KIA and Mombasa port main ivory conduits, says report

A KWS warden inspects an ivory haul seized at the Mombasa port. A report by wildlife charity Born Free USA indicates that Nairobi's JKIA and the Mombasa port are major conduits for illegal ivory mainly destined to East Asian countries. FILE PHOTO | NATION MEDIA GROUP 

In Summary

• This has been revealed in a study report by a wildlife charity, Born Free USA.
• In every seizure of ivory in Kenya and other countries in Africa a Chinese national is involved in the trafficking.
• The report blames a small number of criminal networks that act as a links between poachers in the forests and the market.
• The greatest challenge to combating wildlife trade among governments was lack of adequate information on how the trade functions.

By JAMES KARIUKI
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Nairobi’s Jomo Kenyatta International Airport (JKIA) and the Mombasa port are among the major conduits for ivory that is driving the illegal multibillion-shilling trade, mainly in China.

A report just released by a wildlife charity, Born Free USA, says that in every seizure of ivory in Kenya and other countries in Africa, a Chinese national is involved in the trafficking.

“It is well known that East Asian nationals and in particular, the Chinese, drive the modern ivory trade.

“However, the scale we found in our investigation was shocking. Chinese traffickers are present in virtually every single African state and operate at nearly every point along the ivory supply chain,” said Adam Roberts, the charity’s chief executive officer.

The four-month investigations, commissioned by Born Free USA, were conducted by the Center for Advanced Defense Studies (C4ADS).

GOVERNMENTS IGNORANT

It found that while the ivory trade was a multibillion-shilling trade, 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 consequences for decades.

“I dare say that there may be as few as 100 large-scale ivory containers moving annually that drive the vast majority of the entire illegal trade,” said Varun Vira, C4ADS’S chief of analysis.

Mr Vira called on the Kenyan government and other governments around the world to focus on intercepting the containers and tracing back their owners and facilitators so as to starve the trade of the much needed ivory supply.

The groundbreaking report, entitled Out of Africa: Mapping the Global Trade in Illicit Elephant Ivory, focuses on the ivory supply chain and the trafficking of ivory from the bush in Africa to retail markets tens of thousands of miles away, mainly in Asia.

Mr Roberts said the illegal ivory trade was today operating at the highest level since the 1989 commercial ivory trade ban was imposed.

ORGANISED CRIME

He added that their investigations revealed that between 2009 and June 2014, there were more than 90 large-scale ivory seizures, collectively weighing almost 170 tons that bore the hallmarks of international organised crime.

“A lot of all of the illegal ivory is accounted for within a small number of transactions passing through three ports of Mombasa, Dar es Salaam, and Zanzibar in Kenya and Tanzania as well through Nairobi’s Jomo Kenyatta International Airport, Johannesburg (South Africa) and
Ethiopia’s Addis Ababa Airport,” the report says.

The report by Mr Roberts, co-authored by Mr Vira, blames a small number of criminal networks that act as a links between poachers in the forests and the market, adding that “poachers earn peanuts while the cartels’ kingpins earn up to 2,500 per cent.”

The report warns that allowing the ivory and wildlife trafficking networks to flourish within their illegal market created a high degree of convergence, with other forms of organised crimes, 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,” said Mr Roberts.

GREATEST CHALLENGE

He added that the greatest challenge to combating wildlife trade among governments was lack of adequate information on how the trade functions.

“Our report seeks to bridge that gap, providing actionable insights and replicable and scalable processes, to help mobilise tangible action for the policy, intelligence, and law enforcement communities” he said.

The Born Free USA team has focused on wildlife trafficking for more than two decades, and advocated vociferously for the 1989 Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species (CITES), upgrading of African elephants to Appendix I, thus shutting down the commercial international trade in elephant ivory.

The organisation maintains a global wildlife trade programme and is at the forefront in campaigns to protect endangered species.

It fights against the trade in elephant ivory, rhino horns, tiger bones, lion trophies, and bear gall bladders.