Zimbabwe has threatened to quit the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species (CITES) if it is not allowed to sell its stockpile of seized ivory.

Zimbabwe is lobbying CITIES by opening an international conference to try to win international support for its campaign to sell the part of elephants.

The southern African country has 130 tons of ivory, estimated to be worth $600 million.

The three days conference started on Monday at the Hwange National Park, the country’s largest wildlife park which is in southwestern Zimbabwe. Representatives from 16 African countries, as well as Japan and China, major consumers of ivory, are to attend the gathering, said officials.

The conference is an additional effort of Zimbabwe to get support to sell ivory. Last week, Officials from the Zimbabwe National Parks and Wildlife Management Authority showed ambassadors from EU countries the stockpile of ivory tusks that have been seized from poachers and collected from elephants that have died.

The Zimbabwean officials also appealed to the European Union and other countries to support the sale of ivory which has been banned since 1989 by CITES, the international body that monitors endangered species.

The conference has however been criticized by said a coalition of 50 wildlife and animal rights organizations from across the globe in a joint statement issued Monday.

The coalition argued that the conference “is sending a dangerous signal to poachers and criminal syndicates that elephants are mere commodities and that ivory trade could be resumed, heightening the threat to the species.

“Legalizing the ivory trade, including by authorizing another ‘one-off’ sale could have similarly disastrous consequences,” the groups said.

Zimbabwe’s position is that it needed to raise funds to adequately cater to its growing elephant population which has exceeded the capacities of its parks. The elephant population is growing rapidly at between 5% to 8% per year.

Opposition is coming from Kenya and other members of the

Countries that made up the African Elephant Coalition, whose 32 members are mostly East and West African countries with fewer elephants have argued against Zimbabwe’s push, with the stand that reopening legal international trade in ivory trade, even for a single auction, would result in increased poaching.

CITES banned the international commercial ivory trade in 1989. Then, in 1997, recognizing that some southern African elephant populations are healthy and well managed, it permitted Botswana, Namibia and Zimbabwe to make a one-time sale of ivory to Japan totaling 50 tonnes (the sales took place in 1999 and earned some $5 million).