With the next CITES now less than a month away, the debates surrounding Tanzania and Zambia’s proposed one-off sale have turned to the cold realities of money.

Up until recently, the vast majority of public exposure to the proposal has come in the form of the arguments against the sale. Conservationists have found their predictions that the illegal trade and poaching would increase upon the announcement of the proposal borne out by numerous seizures of ivory attempting to be smuggled out of Africa.

Many governments around the world that backed previous one-off sales have come out against the latest proposal as a result of strong public opposition.

The Tanzanian government has now revealed one of the driving motives behind their desire to sell their stockpiles of ivory.

They are currently spending $75,000 annually to secure its stockpile of 12,131 tusks. Protecting the stockpile has cost over $1.5 million over the last 21 years since trade in ivory was banned.

If Kenya and other East African Community countries opposed to the proposal succeed in blocking the sale, the Tanzanian government will have to continue spending money on protection of the stocks, but a report recently published states that they would be required to invest in new storage for the ivory.

The report shows that the Tanzania government would be required to construct another two strong rooms at $1 million each for storing the tusks.

The same report also states that Tanzania would be expected to fetch more than $12 million if Cites allowed the sale.

In the CITES report on the previous sale, a crucial stipulation was that “the proceeds of the trade are used exclusively for elephant conservation and community conservation and development programmes within or adjacent to the elephant range.”

This would mean that as well as recouping the costs of storing and protecting their stockpiles, they would gain crucial revenue that could be reinvested into conservation efforts.

Even though the recent surge in poaching and smuggling is difficult to ignore, it is equally impossible to deny that more than $10 million would give a huge boost to efforts to put a halt to this illegal activity.

Anything other than permission to go ahead with the sale will leave the Tanzanian government with a difficult choice. They could continue to spend on storage and protection for the ivory in the hope that one day the legal market will be reopened and boom sufficiently to fetch a handsome profit.

If they decide they cannot afford the expenditure that goes along with their stockpile, they must make the difficult choice that Kenya made in 1989 and burn the entire stockpile.

While conservationists would no doubt rejoice, they would at the same time be bearing witness to a potential shot in the arm for Tanzania’s conservation efforts going up in smoke.

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