Namibia and Zimbabwe failed on Monday to convince a U.N. body that they should be allowed to export elephant ivory, while Swaziland lost a bid to sell rhino horn - moves they all argued would protect the animals rather than endanger them, Reuters reported. Member states of the U.N. Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species (CITES) voted overwhelmingly at a conference to reject the proposals to sell tusks and horns, whether they are seized from poachers or taken from animals that die naturally or have been put down by the state because they were, for instance, destroying crops. "African elephants are in steep decline across much of the continent due to poaching for their ivory, and opening up any legal trade in ivory would complicate efforts to conserve them," said Ginette Hemley, head of conservation group WWF's CITES delegation. "It could offer criminal syndicates new avenues to launder poached ivory." A global ban on ivory sales was imposed in 1989 to curb a wave of poaching but, in one-off rulings, CITES allowed Botswana, Namibia and Zimbabwe to sell stockpiles to Japan, and South Africa to sell to China and Japan in 2008. A similar ban was applied to rhino horn in 1977, but poaching of both elephants and rhinos has soared in recent years to meet red-hot demand in newly affluent Asian economies such as China and Vietnam. Ivory is prized for its decorative qualities while rhino horn is a key ingredient in traditional Asian medicines. There is also speculative demand from buyers betting that prices will skyrocket if rhinos are poached to extinction. South Africa, home to most of the world's rhinos, has seen rhino killings leap from 13 in 2007 to 1,215 in 2014, a number that fell only slightly last year. Meanwhile, tens of thousands of elephants have been slain, mostly in east and southern Africa.
