Ivory Stash Driving Debate

SKUKUZA, South Africa — It takes three people to unlock the strongroom here at the headquarters of the South African National Parks.

One person turns the main key. Another handles the backup lock. And the third keeps watch over the other two.

When the heavy door swings open, the safeguards become understandable. Stretching the width of a three-car garage, the concrete vault is stacked with elephant tusks, more than 33 tons of ivory in all.

The storeroom filled steadily over a decade while a worldwide ban on the sale of ivory took hold. Now a South African proposal to sell most of the stockpile, believed to be worth $5 million, has embroiled governments across the continent, animal rights activists around the world and poor communities here adjoining Kruger National Park in a heated debate about how best to protect Africa's signature pachyderm.

The elephant population in Africa, estimated at 620,000 last year, has fallen from 1.2 million less than 20 years ago. Although the decline appears to have been checked, there is deep disagreement about the long-term prognosis and what role the trade in ivory--which has been banned internationally since 1989 except for an experimental sale last year--should play in managing a recovery.

The South Africans say regulated sales of ivory acquired through natural elephant deaths and other legal means would provide badly needed funds for elephant conservation and reward countries that have curbed the devastating poaching of the 1970s and 1980s. Some of the money from the proposed South African sale, for example, would be used to run a new elephant management program at Kruger, which envisions the elephant population within its boundaries doubling over the next 20 years. Other revenue would go to enlarging an elephant park in the country's Eastern Cape province.

"No serious management agency in Africa is saying the species is going extinct," said Anthony Hall-Martin, director of conservation development for South African national parks. "We will not be part of a process that drives elephants to extinction. We think this is an opportunity to drive the numbers up."

But wildlife officials elsewhere, particularly those in Kenya, warn that a resumption in ivory sales anywhere in Africa is an invitation to black-market profiteers and places elephants everywhere in extreme jeopardy. They say last year's trial sale by Botswana, Namibia and Zimbabwe led to an increase in elephant deaths by poaching, though one international investigation last week found no direct link.