Kenya torches 5 tons of ivory taken from poachers

[xchrom]

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/feedarticle/9754241

Associated Press= MANYANI, Kenya (AP) — Kenya's president set fire to more than 5 tons of elephant ivory worth $16 million on Wednesday, in an act meant to focus attention on a rising tide of poaching deaths.

The bright orange flame that raced through the fuel-laden pile jumped out and nearly bit President Mwai Kibaki as he lit the mound of 335 confiscated ivory tusks and 41,000 trinkets.

"Through the disposal of contraband ivory, we seek to formally demonstrate 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 facility in southeastern Kenya. "We must all appreciate the negative effects of illegal trade to our national economies. We cannot afford to sit back and allow criminal networks to destroy our common future."

Kenyan officials first set fire to a mound of ivory in 1989, a desperate call-to-action to wake the world to a poaching crisis that sent Africa's elephant populations plummeting. Elephant numbers are much healthier today, but elephant advocates say a second elephant crisis is coming, as China's middle class seeks to satisfy its ivory appetite.

[Nihil]

1. Shame they didn't put the poachers on it at the same time ...

... and solve two problems at once ...

:grr: