Jul

2011

11:35am, EDT

Tony Karumba / AFP - Getty Images

Kenya's President Mwai Kibaki sets on fire an illegal ivory stockpile, July 20, 2011 at the Tsavo National Park, southeast of Nairobi. Kibaki ignited nearly five tons of ivory stockpiled in the country since being seized in Singapore nearly a decade ago -- destroying some 335 tusks and 42,553 pieces of ivory carvings at the Manyani wildlife rangers training institution in eastern Kenya.

Torching elephant tusks in Kenya

By Phaedra Singelis, NBC News

That pile represents an awful lot of dead elephants.

The burning of the ivory is part of the first-ever African Elephant Law Enforcement Day celebrations with the theme 'Fostering cooperation to combat elephant poaching and ivory trafficking in Africa’. This would be the third time for such an exercise to be held in Africa, after Kenya’s in 1989 and Zambia in 1992. The volume of illicit ivory trade rose ninefold in the past five years, from 1366 pounds ( .6 metric tons) in 2005 to 5.7 metric tons in 2010, according to Lusaka Agreement Task Force (LATF), a regional anti-poaching body. Kenya's Wildlife Service has this year alone seized some three tons of ivory in transit.

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