Bwanamich:
I agree with you that most organizations are money-making schemes. There ought to be transparency with all organizations as to what percentage of income/donations are going for administrative fees and what is going for its actual purpose.
Pro-tade is not all wrong in species that are not endangered (CITES is in endangered species). For instance, I can see them allowing trade in birds and reptiles that are not endangered - no problem with that. However, trade in anything from elephants, tigers and other animals that are truly threatened is abhorrent to most people.
We both agree that probably most of the ivory is from illegal harvesting. However, both CITES and the countries involved are trying to make people believe in all the news articles that all this ivory is from "natural deaths" which is true crap and a lie.
The problem with all of this is that there will be no control. Once the ivory gets into the hands of the Chinese carvers there will be no transparency. The more you give them, the more they will want. If they could not get any, perhaps they would change their careers and do something not related to animal parts.
Hopefully, with education, perhaps some of the Chinese that are eating exotic wild animals will change their ways.
CITES had the opportunity of being pro-wildlife but instead chose a different path. Once the indigenous people heard that ivory was being sold, many of them went into the bush and started poaching again because the know there will be plenty of people wanting to buy ivory. Most of the African countries just don't have the funds to staff enough people, vehicles, etc to be able to protect their all their wildlife adequately. The Chinese don't have the security in place to ensure that it will be ONLY this shipment of ivory that is used. Chinese have already been caught in Kenya smuggling ivory out in their suitcases. How can poverty stricken countries deal with this? They can't. Thus by giving the green light to these current sales, they will have endangered elephants even more.
They could, and should have, taken the higher road and not allowed the sale.
