By Philip Mwakio

What is suspected to be the largest ever ivory haul has been impounded at the port of Mombasa.

The discovery of the game trophies was made following intelligence received by the Kenya Wildlife Service.

KWS Assistant Director in charge of Coast Conservation area, Mr Simon Gitau, said the 727 pieces of ivory, which were stashed in bags inside a 20-foot container disguised as plastic waste chips, were worth more than Sh200 million.

He revealed that close to 200 elephants might have been slaughtered to make up the consignment.

"This is our second discovery in less than a month at the port of Mombasa. We have been following up on this particular consignment and had alerted police before we requested for verification to be done," Gitau said.

By the time of going to press, weighing of the impounded cargo was still underway.

It was a flurry of activity at the Kenya Revenue Authority (KRA) Custom bonded warehouse at the port’s Berth 5 as Government officials opened the bags in search of the ivory.

evict journalists

At one point, a senior KRA official attempted to throw out journalists from the premises. However, journalists protested at the move and refused to leave.

Gitau said initial investigation had revealed that the ivory originated from a neighbouring country.

Since KWS introduced an anti-smuggling team at the port, there have been several recoveries unlike in the past when it was suspected that illegal game trophies were smuggled out of the country through the harbour with ease.

Early last month, the anti-smuggling team recovered 465 pieces of ivory, which were to be exported to a country in the Far East.

This latest seizure also comes barely two months after another 87 pieces of ivory were found stashed inside cloth bundles at the port. Samples from the first seizure have already been taken for genetic analysis to conclusively establish their origin.

Trade in ivory has proved to be lucrative, with a kilo retailing for Sh17,000 in the black market.

During a recent interview, KWS Director Julius Kipng’etich confirmed that following Kenya Defence Forces incursions into Somali in pursuit of Al Shabaab militia, acts of banditry in wildlife conservation areas under their watch had decreased.

　

　

GLANCE BOX

About ban on Ivory sale

-African White elephants have been hunted for several centuries; the exploitation of elephant herds on a massive scale began in the 1970s.

-Organised gangs of poachers used automatic weapons, profited from government corruption, and laundered tonnes of elephant tusks through several African countries to destinations in Eastern and Western countries.

-Threatened with extinction, the elephant is theoretically protected from international trade by their listing on Appendix I of the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora (CITES) since 1989.

-The enforcement of this ban, the level of compliance adhered to by CITES Parties, the response of non-CITES members, as well as the policy question as to how trade "interventions" best serve the environmental objective of species preservation, are all key concerns of this dispute.