Elephants scored a big win in 2010. Representatives from 175 countries at the United Nations' Convention on the International Trade in Endangered Species (CITES) in Doha, Qatar, rejected a bid to allow the sale of ivory. Two African nations, Tanzania and Zambia, had asked to open the ivory trade.   Conservationists feared that weakening a 21-year-old ban on the sale of ivory would have encouraged illegal hunting and hurt elephant populations. African elephants once numbered in the millions. Today, there are fewer than 500,000.   "People born in 100 years should be able to see an elephant, " said Noah Wekesa, Kenya's minister of forestry and wildlife. His country voted to keep the ban.    In the 1980s, as many as one million elephants were killed throughout Africa. Hunters killed the animals for their ivory tusks, which were used to make jewelry and other items. " The slaughter  of elephants in Africa was just terrible, " says Paul Todd of the International Fund for Animal Welfare ( IFAW ). The group works to protect animals.    The ivory wars continued until 1989, when CITES voted to ban all trade in ivory. With trade controlled, demand for ivory fell. Elephant populations began to increase slowly.    Tanzania and Zambia asked CITES to allow ivory sales from government stockpiles  . Ivory is so expensive that it's known as "white gold". Tanzania holds almost 200,000 pounds of ivory, which is worth as much as $20 million. Zambia has 48,000 pounds of the "white gold". The two countries argued that their ivory had been taken from hunters or had come from animals that died naturally. They said this income from the sale of ivory would help the countries.    Wildlife experts, who believe that the ivory trade encourages illegal hunting, cheered the CITES decision. "It's a rare victory for elephants," said Jason Bell-Leask, the IFAW's director for southern Africa. The sale of ivory wasn't banned until   _  .
2010 2005 1980 1989