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Kenya’s big bonfire of ivory

President Kenyatta sets fires to biggest stockpile of ivory tusks ever destroyed, in statement against ivory trade.

Kenya Ivory
A Kenya Wildlife Service (KWS) ranger stacks elephant tusks, part of an estimated 105 tonnes of confiscated ivory which was set ablaze, onto a pyre at Nairobi National Park near Nairobi, Kenya. [Thomas Mukoya/Reuters]
Published On 1 May 2016

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Kenya’s president set fire to thousands of elephant tusks and rhino horns, destroying a stockpile that would have been worth a fortune to smugglers and sending a message that trade in the animal parts must be stopped.

Plumes of smoke rose as the flames took hold of the tusks piled up in a game reserve on the edge of the capital Nairobi, destroying 105 tonnes of ivory from about 8,000 animals, the biggest ever incineration of its kind.

President Uhuru Kenyatta dismissed those who argued Kenya, which staged its first such burning in 1989, should instead have sold the ivory and the tonne of rhino horn, which by some estimates would have an illegal market value of $150m.

“Kenya is making a statement that for us ivory is worthless unless it is on our elephants,” he told dignitaries before setting light to the first of almost a dozen pyres.

Kenya Ivory
Kenya alone had 20,000 rhinos in the 1970s, falling to 400 in the 1990s. It now has almost 650 black rhinos. [Thomas Mukoya/Reuters]
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Kenya Ivory
Kenyan president Uhuru Kenyatta (centre) and chairman of the Kenyan Wildlife Service (KWS) Richard Leakey (left) pose for the press after the president lit on fire parts of an estimated 105 tonnes of ivory and a tonne of rhino horn confiscated from smugglers and poachers at the Nairobi National Park near Nairobi, Kenya. [Siegfried Modola/Reuters]
Kenya Ivory
Poachers in Kenya can sell the horns of a single dead rhino for the equivalent of about $50,000 in local markets, earning in one night what would take them many years in regular employment. [Ben Curtis/AP]
Kenya Ivory
Firemen stand by at the ready as pyres of ivory are set on fire in Nairobi National Park, Kenya.[Ben Curtis/AP]
Kenya Ivory
Kenya is seeking a total world ban on ivory sales when the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora (CITES) meets in South Africa later this year as poaching poses an increasing risk to the species. [Thomas Mukoya/Reuters]
Kenya Ivory
Illegal hunting spiked in the three years to 2012 when about 100,000 elephants were killed, the equivalent of more than 33,000 a year. [Thomas Mukoya/Reuters]
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Kenya Ivory
A Kenya Wildlife Service (KWS) ranger holds the horn of a rhino, part of an estimated 105 tonnes of ivory and a tonne of rhino horn confiscated from smugglers and poachers [Siegfried Modola/Reuters]
Kenya Ivory
In the 1970s, Africa had about 1.2 million elephants, but now has 400,000 to 450,000. [Ben Curtis/AP]