Jakarta Globe, January 16,
2013
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| The international trade in elephant ivory has been outlawed since 1989 after populations of the creatures plummeted. (AFP Photo) |
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Officials
in the Kenyan port city of Mombasa have impounded more than 600 pieces of
ivory, weighing two tons, they said on Tuesday, the latest in a series of
seizures by Kenyan authorities.
"They
were labelled as decorating stones and were headed to Indonesia from
Tanzania," a police source based at the port told AFP on condition of
anonymity.
The head of
operations at the port, Gitau Gitau, confirmed the seizure, but said no arrests
had been made. Gitau said the documents used to ship the cargo would be used to
track its owners, and added that the seized ivory was valued at more than $1
million.
Two weeks
ago, officials in Hong Kong seized more than a ton of ivory worth about $1.4
million in a shipment from Kenya.
The
international trade in elephant ivory, with rare exceptions, has been outlawed
since 1989 after elephant populations in Africa dropped from millions in the
mid-20th century to some 600,000 by the end of the 1980s.
Ivory trade
is banned under the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of
Wild Fauna and Flora (CITES).
East
African nations have recently recorded an increase in poaching incidents. A
week ago, a family of 11 elephants was killed in a Kenyan park in what
officials called the country's worst incident of its kind in the past three
decades.
The killing
led to an aid appeal by Kenya's Prime Minister Raila Odinga to help the country
deal with the escalating poaching menace. Despite the fact that tourism plays a
major role in east African economies, poachers have recently expanded their
operations to areas previously thought to be safe from poaching.
According
to the Kenya Wildlife Service, Kenya lost at least 360 elephants last year, up
from 289 killed in 2011.
In October
last year, Tanzanian police seized over 200 elephant tusk pieces valued at
around $1 million dollars from 91 different animals.
Four people
were also arrested in the raid and a total of 214 tusk pieces were recovered
from the house of a Kenyan living in Tanzania's economic capital Dar es Salaam,
officials said.
At the time
of the arrests, police said they believed the ivory came from elephants in
Tanzania, and that smugglers had hoped to take the tusks by road into Kenya.
Some experts
have attributed the increase in poaching to an upcoming meeting of signatories
to the CITES treaty in Thailand in March, which may be prompting ivory dealers
to boost their stocks in speculation that the conference might result in a lift
of the ban on the ivory trade.
The illegal
ivory trade is mostly fueled by demand in Asia and the Middle East, where
elephant tusks and rhinoceros horns are used to make ornaments and in
traditional medicines.
Africa is
home to an estimated 472,000 elephants, whose survival is threatened by
poaching and the illegal trade in game trophies, as well as a rising human
population that is causing habitat loss.
Agence France-Presse
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