The event, which took place in the Nairobi National Park, marked the nation’s fourth such burn to raise awareness on the importance of protecting animals and rejecting illicit business at their expense.
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[After a largely successful ban by the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species in 1989] there was still a lot of ivory sitting around in storerooms, and some countries-South Africa in particular, Botswana, Namibia, Zimbabwe-thought that this could earn them money if it was sold. This will send an absolutely clear message that the trade in ivory must come to an end and our elephants must be protected.
This practice has been embraced in Kenya since 1989 with the objective of talking the poaching crisis.
Addressing dignitaries before setting light to the first of nearly a dozen pyres, President Uhuru Kenyatta said: ‘Kenya is making a statement that ivory is worthless unless it is on our elephants’. Kenyan wildlife officials had to douse the pyres, which represented 8,500 dead elephants and 343 slaughtered rhinos, in 40,000 liters of fuel to ensure the animal parts disintegrated.
Robin Hollister, a pyrotechnic expert and former film special effects engineer, is staging the grand gesture against the ivory trade, which threatens to render elephants extinct.
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. The last three are kept in Kenya under heavy guard.
The burn marked Kenya’s most significant protest against poaching and the largest burn of illegal wildlife products in history.
“They are speculators on an evil, illegal commodity”, Leakey said. “There are can be no justification for speculating price rises in ivory down the road”.
French Environment Minister Segolene Royal announced in Nairobi she was would introduce “a ban on any kind of ivory trade in France” after banning export certificates for ivory past year. The number of African elephants roaming the continent has plummeted since the beginning of the 20th century to an estimated 400,000 today, down from over 1.2 million.
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Poaching is still a big problem in Africa, with over 30,000 elephants being killed in each year.
