Kenyan police seize 300 elephant tusks

Kenyan authorities on Thursday (June 5) displayed over 300 elephant tusks that were seized in the port city of Mombasa, as they were being packed for export.
 
Wildlife officials said the authorities had uncovered 228 whole tusks and 74 others that had been broken up into pieces.
 
Poaching has surged in the last few years across sub-Saharan Africa, where gangs kill elephants and rhinos to feed Asian demand for ivory and horns for use in traditional medicines.
 
Wildlife authority, the Kenya Wildlife Service (KWS) said their officers, along with police, had confiscated the ivory in a raid at a Mombasa warehouse.  
 
The KWS's assistant director of conservation said some of the ivory could have come from other parts of Africa.

"We can estimate that they are from different sources. The brown ones could be from savannah elephants which are mainly found within our country. There are some which are smaller and a bit dark in colour, these are from elephants that live in forest and mainly originating from Congo areas. So we can say they have come out of the country because we don't have so much forest elephants here," said Arthur Tuda.

"From my estimation these are over 100 elephants," he added.
 
The confiscated tusks were packed in nylon and sacks made of sisal, a fibre producing plant.
 
Police arrested one suspect and were searching for another who escaped.

Kenya has imposed stiffer penalties - longer jail terms and bigger fines - for wildlife poaching or trafficking, saying poaching is harming tourism, a major earner of foreign exchange.

KWS said in March that Kenya poachers have killed 18 rhinos and 51 elephants this year. In 2013, 59 rhinos and 302 elephants were killed, compared with 30 rhinos and 384 elephants in 2012.

Kenyan officers seized 13.5 tonnes of ivory in Mombasa last year, mostly originating in other countries in the region. At least 249 suspects have so far been arrested this year and prosecuted for various wildlife offences, KWS said.


REUTERS