Lord Jones of Cheltenham – 2014 Parliamentary Question to the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs

The below Parliamentary question was asked by Lord Jones of Cheltenham on 2014-04-08.

To ask Her Majesty’s Government what effect they expect that the recently announced Elephant Protection Initiative will have on the illegal wildlife trade; and what support they are giving to the Initiative.

Lord De Mauley

The Government warmly welcomes the Elephant Protection Initiative (EPI), launched at the London Conference on the Illegal Wildlife Trade in February 2014 by the Presidents of Botswana, Chad, Gabon and Tanzania, and the Foreign Minister of Ethiopia.

Through the EPI, these Governments are committing to:

· observing an extended moratorium on consideration of future international ivory trade

· closing domestic ivory markets

· putting all ivory stockpiles (both seized ‘illegal’ and ‘legal’ ivory accrued from elephant mortality) beyond economic use.

In response to these bold commitments, the EPI is intended to provide participating Governments with access to a fund to support the implementation of the measures contained in the Africa Elephant Action Plan. The UK Government has committed to supporting this fund, in the first instance by matching the first tranche of private sector funding amounting to around £1m.

The text of the Elephant Protection Initiative can be accessed through the following link: www.gov.uk/government/news/decisive-action-agreed-on-illegal-wildlife-trade.

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