President of Kenya Burns Ivory poaching crisis to highlight

President of Kenya lit several tons of ivory stockpiled in the country were seized in Singapore almost a decade ago. Photography: Tony Karumba/AFP/Getty

President of Kenya had set fire to more than five tons of elephant Ivory worth 10 million pounds to attract attention of poaching.

Mwai Kibaki was burned almost as he lit up the mound of 335 ivory tusks and 41,000 trinkets, which had been confiscated in Singapore.

"For the sale of ivory, smuggling, that try to prove formally to the world our determination to eliminate all forms of illegal trade in ivory," Kibaki told several hundred people at a rural Kenya Wildlife Service training. "We all appreciate the negative effects of illegal trade for our national economies. We cannot afford to sit back and allow the criminal networks destroy our common future. "

Kenyan officials first set fire to a mound of ivory in 1989, a desperate call to action to alert the world to a elephant poaching that sent plummeting populations of Africa. Elephant numbers are now much healthier, but activists say that another second elephant crisis are coming as China's middle class seek to satisfy its appetite for ivory.

The Group Save the elephant elephant tracks from around the world news and headlines from the week that cited documented its elephant busts in Kenya, Namibia and Zimbabwe.

The Group's founder, Iain Douglas-Hamilton, said he hoped people would see the last burn Ivory in Kenya as another warning that elephants are once again being hunted. He said that the economic loss from burning ivory was part of the message.

"This is a clear signal that is worth a lot more money than you could get on the market. We should stop buying if we want to stop the killing, "he said as the ivory burned nearby. "I am not totally pessimistic. I believe that the Chinese can be converted. "

A global ban on trade in ivory in 1989 briefly interrupted disappearance of elephants. But the initial success of the ban has been undermined Asia's booming demand and increasing human-elephant conflicts as people encroach on land animals.

Africa has about 500,000 elephants, down from 1.3 million in 1970. Kenya has 37,000 elephants, up from 16,000 that was at the height of the crisis in 1989, but far below the peak of the country.

Burning Wednesday, although hosted by Kenya, was carried out by the Lusaka Agreement Task Force, a group of seven African countries working to protect the flora and fauna. A group member, Ephraim Kamuntu, Uganda's Minister of tourism, said it sent the signal that "the days of poachers are counted."

Burnt ivory was confiscated by officials in Singapore in 2002. Then it was sent to Kenya, where DNA analysis has determined that the tusks came from Zambia and Malawi.

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