Ahead of tusk bonfire, Kenya calls for total ban on ivory trade
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KENYAN President Uhuru Kenyatta yesterday demanded a total ban on the trade in ivory to end trafficking and prevent the extinction of elephants in the wild.
“To lose our elephants would be to lose a key part of the heritage that we hold in trust. Quite simply, we will not allow it,” Kenyatta said in the keynote speech at a meeting of African heads of state and conservationists.
“We will not be the Africans who stood by as we lost our elephants.”
Africa is home to between 450,000 to 500,000 elephants, but more than 30,000 are killed every year on the continent to satisfy demand for ivory in Asia, where raw tusks sell for around US$1,000 a kilo.
“The future of African elephant and rhino is far from secure, so long as the demand for their products continues to exist,” Kenyatta added, speaking one day before he is to set fire to most of Kenya’s ivory stockpile.
“Any sale of elephant ivory and rhino horn including within legal domestic markets is inherently likely to increase the risk to our elephant and rhino populations,” he added.
The bonfire will be the largest-ever torching of ivory, involving 105 tons from thousands of dead elephants, dwarfing by seven times any stockpile burned before. Another 1.35 tons of rhino horn will also be burned.
It is a grand statement: on the black market, that quantity of ivory could sell for over US$100 million, and the rhino horn could raise as much as US$80 million. Rhino horn can fetch as much as US$60,000 per kilo, more than gold or cocaine.
The Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora (CITES) banned the ivory trade in 1989.
Activists say destroying the stocks will help put anti-trafficking efforts at the top of the agenda at the next CITES conference.
Kenyatta said he will lead calls for a “total ban on the trade of elephant ivory” at the CITES conference in South Africa in September.
“This will ensure Africa’s elephants are accorded the highest possible level of protection,” he said.
The summit, in the central Kenyan town of Nanyuki, has highlighted the multiple methods used in the fight against poachers, from the frontline — where armed rangers combat poachers — to the court room.
President Yoweri Museveni from neighbouring Uganda said he had also taken a tough line against poachers.
“We are very strict,” Museveni said. “We send them to heaven prematurely.”
President Ali Bongo from Gabon, spoke of the “massacre” of forest elephants. “Unless we take action now we risk losing this iconic totem,” he said.
In Kenya, the combined efforts of government and private game reserves have helped cut poaching, with the number of elephants killed in 2015 down to 93 from 164 the previous year.
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