A KWS warden inspects an ivory haul seized at the Mombasa port. A report
by wildlife charity BornFree USA indicates that the ports of Mombasa,
Dar es Salaam and Zanzibar as well as Nairobi's JKIA are major conduits
for illegal ivory mainly destined to East Asian countries. FILE PHOTO |
NATION MEDIA GROUP
In Summary
- The Out of Africa: Mapping the Global Trade in Illicit Elephant Ivory report warns that allowing the ivory and wildlife trafficking networks to flourish created a high degree of convergence with other forms of organised criminal activity such as gun-running and sale of narcotic drugs.
- The document traces the ivory supply chain and trafficking from the African bush to retail markets, thousands of miles away in Asia.
- “The scale we found in our investigation was shocking. Chinese traffickers are present in virtually every single African range state and operate at nearly every point along the ivory supply chain,” said the charity’s chief executive officer, Mr Adam Roberts in a statement accompanying the report.
A Chinese is involved in every seizure of ivory in Kenya and other countries in Africa.
A new report adds that Jomo Kenyatta International
Airport in Nairobi and Port of Mombasa are major conduits for illegal
ivory that drives the multi-million-dollar global trade.
The report was released by wildlife charity -BornFree USA and says that a Chinese is always a trafficker.
The Out of Africa: Mapping the Global Trade in Illicit Elephant Ivory report
warns that allowing the ivory and wildlife trafficking networks to
flourish created a high degree of convergence with other forms of
organised criminal activity such as gun-running and sale of narcotic
drugs.
“Ivory traffickers do not necessarily run guns or
narcotics themselves, but they rely on and help enrich the facilitators
who are interwoven into the systems that enable terrorist financing,
drugs, weapons, and human trafficking,” says the ground-breaking report.
The document traces the ivory supply chain
and trafficking from the African bush to retail markets, thousands of
miles away in Asia.
“A large majority of all of the illegal ivory is
accounted for within a small number of transactions passing through
three ports of Mombasa in Kenya; Dar es Salaam and Zanzibar in Tanzania
as well through Nairobi’s Jomo Kenyatta International Airport,
Johannesburg (South Africa) and Ethiopia’s Addis Ababa airport,” it
says.
The illegal ivory trade is currently operating at its highest level since the 1989 commercial ivory trade ban was imposed.
The investigations also revealed that between 2009
and June 2014, there were more than 90 large-scale ivory seizures,
collectively weighing almost 170 tonnes that bear the hallmarks of
international organised crime.
East Asian nationals and in particular, the Chinese, are cited as the masterminds of the modern ivory trade.
Chinese at every point
“The scale we found in our investigation was shocking. Chinese traffickers are present in virtually every single African range state and operate at nearly every point along the ivory supply chain,” said the charity’s chief executive officer, Mr Adam Roberts in a statement accompanying the report.
“The scale we found in our investigation was shocking. Chinese traffickers are present in virtually every single African range state and operate at nearly every point along the ivory supply chain,” said the charity’s chief executive officer, Mr Adam Roberts in a statement accompanying the report.
The four-month investigations, conducted by the
Centre for Advanced Defense Studies found that while the ivory trade
thrived globally, governments still treated it like an unprofessional,
disorganised, and artisanal industry, of concern only to
conservationists.
“But in reality, it is a highly organised global
crime that has avoided consequence for decades. I dare say, there may be
as few as 100 large-scale ivory containers moving annually that drive
the vast majority of the entire illegal trade,” said Centre for Advanced
Defense Studies' chief of analysis, Mr Varun Vira, who authored the
report alongside Mr Jackson Miller and Mr Thomas Ewing.
The report calls on Kenya and other nations to focus on intercepting the container
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