Mozambique and Tanzania have stood by as their elephant populations dropped by half due to illegal ivory trafficking, the spokesperson for the World Wildlife Fund, Colman O’Criodain, told the Spanish news agency EFE on Monday.
O’Criodain added that both countries were under United Nations surveillance due to their failure to enact national legislation to deal with this issue with a meeting of CITES – the Convention on the International Trade in Wild Species of Fauna and Flora, having met in Geneva through to Sunday to evaluate progress.
Despite Mozambique proving one of the countries facing the most endemic hunting of both elephants and rhinoceros and despite some legislative changes, “the hunting of some of these species results only in the sentencing to a small fine,” said O’Criodain.
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