Abdul Shareef

The following viewpoint is taken from a 1996 speech by Abdul Shareef, a diplomat and head of the Tanzanian High Commission to Great Britain. Shareef argues that elephant populations in Tanzania and other African countries plunged during the 1970s and 1980s due to poaching fueled by the ivory trade. Efforts by the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species (CITES) to partially control the trade did little to stop illegal hunting, he maintains. Only when CITES agreed in 1989 to a flat ban of all international trade in ivory did elephant populations begin to recover. Shareef asserts that any steps to fully or partially reopen the international trade in ivory and other elephant by-products would jeopardize the survival of the animals and threaten Africa’s tourism industry.

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