Outlawing Ivory Trade in Africa

Dr. Sam Wasser: Ivory is essentially an incisor tooth that has evolved into a tusk.

Female: Man has carved ivory into beautiful objects and traded it since the
Stone Age.

Dr. Sam Wasser: The drive for ivory just seems to be the fact that it comes from a
very majestic animal.

Female: So majestic and hard not to miss, in fact, that the ivory poaching
wars in Africa during the 70s and 80s killed many of them off.

Dr. Sam Wasser: Elephants went from 1.3 million to 600,000 in ten years. And that
loss of 700,000 just surprised the world.

Female: In 1989, Kenya burned 12 tons of elephant tusks in a dramatic
protest to persuade the world to halt the ivory trade. Some say it
was a publicity stunt.

But later that year, 115 countries voted in favor of an international
ban on the trade of ivory.

Along with the ban came strong international support for wild life
law enforcement.

Michael Wamithi: To address the issue of run-away poaching, which was decimating
wildlife, a crack unit was recruited and trained. We weakened the
strong networks that had gained root over time in Kenya so it
became more expensive to get involved in the wildlife traffic so it
became more expensive to get involved in wildlife trafficking, and
it really went down.

Between 1990 and 1996 we were able to be in control of our
national parks. And that system is still in place.

Female: After the ivory ban went into effect, African-elephant population
seem to stabilize with some countries even reporting
overpopulation of herds. But the illegal ivory trade is still with us
and takes its toll on more than just elephants.

In the past years, three Kenyan wildlife rangers and four poachers
were killed in a shootout in the Tana River District.

Julius Kipng’etich: The manhunt for the poachers is still on. There were seven, we
killed four. What happens is that during the rainy season, usually
poaching activity goes up. So, this is a cyclic thing. They come
usually at these times.

Female: There’s more. The past six years of have seen a steady increase in
the tonnage of ivory being seized in cargo containers in different
parts of the world.

The first inkling known was a major problem was a container
seized in Singapore back in 2002 in a case that is still ongoing.

The story began in Lusaka, the capital of Zambia.

Dr. Lewis Saiwana: The information that I had received was there were some Chinese
in Malawi who were running around collecting ivory from Eastern
province taking the ivory to Malawi so I supported the
investigations by the officers on the ground.

Undercover Agent: What we do is we’ll collect data, put it together. This is — for the
letter of ivory collection and the connecting syndicate.

Female: Painstaking undercover work revealed an elaborate poaching
syndicate.

Undercover Agent: We have some documents that would show the weights and the
values of all the ivory —. There was evidence of having to change
hands on 28th March 1994, 14th of the September 1996.

Female: The data suggested the syndicate had been killing Zambian
elephants for at least the past eight years. They smuggle the tusks
across the border into neighboring Malawi. Hidden workshops
would partially carve and package the ivory to shipment to the Far
East.

Coordinating their efforts, Malawian and Zambian wildlife
authorities raided one such illegal workshop in 2002.

Alphius Lipiya: When this syndicate issue came about, we decided to go and check
on them. When we went there, we found quite a number of tusks.

They had a room where they were poaching the ivory and most
probably where they were loading the — and that’s when we
should know this guy is not good. We should arrest him and we
confiscate all that he has — in terms of all these ivory pieces. This
could have been from — close to 10 or 20 elephants just this load
here.

Female: The ivory waste materials suggested this facility was punching out
personal signature stamps, Hankos as they are known in Japan.
They were then shipped overseas.