Up in smoke: Kenya to torch millions of dollars worth of ivory

[WhiteTara]

Source: cnn

Nairobi National Park, Kenya (CNN)It's an overpowering display of the sheer size of Africa's poaching crisis.

For the past week, several dozen men have circled a site in Nairobi National Park, unloading elephant tusks from shipping containers -- many of them so big it takes two men to carry one tusk -- and building them into towers of ivory up to 10 feet tall and 20 feet across.

It forms something like a graveyard for some of the world's iconic endangered species.



Confiscated colobus monkey Skins are added to the pyres.

On Saturday, the graveyard will turn into a crematorium.

Read more: http://www.cnn.com/2016/04/29/africa/kenya-ivory-burn/

[scscholar]

1. That money would feed a lot of people

[LiberalFighter]

2. Rather than torching it

They should crush it or any method that does not create as much pollution.

[renate]

4. god, that's horrifying and so so sad

I don't know whether poachers are poor and just trying to feed their families, or whether they're like drug lords making bank off the suffering of others--if it's the former I guess I can understand a little bit, but it's unspeakably sad how people can be so cruel to animals...

[robbob]

5. I'm sure it's like any other great capitalist venture

There are probably those at the top who get obscenely rich (literally, in this case), and the underlings who actually go out and do the killings for them, at risk of their lives if they don't comply with the bosses.

I wouldn't be surprised to find government officials in the food chain, since shipping that much "product" out of the country must require greasing a few palms...

[Fast Walker 52]

6. So fucking disgusting... elephants are such great creatures and they are going extinct because of

the evil of money.

[Fast Walker 52]

7. maybe they are trying to make a point but it may be counter-productive, since burning

that ivory will make it more scarce, and drive the price up.

[Egnever]

8. Short sighted in my opinion

That ivory should be sold and the proceeds used to fund more anti poaching measures.

If instead of ivory they had seized a poachers bank account would they burn the cash?