main meeting in Zimbabwe. The President Robert of Zimbabwe argued that elephants took up a lot of space and drank a lot of water. The elephants have to pay for their own“ room and board” with their ivory. Several African countries made CITES an offer: They would honor the ivory ban only if they were allowed to sell the ivory from elephants that had been died of natural causes. In 1989 it is estimated that one elephant was killed every 10 minutes. In 1990 the sale of ivory was banned by CITES. The Japan Experiment CITES agreed to a compromise, authorizing a one-time-only“ experimental sale” by the three countries to just Japan. In 1999 Japan bought 55 tons of ivory for five million dollars. Japan immediately said it wanted more, and soon China would want legal ivory too. In July 2008 the CITES approved China’ s request to legally buy ivory. Member countries agreed, and that fall Botswana, Namibia, South Africa, and Zimbabwe sold more than 115 tons of ivory to Chinese and Japanese traders. Allowing legal ivory trade should have kept the price down and limited smuggling. Instead China limited the supply and the price went up for the legal ivory. This meant even more smuggling of illegal ivory. According to Kenneth Burnham, the official statistician for the CITES program, it is“ highly likely” that poachers killed at least 25,000 African elephants in