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Kenya seizes massive ivory haul

Some of the Tusks and Rhino Horns Suspected to Have Come from Tanzania. Kenyan wildlife authorities have impounded nearly $ 1 m worth of elephant tusks and rhino horns suspected to have been smuggled by poachers from Tanzania and elsewhere in Africa and bound for illegal ivory markets in Asia.

It was one of Africa's biggest ivory hauls. Officials said the tusks were hidden in wooden boxes shaped like coffins, and that blood traces on them indicated that the animals had been killed recently.

Sniffer dogs found the nearly 300 kilogrammes of ivory at Nairobi's Jomo Kenyatta Airport in cargo crates coming from Mozambique on a Kenya Airways flight, the director of the Kenya Wildlife Service (KWS), Julius Kipng'etich, told reporters late on Tuesday.

"The rhino horns are freshly cut and one of them has a "bullet wound," Kipng'etich said, adding: "It's a sad moment. Remember all wildlife, wherever it is, is a world heritage. So if we lose any, it's a loss to all of us as a human race."

Kipng'etich said the animals must have been poached from southern African countries like Tanzania, Zimbabwe or South Africa as Mozambique has no rhinos and hardly any elephants. According to the WWF conservation group, the whole continent has about 18,000 rhinos left, while sub-Saharan Africa has 690,000 elephants at most - where once they were millions.

Ivory demand in Asia is stimulating poaching by international criminal rings, wildlife experts say. "In the last year we have witnessed an upsurge in poaching for trophies, especially elephants and rhinos," Kipng'etich said. "In the last year alone, Zimbabwe lost 100 rhinos and South Africa 162. This to me is the tip of the iceberg." He said the illegal shipment was bound for Laos, but that China was more likely to be the final destination. "From our own

experience of movement of wildlife trophies, definitely this was going to China," he stated. Rhino horns are used in traditional Chinese medicine where many people believe it can cure arthritis and fever.

Elsewhere, ivory is in demand for carving into dagger-handles and other ornaments. Kipng'etich said a kilo of rhino horn is worth $5,000 on the black market, while a kilo of ivory sells for $3,000 a kilo, meaning the haul in Kenya of 280 kilos of elephant ivory and 18 kilos of rhino horn is worth almost $lm.

Although the ivory trade has been banned for 20 years, the latest haul has demonstrated that the trade is still alive and well. Elephant poaching has been on a massive increase in Tanzania in recent months. Same East legislator Anne Kilango Malecela (CCM) recently stated in Parliament that widespread corruption in Government is the root cause of the unabated smuggling of ivory from the country, and called for a parliamentary probe to unearth the smuggling network.

The lawmaker made specific reference to the illegal shipment of two containers full of ivory from the port of Dar es Salaam to Vietnam back in March this year. The two containers, with about six tonnes of elephant tusks worth, around $29.41m (approx. 40bn/-), were seized by customs officials at Vietnam's Hai Phong Port after inexplicably being allowed to pass through the Dar es Salaam Port as plastic waste.

Ms Kilango Malecela said she was planning to table a private member's motion in the National As¬sembly for the formation of a parliamentary committee to probe the specific case regarding the smuggling of the two ivory-laden containers to Vietnam.



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