February 11, 2016•Update: February 16, 2016
By Andrew Ross
NAIROBI, Kenya
Conservationists and wildlife experts gathered in Kenya’s capital Thursday for the first international conference on the illegal trade in ivory.
"Poaching and the illegal trade of ivory is escalating to unmanageable levels," Bonaventure Ebayi, director of the Lusaka Agreement Task Force (LATF), said. "The east African region bears the biggest brunt of the menace according to statistics."
He said senior conservation figures from Ethiopia, Kenya, Rwanda, South Sudan, Tanzania and Uganda had gathered in Nairobi to tackle poaching and the illegal trade wildlife.
Kenya’s Environment Minister Judy Wakhungu said: "In the region, the poaching of elephants has reached unprecedented levels and it is high time we acted jointly, decisively and swiftly in order to reverse the alarming trends."
According to the World Wildlife Fund, African elephants are still being poached in large numbers despite a ban on the international trade in ivory, with China the largest market for tusks.
A 2014 study by Colorado State University estimated that 100,000 African elephants were illegally killed between 2010 and 2012.
Henri Fournel, Interpol’s environmental security manager, welcomed joint action by east African states where most savannah elephants are found.
"Those strategies need to be robust," he said. "They need to be accepted by everyone. We need to find ways to efficiently stop this kind of crime."
