Jakarta Globe, March 26, 2013
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| Seized ivory tusks are displayed during a Hong Kong Customs press conference on Jan. 4, 2013. A Chinese smuggler was caught in Kenya with a haul of ivory was fined less than a dollar a piece, wildlife officials said on Tuesday. (AFP Photo/Dale de la Rey) |
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A Chinese
smuggler caught in Kenya with a haul of ivory was fined less than a dollar a
piece, wildlife officials said on Tuesday.
Kenya
Wildlife Service spokesman Paul Udoto said that Chinese smuggler Tian Yi was
arrested on Sunday while in transit in Nairobi carrying 439 pieces of worked
ivory.
The ivory,
cut into finger-length sections and painted brown, was "hidden in a
suitcase and mixed with tree bark to disguise it as traditional medicine,"
Udoto said in a statement.
Tian — who
was arrested as he travelled from the Democratic Republic of Congo to Hong Kong
— was on Monday fined $350 and has since been set free, Udoto added.
Experts
suggest a kilogram of ivory has an estimated black market value of some $2,500.
Poaching
has spiked recently in East Africa but the courts are hampered by sentencing
limits that treat smuggling as a petty crime.
Udoto said
that officers had "intensified security operations and surveillance"
to curb wildlife related crimes.
The illegal
ivory trade is mostly fueled by demand in Asia and the Middle East, where
elephant tusks and rhinoceros horns are used to make ornaments and in
traditional medicine.
Trade in
elephant ivory, with rare exceptions, has been outlawed since 1989 after
elephant populations in Africa dwindled from millions in the mid-20th century
to some 600,000 by the end of the 1980s.
Africa is
now home to an estimated 472,000 elephants, whose survival is threatened by
poaching as well as a rising human population that is causing habitat loss.
Agence France-Presse
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