe Yovino, former head of the CITES ivory unit: "No question, we got snookered." Yet four months ago, the CITES secretariat agreed to arrange for the sale of about 28 tons that had been seized by Burundi authorities. Jacques Berney, the deputy secretary-general of CITES, says he is convinced that the new Burundi government, which came to power in a 1987 coup, is sincere about keeping the agreement to halt additional ivory imports.
Conservationists suggest that the secretariat's protrade policies may have something to do with its source of funding. Since its founding in 1985, CITES' ivory unit has received two-thirds of its budget -- some $237,468 -- in contributions from ivory traders. Japan's trade association has contributed $139,701 to CITES' ivory unit, making it the largest single contributor. After CITES registered the Singapore ivory, much of which belonged to Hong Kong's Wang, he contributed $10,000 to the organization. "When I saw my salary was coming from K.T. Wang, that just did it," said Yovino, then head of that unit. Yovino resigned two weeks later.
The secretariat defends its cozy relationship with the ivory business. Eugene Lapointe, CITES secretary-general, says inadequate financial support from governments left the group little choice but to turn to the trade for money. CITES, he says, has no enforcement authority and should not be held accountable for policing. That, he says, is the responsibility of the individual nations. As for the amnesty granted the Singapore and Burundi ivory, the secretariat says a 1985 vote by its member nations empowered it to register all stocks.
Current and former CITES staff members and consultants have actively led the fight against the proposed ivory ban. In July, Yoshio Kaneko, a staffer originally on loan from the Japanese government, wrote an editorial in a Tokyo daily on behalf of CITES, exhorting Japan and the trade to assert their economic interests and oppose the ban. And Zimbabwe's position paper against the ban, to be offered at this week's meeting, was written by former CITES staffer Huxley, who received $5,000 in funding for the study from the Japanese ivory association.
Will the secretariat's campaign to block the ban succeed? Probably not, since the international momentum to do something for the elephant is strong. But little is certain. "I foresee chaos," says a spokesman for Botswana. In the final days leading up to the meeting, lobbying efforts by both sides reached a frenzied level. The vote in Lausanne will not be unanimous, and any prohibition of ivory trading will be at best a patchwork. As long as southern African nations such as Zimbabwe and Botswana refuse to accept the ban, ivory will be available for sale.
So the future of the trade depends in large part on Hong Kong and Japan, the big consumers. Officials of both places have expressed deep concern at the catastrophic losses to Africa's herds and have vowed to place the preservation of the elephant ahead of the interests of the trade. In Lausanne that commitment will be tested. Japan has made admirable strides to restrict the trade, but its long-term stand remains a wild card. "We, of course, pay close attention to other countries' opinions," said a spokesman for the Japanese government. "We have not fixed our position." The Japanese have every right to feel that many Western nations have shifted their stance rather abruptly. Until its recent trade curbs, the U.S. bought one-third of Hong Kong's ivory products.
Ultimately, many of the importers and the southern African nations hope for a situation in which moderate demand can be satisfied with legal ivory from controlled culling of elephant herds and natural mortality. That could theoretically keep both the elephant and the ivory industry alive. Such a delicate balance between supply and demand will be difficult to maintain.
Demand for ivory is falling, but perhaps not fast enough. In 1979 Hong Kong imported 521 tons, representing 31,000 elephants. Last year it imported only 290 tons, but it took at least 33,000 elephants to meet the reduced demand. That is because tusk sizes during the period fell from about 18 lbs. to 9 lbs. Older elephants have been wiped out in many herds, and younger animals are now the targets. Breeding patterns have been disrupted. In Tanzania's Mikumi National Park, 72% of the elephant families observed in a recent study were either missing adult females or were composed mostly of orphans.
No matter what happens this week in Lausanne, the elephant will still be in some peril. Even if the ivory trade winds down, the elephant will face increasing encroachment from Africa's fast-growing human populations. African farmers or herdsmen trying to eke out a living covet the vast habitats set aside for animals and cannot understand why scarce financial resources go to protect elephants while people go hungry. To many Africans, the elephant is a five-ton nuisance that can trample a season's maize in seconds. As long as they feel that way, they will turn a blind eye to poaching. Revenues from tourism and safaris have yet to improve the lot of the African people enough to win them over to wildlife management.
Education efforts, both in Africa and in ivory-consuming nations, should emphasize just how crucial elephants are to African ecosystems. Elephants not only inhabit but also shape their habitat. In their search for food, they uproot and topple trees, allowing grasses and shrubs to take root and sunlight to reach the ground. By digging with their tusks, the great beasts bring underground pools to the surface, creating water holes that sustain a host of thirsty creatures. Warns a May 1989 study by a consortium of conservationists: "The elephant's extermination will lead to biological impoverishment and domino-like extinctions over much of Africa."
Such a prospect truly alarms Richard Leakey, the world-famous paleontologist who heads Kenya's wildlife department. Says he:"The elephant has been around a long time and has given such pleasure to so many and has the potential to give such pleasure to so many more. Should we allow it, through our inaction, greed and perhaps cowardice, to become an exotic on this continent? If not, how do we prevent it?"
That is a question Japanese carver Koryu Kawaguchi asks as well. On the outskirts of Tokyo, the 70-year-old master carver sits on a tatami mat, his workbench and tools covered with a fine ivory dust. In his hands is an ivory figurine of the Merciful Mother Kannon, which he has been carving for a month. Beside him sits his son Ryusei, 37, a fourth-generation ivory carver. The elder Kawaguchi is a gentle man with a reverence for the gleaming white medium he has spent his lifetime bringing to life. His eyes are weak from the strain of the work. Only in the stillness of night does he carve the delicate faces. When he fashions the eyes, the nose, the mouth, he holds his breath to steady his hands.
For years he believed his ivory was found in the fields of Africa at a common elephant graveyard. Fifteen years ago, he learned the truth. As he moved a section of ivory through a saw, the blade came to a screeching halt and broke. He looked down; in the heart of the tusk was a corroded mass of steel -- a bullet. "When I saw that, I realized," he says, caressing a figurine in his hands. "I was shocked. If I had anything else to do, I'd change my job." From that day on, he has placed the ivory section with the bullet on his family altar. "We sprinkle some water on it every day," he says, "so we can pacify the spirits of the dead elephants." Even as he speaks, there are more and more elephant spirits to placate, and the clack of tusk against tusk in Africa grows fainter and fainter.