Many people get worried when talk turns to elephant ivory at U.N. wildlife trade talks in The Hague. They know the issue is too big to be hidden in a corner.

“I have approached this moment with trepidation for months,” Greg Leach, chairing a meeting of the U.N. Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species, said to delegates from 171 nations when he opened debate this week about whether to extend or relax a 1989 export ban on ivory.

He drew a few nervous laughs but passions run high over pachyderms – chatting to delegates in the corridors I find the conversation almost always turn to ivory even if we start off talking about tigers or mahogany. 

  ”Getting the U.N. Security Council to agree on something is easy compared to working out an elephant ivory deal among African states,” one delegate reckoned.

Kenya and Mali want to extend a 1989 trade ban for 12 years while Botswana, Namibia, South Africa and Zimbabwe want tightly limited trade, arguing that their elephant stocks are on the rise. And both sides claim their plan is the best way to discourage poachers.

They are trying to present a common front, so far without luck. Some environmentalists say the dispute is a distraction from other debates about elephants, such as how to rescue stocks in West Africa.

Leach has presided over contentious decisions about corals, eels or sawfish this week that have gone through with a minimum of fuss but the problems of the world’s biggest land mammal are getting a jumbo amount of attention.

                                                                                                                                                                                                 Come on Africa, sort it out. Can it be that difficult?