Sir

We wish to express our concern over the resumption of a limited international trade in elephant ivory. The Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species (CITES) has allowed Namibia, Zimbabwe and Botswana to sell 59.8 tons of stockpiled ivory to Japan. The sales began in April, ending a ten-year ban. They are termed ‘experimental’, suggesting that, if deemed a success, further sales will be proposed.

When these sales were initially approved in June 1997, an important condition was attached — that a system should be developed to measure the impact of trade on elephant populations. The recent authorization reflects the satisfaction of CITES with a draft of a trade and elephant monitoring system called MIKE (Monitoring Illegal Killing of Elephants). We feel that the approval of MIKE was inadvisable. This programme may be able to measure large-scale changes in populations, but it cannot gather the details needed to link subtle changes to causes.

Each of us has attempted to count elephants by various methods, and can attest that a reliable, sensitive census is difficult in the best of circumstances. We believe it would be nearly impossible to devise a method that was sensitive to minor changes in populations in varied environments and capable of relating these changes to underlying causes. At best, this would require measurements not included in MIKE's design. Without a good monitoring programme, the impact of the ivory trade will remain unknown.

We are also uncomfortable with the lack of a requirement for a monitoring system to be up and running before the current ivory trades were made. These omissions, and the notion that these sales are ‘experimental’, spell a dangerous situation for elephants.

CITES meets next in April 2000 in Nairobi. If further sales are proposed, these points must be made:

1) The lack of a satisfactory draft for a system to monitor the global elephant population and ivory trade means that there will not be enough information available in 2000 to justify further sales.

2) Any population-monitoring system must be scientifically credible, evidenced by peer review, which MIKE largely lacked when it was accepted by CITES.

3) Without a way of assessing the relationship between trade in ivory and the health of elephant populations, further sales must not be authorized.

This letter does not necessarily reflect the opinions of the writers' supporting institutions.