Sunday, January 24, 1999 Published at 09:44 GMT
Tusk count to fight ivory trade
Park wardens find a killed elephant
A major survey is underway in Kenya to establish the number of elephants in a national park straddling the border with Tanzania.
Next month a meeting of CITES, the Convention of International Trade in Endangered Species, will review a decision made in 1997 which allowed three southern African countries to legally sell ivory.
Kenya hopes to use data from the survey to fight any further relaxation of the rules which permit Zimbabwe, Botswana and Namibia to sell a limited amount of ivory to Japan.
A clause in the CITES decision says ivory sales will be stopped if any country can show that the limited trade is adversely affecting its own elephant population.
The survey has been costly and complicated for Kenya with dozens of volunteers counting elephant numbers as accurately as possible from the air.
Park worker Daniel Woodley said: "Over the last 18 months we have noted an increase in poaching - from losing less than 50 a year up to about 100 a year.
"I suspect it is in anticipation of the ban being lifted rather than supplying the limited trade that is already going on."
Between 1988 and 1997 there was a worldwide ban on the ivory trade to try to protect an elephant population which had suffered drastically at the hands of poachers.
In Tsavo elephant numbers had reduced from 45,000 in the 1960s to about 2,000.
Kenyan wildlife experts expect the elephant survey will show that between 8,000 and 10,000 are now roaming the Tsavo plains.