Kenya burns huge pile of ivory tusks to protest poaching

Kenya's President Uhuru Kenyatta set fire to 105 tons of elephant ivory and more than 1 ton of rhino horn, believed to be the largest stockpile ever destroyed, in a dramatic statement by the East African country against the trade in ivory and products from endangered species, ABC News reported Sunday.

Kenyatta put a flame to the biggest of 11 pyres of ivory tusks and one of rhino horn in a chilly afternoon. Overnight torrential rains had threated to ruin the event but stopped midday leaving a mud field around the piles inside Nairobi National Park.

"A time has come when we must take a stand and the stand is clear. Kenya is making a statement that for us ivory is worthless unless it is on our elephants," Kenyatta said.

The stacks of tusks represent more than 8,000 elephants and some 343 rhinos slaughtered for their ivory and horns, according to the Kenya Wildlife Service.

Kenya will push for the total ban on trade in ivory at the 17th meeting of the Convention on International Trade of Endangered Species to be held in South Africa later this year, said Kenyatta.

Kenya decided to destroy the ivory instead of selling it for an estimated $150 million. But Kenyatta said that Kenya wants to make the point that ivory should not have any commercial value.

Kenya Wildlife Service chairman and renowned paleoanthropologist and conservationist Richard Leakey said the burning of the ivory should encourage African countries to support a ban in ivory trade. He said a group of countries which is advocating for the sale of ivory in the continent should be ashamed.

Africa had 1.3 million elephants in the 1970s but has only 500,000 today.

The elephant populations worst hit by poaching are in Tanzania, Gabon, Cameroon, Central African Republic, Mozambique, Republic of Congo and Congo. The years 2011, 2012 and 2013 witnessed the highest levels of poaching since a poaching crisis in the 1980s, according to Kenya's Wildlife Service.

Central Africa's forest elephants have declined by two-thirds between 2002 and 2012. Most of the remaining forest elephants are in Gabon and are under threat from armed groups, said Gabon's President Ali Bongo Ondimba, who attended Saturday's burning. He vowed to stop the decline of the species.

Source: MENA