Word: bans
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...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...
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...
...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...
...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...