Elephant-Rich States Row Back From Threat to Quit Trade Body (1)

A group of Southern African countries where two-thirds of the world’s African Elephants live rowed back from a threat to leave an international governmental body that regulates trade in endangered species and their products.

Mangaliso Ndlovu, Zimbabwe’s environment minister, said a document tweeted by a government spokesman in which the countries threatened to leave the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora, or CITES, was a draft.

“A pullout is not yet up for discussion,” Ndlovu, whose surname means elephant in the Ndebele language, said Thursday after the close of an elephant summit ...