SECURING IVORY
There’s more to saving elephants than catching poachers. The effective management of ivory stockpiles may sound mundane in comparison, but it is crucial to elephant conservation.
WHY?
Stockpiles of ivory, and other wildlife products, accrue from carcasses found in the wild, or seized from traffickers. The storage and management of these objects is often woefully inadequate – enabling theft, or the neglect of evidence that is essential to securing wildlife crime persecutions. The leakage of ivory back into the illegal market, and the weak enforcement of wildlife protection laws, perpetuate the ivory trade and the continued slaughter of elephants.
The EPI Foundation has created a bespoke Stockpile Management System (SMS), a digital tool for secure storage of inventory data.
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Eight countries used the SMS to submit their annual ivory stockpile report to CITES in 2019: Angola, Chad, Republic of Congo, Ethiopia, Gabon, Kenya, Malawi and Uganda.
OUR IMPACT
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818 individual training sessions on use of the SMS to date – across inventory, administrator and user training courses.
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120 smart tablets have been provided to government and NGO partners for the SMS so far.
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Three countries are in the process of discussing the implementation of the SMS: Nigeria, Côte d'Ivoire and India.
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Eleven African countries have implemented the SMS and have up to date inventories: Angola, Botswana, Chad, Republic of Congo, Ethiopia, Gabon, Kenya, Malawi, Mozambique, South Sudan and Uganda
RESOURCES FOR IVORY MANAGEMENT
The EPI Foundation has developed a number of key resources to support countries in the management of ivory and other wildlife products