More help needed to tackle ivory smugglers

Ethiopian wildlife experts have appealed for more support to help crack down on ivory smugglers after returning 37 seized elephant tusks to Kenya. Mohamed Abdi, from the Ethiopian Wildlife and Conservation Organisation, told IRIN the country needed more support to combat poachers and smugglers. “We are trying our best but we lack the manpower to monitor every check point,” said Mohamed, who is based in the Ethiopian capital Addis Ababa. The tusks, weighing 140 kg and believed to have come from Kenyan elephants, were returned to the Kenya Wildlife Service at the border town of Moyale on Tuesday. “There is a long border between Kenya and Ethiopia so it is easy for smugglers to get across,” said Mohamed. “The smugglers are very well organised. “Until we get financial support to help fight the smugglers then this sort of thing will continue.” He said combating the smugglers – drawn by the lucrative profits from selling ivory – was an uphill battle and one that wildlife conservationists were struggling to win. Mohamed added that the smugglers were probably trying to cross the Kenyan border into Ethiopia and to Addis Ababa where a flourishing black market exists in carving ivory. The tusks were handed back more than a year after Ethiopian customs seized them from smugglers as they tried to cross into Ethiopia in April 2002. According to the UN Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species (CITES) seized ivory has to be returned to the country of origin. Gebremedhin Belay, Ethiopia’s deputy agriculture minister who is in charge of conservation, has pledged to crack down on smugglers. “Smuggling is very difficult to control,” he told IRIN. “But we will crack down on any smugglers that we find."