Documentary Highlights Struggles of African Wildlife Enforcers

For "Earth Report: The New Silent Ivory Wars," a new installment in the BBC World's highly acclaimed environmental series, INECE filmmaker Douglas Varchol travels to Japan and Africa, to learn first hand about the forces driving this market, as well as whether the great elephant herds are once again in danger of being slaughtered into extinction.

The poaching wars in Africa during the late 1970s and 1980s killed off over 60 percent of the great elephant herds, prompting an international outcry from public and governments alike over the slaughter. In Kenya, Tanzania, and other Africa counties wildlife enforcers fought back, tracking down and killing many poachers, and with the help of the international community eventually establishing an international ivory ban in 1989.

The elephant herds appeared to be safe, public outcry quieted, and the world went back to other matters at hand. Nevertheless, a 2002 ivory bust in Singapore by African wild life authorities, including the Lusaka Agreement Task Force (LATF), tells a different story.

Sophisticated DNA analysis on the confiscated ivory may indicate African elephants are once again being killed at an alarming rate. Rapidly expanding economies in the Far East are driving up the demand for illegal ivory, bringing the highly lucrative business of poaching to the attention of organized crime syndicates. The commercial market for Hankos alone in Japan - personal seals made from ivory - is a multimillion-dollar a year business.

The film is funded in part by United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP), The International Fund for Animal Welfare (IFAW), and the Institute for Governance & Sustainable Development (IGSD) and will premiere first quarter 2008, with a special showing at the 8th INECE Conference in Cape Town.