Burning elephant tusks is pointless gimmickry

Every so often, Kenya resorts to a terrible gimmick. In a public spectacle beamed to TVs worldwide, the country’s CEO presides over the incineration — burning — of elephant and rhino tusks. The drama is the most meaningless head-fake this side of the Sahara. As the tusks are turned into ash by an inferno, the country goes into a tizzy. Tree-huggers and animal lovers wipe away tears of child-like compassion as they swear at evil poachers. African presidents — many of them corrupt undemocratic thugs — usually grace the made-for-TV orgy of destruction. Then everyone goes home, and the poaching resumes unabated.

Burning tusks may be good public relations, but a policy it isn’t. Nor is it even a strategy. It’s feel good self-indulgence by political leaders and those who claim to love the wildlife and our heritage. Let me take issue with Kenya’s leading conservationists. By giving the tusk-burning legitimacy, they give the global public a palliative — a lie that something’s been done. This is how the bourgeois “save” wildlife – by attending highbrow stunts. I ask them to stop this charade of nonsense and get to the heart of the matter. They — and we — know that burning tusks isn’t a sanction against the poachers. Why subject the poor tusks to an inferno as though they had committed a crime?