Reprieve for The

By TED GUP

A decision to place yet another creature on the endangered-species list often goes unnoticed. But last week champagne flowed in Lausanne, Switzerland, and sighs of relief echoed around the world. Reason: delegates to the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species (CITES) voted to place the elephant, earth's largest land mammal, on the roll of animals that stand worrisomely close to the brink of extinction. That decision, supported by 76 nations and a legion of conservation and environmental groups, triggered a worldwide ban on the ivory trade. The hope is that it will bring an end to a decade of slaughter in which poachers have reduced Africa's once proud herds from 1.3 million to 625,000.

The brunt of the ban will fall on the Far East. Hong Kong's traders have a 700-ton ivory stockpile that they will be unable to sell anywhere except within that colony. Japan, which has consumed about 40% of all ivory in recent years, abstained from the vote at Lausanne. Japanese officials say they intend to honor the prohibition.

The ban will have an unwelcome impact in several southern African nations. Their legal ivory trade has brought revenues used for conservation efforts and improvements in local communities. Zimbabwe, for example, carefully culls its herds without depleting them. Ivory from this culling brings in foreign exchange to Zimbabwe, which guards its elephants against poachers. But the delegates in Lausanne feared that any legal trade would be used as a cover by smugglers, as in the past. Angered by that stance, Zimbabwe, Botswana, Mozambique and Burundi say they may defy the ban.

The lone concession to the southern African nations is that they can appeal the CITES decision. If they prove that their herds are out of danger, they could engage in tightly controlled ivory trading. Yet if major consumer nations block imports, there will be little market for ivory.

Enforcing the ban may not be as serious a problem as once thought. Consumer demand for ivory is plummeting, and with it the price of tusks. But even those who championed the ivory ban doubt that the elephant is out of peril. Said Susan Lieberman of the U.S. Humane Society: "This isn't the end, it's the beginning, but now the elephant has a cease-fire." Conservationists must continue to wage war against poachers and provide people living beside the game reserves with reasons for regarding the elephant as something more than a pest capable of trampling a season's crops. Kenya plans to fence in its vast < game reserves and channel more of the $320 million from tourism into local communities.

The solution is less certain in those parts of Africa racked by starvation and civil war, where CITES decisions carry little weight, tourist dollars are nonexistent, and the herds continue to shrink. In Angola and Mozambique, for example, rebels use ivory to help finance military operations. Said a spokesman for Mozambique: "If the war stops, people can live, students can go back to school, and yes, we can save elephants too."

With reporting by Robert Kroon/Geneva and Ellen Wallace/Lausanne