SHOCK discovery - shopping in Pemba

Last night we were off to meet an interesting old friend of Dominik’s, Rob Primmer, who is setting up a large scale UN timber certification process to facilitate carbon credits and stem the vast illegal trade here.

On the way I decide to begin a spot of Christmas shopping so nip out at a large tourist shop.  There under the shade of the bamboo constructed shop is a Chinese man sitting on a stool surrounded by 5 or so sellers unpacking the contents of their rucksacks...ivory carved into many different artefacts and the buyer is handling a large carved tusk, ironically carved into a herd of elephants pursued by a lion....not a poacher.

My word – I am gobsmacked and feel a cocktail of emotions including anxiety – I must do something?  This is happening in broad day just there next to the road and opposite the beach front, a shocking gauge of normalised behaviour, supply and demand.  I run to find Dominik and get his camera and return, smile and look innocent when I ask ‘what material is that?’...”plastic” they smile back.  At this point the largest tusk has been hidden.  I handle the small tusks just to check and indeed there are the growth marks and nerves of elephant teeth.  I then pose as a buyer and ask to see that beautiful carved piece I saw earlier – he then revels that that is ivory and expensive...’Oh how much?’, say I...  ‘$300 but we can negotiate’.  Ivory is now fetching $850/ kg on the black market (a couple of years ago it was $300/kg) and this tusk would have been at least 3 kg- so it is nothing, so very cheap the market must be flooded.

Here are the photos for you and a slice of reality – as Dominik put it simply ‘when you have any resource in a poor country there will always be a supply.’  A ‘resource’...for someone who is emotionally hard wired to elephants and their conservation this was a very surprising calm response.  He usually has what I term Ivory Tourettes – if he smells illegal trade or encounters a known poacher he cannot stop himself from a loud exclamation – such as ‘he’s a poacher!' 

A sadly resigned and subdued response to a problem that now seems to me huge and heavy -  like a bull elephant’s tusk...and a conservationist’s heart.