$100-million worth elephant tusks go up in flames in Kenya

President Uhuru Kenyatta of Kenya set on fire a huge pyre of elephant tusks worth $100-million to show to the world that his country is serious about ending the illegal trade in ivory which is threatening to push wild elephants to extinction.
This has been reported in timesofindia.indiatimes.com dated 1 May 2016.

Heavily armed poachers, using military tactics, have wiped out tens of thousands, maybe even hundreds of thousands, of elephants across Africa. They are killed for their tusks which, then, enter an underground pipeline to Asia, especially China, where there is a huge demand for ivory. It is used to make eyeglass frames, combs, statuettes and other trinkets.
In the opinion of wildlife experts, the street price of a kilogram of ivory is around $1,000. And, Kenya set fire to 105 metric tons of ivory. It was a stockpile of confiscated and recovered tusks and was the most amount of ivory ever destroyed at one time - it represented 6,000 to 7,000 dead elephants.


Image courtesy wikimediacommons.org

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