To end poaching, climb down the ivory towers and mainstream conservation

Some of the ivory towers that were set alight in the biggest ivory burning done in the history of Kenya

A cast of international celebrities were reported to be headed to Nairobi at the time of writing this piece. Hollywood A-listers Leonardo Di Caprio, Nicole Kidman, billionaire philanthropists George Soros, Paul Allen, Michael Bloomberg and Howard Buffet, flamboyant Elton John, ex-NBA athlete Yao Ming and the voice of conservation BBC’s Sir David Attenborough.

It read like a guest list to an invite-only destination wedding for the hideously rich and famous. The big deal was Kenya’s burning of 105 tonnes of ivory and 1.35 tonnes of rhino horn at the Nairobi National Park. The biggest ivory stockpile ever set ablaze and reportedly Kenya’s entire stash. Expert estimated it was the equivalent of thousands of elephants that when placed in a single file would measure 30 miles, the distance from Nairobi to Thika town. It was so much ivory that it took a week to stack up it into towers ready to be burned. All these great beasts, murdered for their tusks in the past decade.