The protests of the international conservation lobby at this week’s officially sanctioned auction of African ivory are more than foolish. This is the first time in 10 years that Botswana, South Africa and Namibia have sold off ivory stocks. A hundred tons of tusks is being sold exclusively to Japanese and Chinese buyers. All the material comes from animals that have died naturally or from hoards seized from poachers by game park authorities.

The auction is being conducted under the auspices of the secretariat of the United Nations’ Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species (CITES). The plan is that all the money raised from the sales will go back into the preservation of elephants and rhinoceros, not the least to fund further successful action against ivory poachers.

Ivory sales were banned globally in 1989. Ten years later, because southern African countries were accumulating considerable stocks of confiscated ivory and tusks collected from beasts that had died of old age or disease, CITES agreed to an auction exclusively for Japanese buyers. Because at that time, Chinese dealers were implicated in the illegal trade, they were unable to purchase. What is more, Japanese merchants were unable to sell on to the Chinese the unworked ivory that they had bought. This time, because the Chinese authorities have taken strong action against the illegal trade, they are also able to buy legally.

And the plain fact is that since the market in ivory was regulated in this way, poaching has decreased. After the first auction in 1999, there was a marked drop in the criminal slaughter of elephants. It was becoming too difficult for all but the best organized gangs to smuggle the tusks out of Africa.

Therefore, the controlled market has proved a success. It is an occasional market which is well regulated. Yet to hear the wails of conservationists, 10 years ago and again this week, you would imagine that it was once again open season on Africa’s pachyderms. This is absolutely to misrepresent what has been achieved by African governments, as well as by the consistent and successful work of the UN. Indeed the protests from predominantly Western liberals about this second ivory auction smack of the worst kind of insidious moral imperialism. They suggest that African governments are incapable of managing their own game parks, have been bamboozled into, or even perhaps connived at, the destruction of their elephants and rhinoceros and, therefore, need outside help to manage their natural resources. Such arrogance ignores the fact that photo safaris are a major tourism earner for African states with established game parks. Thus for the authorities to allow the uncontrolled slaughter of elephants would be an economic disaster.

The overweening attitude of the protesters in truth suggests a deep disdain for African governments who, so the warped thinking goes, do not know what is best for themselves. They should in fact be burning the ivory not auctioning it and throwing away the much needed income the sales are generating. Such contempt for Africans is itself deeply contemptible.