03:56 GMT 30th January 2012
The haul, coming as it did only three weeks after some 465 tusks were seized at the same port, has renewed fears of the Kenya Wildlife Service (KWS), which has seen the elephant population dwindle over the years due to increased poaching. It also lends credence to allegations that Kenya has become a transit point for ivory exports to the Middle and Far East.
But even more intriguing is the fact that the latest two seizures have both been linked to a single exporter, who however, has not been arrested. Nevertheless, Kenya's commitment to end poaching and illegal ivory trade appears solid.
In July, President Mwai K.ibaki publicly burnt 5,000 tonnes of stockpiled ivory seized in Singapore nearly a decade ago after it was smuggled from Malawi, Tanzania and Zambia. Kibaki wanted to demonstrate Kenya's commitment to the 1992 Lusaka Agreement designed to help African law enforcement agencies tackle wildlife smuggling. More importantly, the agreement was designed to protect the more than 4 72,269 elephants roaming Africa's wild, but whose survival is threatened by poaching and illegal game trophy.
The Mombasa seizure came hot on the heels of another one in Hong Kong. In November customs officers impounded a record number of rhino horns, as well as ivory chopsticks and bracelets that had been hidden in a shipment from Cape Town, South Africa and were destined for other Asian countries. The rhino horns and ivory chopsticks were worth $2.2 million, the largest seizure ever made in Hong Kong.
Last year witnessed the most seizures in Kenya. In May, about 115 elephant tusks were found by sniffer dogs inside metal containers destined for Nigeria. 'We are suspecting they could be from here or neighbouring countries and we are on their toes- we must get them,' Eunice Kiheko, deputy police chief at the airport, said at the time. 'They have killed many, many elephants and we cannot allow this.'
In August 2010, customs officials at Nairobi's Jomo Kenyatta International Airport seized nearly two tonnes of ivory and five rhinoceros horns. The smugglers had been trying to conceal the ivory as a shipment of avocados. While two arrests were made in this particular instance, the slow and lenient court process saw the suspects gaining freedom after posting bail.
It would appear the ivory smugglers are determined to use the most unconventional means to evade detection by customs. For example, in July 2009, Kenyan officials seized 300kg of illegal ivory worth $1m hidden in coffins on a plane bound for Laos. The haul included 16 elephant tusks and black rhinoceros horns. According to the officials, the blood on the ivory suggested the animals had been recently killed. The flight- which transited through Nairobi - originated in Mozambique and was bound for Thailand and then Laos. KWS officials said the ivory might have come from Tanzania or South Africa, since the black rhino is found only in eastern and southern Africa.
The United Nations banned the trade in elephant ivory in 1989, and since then CITES (the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora) has overseen the ban, allowing only one-off sales from four African nations - Botswana, Namibia, South Africa and Zimbabwe - whose elephant populations were judged to have stabilised. The sale of ivory is illegal if the ivory is not from pre- 1989 stockpiles. But critics argue that the illegal trade in ivory has been fuelled by China's demand at the 2008 CITES conference to allow it to import ivory, which was subsequently granted. 'China was accepted as a trading partner to import ivory from the four authorised countries in southern Africa,' said Juan Carlos Vasquez of CITES, at the end of the convention.
The CITES committee agreed that the four countries would be allowed to sell a combined total of 108 tonnes of the raw ivory, which comes from elephants that died from natural causes or were killed in population-management programmes.
'That is the total that the four can sell, and they can sell that ivory to Japan or to China,' Vasquez said, noting CITES members briefly considered then set aside the idea of reviewing Zimbabwe's allocation, given the recent political turmoil there.
But environmental groups opposed the proposal, claiming China does not have adequate control of its ivory trade. They said that allowing it to import ivory legally would simply fuel the illegal market. Their fears have since come to pass.
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