E-mail updates
Follow on Twitter
Subscribe to RSS
James Morgan / AP
In this photograph released by WWF-Canon via AP Images, seized ivory ready for the burn in Libreville, Gabon, on Wednesday, June 27, 2012, in a ceremony to symbolize Gabon's commitment to ending poaching and other wildlife crimes. created an elite military unit whose mission is to secure Gabon's parks and to protect wildlife, especially against poaching and illegal trade of ivory and the confiscated ivory was a product of this crackdown.
Wils Yanick Maniengui / AFP - Getty Images
Five tons of ivory worth around 10 million euros ($14 million) burn on June 27, 2011 in Libreville to mark his government's commitment to battling poachers and saving elephants.
Miguel Llanos, msnbc.com reports:The Central African nation of Gabon on Wednesday burned all the elephant tusks and ivory ornaments it had in its stockpile -- an amount equivalent to 850 elephants -- so that smugglers, via corrupt government officials, won't get their hands on the black market commodities treasured in China and other parts of Asia.
"Gabon’s elephants are under siege because of an illegal international market," President Ali Bongo said. "I call on the international community to join us in this fight" by cracking down on smugglers and buyers. "If we do not reverse the tide, the African elephant is in serious trouble." Continue reading the full story.
•Sign up for the msnbc.com Photos Newsletter
Leave a Comment:
IT's just a damn shame. All the Ivory sitting there and for every piece there just means that they had to kill a hell of a lot of Elephants they slaughtered. For nothing but GREED!!!!!!!!!! All of those beautiful God's Animals. God had brought them here to be part of the lands of Africa. They who killed these wonderful animals should have all their teeth pulled out then thrown on top of a gasoline fire!!!!!!!!!!
Go to youtube and witness the elephant slaughter.
This is heartbreaking. I know there will be no elephants left alive in ten years. They should kill poachers and their customers, including the ones in Asia for what they have done.
They should just auction those ivory to the highest bidder. Then used those money to finance the soldiers in buy some good firearms and hire more soldiers to protect the elephant and their tasks.
Asians are the real problem here. They create the demand. they have no respect or regard for any living creatures. they love ivory, they eat whale meat, they slaughter dolphins, they pop pills made from bears and tigers foolishly thinking that it makes their tiny penises larger. As technologically advanced as they are, they are at the same time quite primitive and ignorant. These people need to wake up and grow up.
They steal and slaughter dogs and eat them.........they don't need to wake up and grow up they need some kind of behavioral therapy/training. Game over, restart something.
A much smarter idea would have been to catalog each and every piece, govermentally contract out the sales of those pieces after complete analysis and print verification (ivory has much like a finger print), and then use the proceeds to further combat that illegal poaching.
Additionally, the captured illegal ivory could then be sold off at a high price to other governments on the understanding that within other countries it sells for DIRT cheap, thus bastardizing the market and making it FAR less worthwhile for poachers.
This strategy has worked in the past for another type of lifeform.
Destroying the ivory is detroying their own ammunition.
Amen Hatchet.
they are doing this wrong. If they would have legally put these on the market, and taxed them....smugglers wouldn't want them anymore. If the business was to get the ivory AFTER the animal was dead instead of killing them for it the poachers would stop. Exactly like if they legalized pot and taxed it. I understand how this started, why it started and all, why its still going...... but this is the way to stop it.
I forgot to mention that they also serve puppies and kittens for dinner!
Another thing I would not mind too much,
Get dental impressions from each poacher they catch, and then when released, have a bounty put on their teeth for other poachers to go after.
Soon you would have a bunch of poachers looking to kill each other off for their ivories.
An almost poetic justice.
A simpler solution would be just to blow the poacher's heads clean off.
It would only be simpler if they had the manpower and knew the locale of the poachers and their camps.
Turning the poachers on each other solves both these issues.
Even the idea that they might be hunting each other would probably be enough for them to shoot first and question later, or avoid the practice of poaching for as long as they wished to remain alive.
Better to burn the poachers. This is just a waste of the animals that have already died.
People who kill animals for profit or for amusement have no rightful place in this world.
Something useful should've been done with the ivory. Just because elephants are becoming endangered and there are poachers and smugglers doesn't mean ivory is a useless resource to be wasted. It all should have been made into anti-smuggler jewelery and sold with the money used in the war against smugglers. Now all those elephants deaths were in vain.
Imagine how many half inch diameter penis rings could have been made to supply the asian demand!
Please also shoot to kill the poacher sincluding the chinese
Dam, that's a lot of animals. Whoops...time to take my powdered deer penis for virility.
After a nice dinner of boiled kittens, you're ready to roll!
Ah, Bartleby. Ah, humanity.
Why not sell the ivory to Museums to educate people about the poaching? Then the government would have 14million more to pay for more elite military. Or sell the ivory as a sting operation and find the bad guys. As for burning the ivory... stupid move. Does this mean the US should burn all the money because the Feds wrote a bad check? lol
Why not sell the ivory and drive the price down so it is not worth poaching. By burning it you decrease the amount and actually make it more valuable. Also, the penalties should be increased and the number of elephants expanded. Dead elephants ivory could also be used to keep the cost low. Burning it is a waste. boraboy above has a good point also.
This is a disgrace! THOSE ITEMS CAN'T BE REPLACED! They should have just held the items for a long time then auctioned them for charity and put the rest in museums- one day there will be no more- take out immediate gratification but some of that is art and heirlooms- the damage was done- they could have dated the items- and gave a time for those to come forward and anything after that would be punishedserverly- 10-50 later the illegal items could have a use-just not for those of greed and distruction-