Ivory poaching on the rise

Investigators have seized $51.5 million worth of illegal ivory in Southeast Asia in the past six weeks, including the third largest haul of elephant tusks on record.

Customs officials in Vietnam last month discovered 1200 sections of tusks, from up to 900 elephants, weighing 6.23 tonnes and hidden inside a consignment of waste plastic sent from the Tanzanian port of Dar es Salaam.

Conservation bodies said poaching in countries including Kenya, the Democratic Republic of Congo and Sudan was reaching levels not seen since a global ban on ivory sales was imposed in 1989.

The seizure - which was accompanied by the interception in Thailand of a tonne of raw ivory from Congo - comes after a controversial decision last October by the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species.

The body approved the sale to China and Japan of 108 tonnes of tusks from four southern African countries with sustainable elephant populations.

This week conservationists claimed the confiscations and increase in poaching were proof that fears expressed at the time of the sale - that it would fuel demand for illegal tusks - had come true.

It is estimated that about 37,000 African elephants are killed by poachers each year.

Figures obtained by the Independent show that in Kenya alone, the number of poached elephants has doubled in the past 12 months and officials in Tanzania are investigating a reported increase in poaching in the country's protected game parks.

The elephant population in Congo is estimated to have fallen by a third in the past five years.

Poached ivory is currently sold for about US$38 ($66) per kilogram in Kenya, where hunters have recently targeted Amboseli elephants.

With adult male elephant tusks weighing up to 50kg, the death of a single elephant can represent a year's income for a farmer or hunter.

- INDEPENDENT