News from the ivory trade front: three men arrested in the Congo for carrying six suitcases full of tusks the same week that 1.5 tons of ivory smuggled and shipped from Tanzania to Hong Kong is confiscated.
From AP:
KINSHASA, Congo — Police in southeastern Congo say they have arrested three men carrying six suitcases full of elephant tusks.
Anti-smuggling commission coordinator Placide Magungu said Tuesday the three Chinese nationals were caught at Lumumbashi’s airport while trying to fly to Nairobi, Kenya. He says the men said they bought the ivory from antique dealers.
Illegal hunting of elephants in central and eastern Africa has intensified in recent years, with much of the ivory exported to Asia.
In August, police seized 116 elephant tusks and arrested two Congolese men in the country’s northeast.
Poachers also have taken advantage of the fact Congo suffered through back-to-back civil wars, and the country’s volatile east remains mired in armed conflict.
From AFP:
Hong Kong customs officers had seized over one and a half tonnes of smuggled elephant ivory worth $HK10.9 million ($A1.41 million) shipped from Tanzania, they said Friday.
The 384 ivory tusks, weighing a total of 1.55 tonnes, were found Thursday inside two containers labelled as “dried anchovies” at the Tsing Yi container terminal, the Ports and Maritime Command said in a statement.
Two men, aged 46 and 48, have been arrested as part of a continuing investigation, the statement said..
The international trade in elephant ivory, with rare exceptions, has been outlawed since 1989 after elephant populations in Africa dropped from the millions in the mid-20th century to some 600,000 by the end of the 1980s.
Full article here.
Image: WWF
