LILONGWE, Malawi, April 2 (MaraviPost) _ Malawi has postponed the much-anticipated burning of four metric tonnes of ivory impounded from poachers and smugglers in the past five years because, according to President Peter Mutharika, there is much more tonnage tied in courts as evidence.
“This country has accumulated four tonnes of seized ivory over the years. Rather than destroy this stockpile at the moment we have decided to postpone the decision because I am told that 2.6 tonnes are in the courts for evidential purposes,” he said.
The decision to postpone the incineration of the stockpile is bound to disappoint wildlife conservationalists who touted the planned burning as a “huge boost” to wildlife conservation.
“Persuading law-enforcers to crack down on poachers gets a whole lot easier when the President himself gives such a clear vote of support for the fight against wildlife crime,” said Lynn Clifford, Director of Wildlife Action Group, in a statement.
Brighton Kumchedwa, Director of Parks and Wildlife, described wildlife conservation in Malawi as “heading towards a crisis”.
In Malawi the elephant population has drastically declined from over 4,000 in the 1980s to about 2,000, according to the Department of Parks and Wildlife.
Jonathan Vaughan, Director of Lilongwe Wildlife Trust, said the four tonnes that were scheduled to be burnt equated to about 500 elephants. He said in a statement the stockpile included those seized from smugglers who poached the elephants in neighbouring Tanzania, Zambia and Mozambique.
“Malawi is being targeted as a transit route by traffickers moving over 500 kilogrammes at a time,” he said.
Vaughan said in the past five years there has been at least 36 seizures of between five and 100 kilogrammes at the southern African country’s airports.
Most of the seized contraband was mainly being smuggled to the Far East, especially China, where the ivory trade fetches millions of dollars.-MaraviPost
