Kenya Wildlife Service (KWS) officers arrested three men and handed them over to police officers after they were found with ivory tusks worth approximately Ksh8.5 million.
In a statement by the National Police Service (NPS), the trio were arrested along the Garsen-Witu Road on Friday, September 20, 2024.
“Police in Garsen on 20/09/2024 arrested three suspects after the trio were found by KWS officers while in possession of 85.7 kg of ivory tusks. The suspects, namely Faraj Omar, Abdallah Wachu, and Anna Hiribae, were arrested along Garsen-Witu Road,” police stated.
While the origin of the elephant tusks is unknown, police have launched investigations to establish how the three came into possession of the banned items.
The arrests come months after a similar operation was conducted in May 2024 when KWS officers arrested two men in Mwingi with elephant tusks worth Ksh8.9 million.
This followed another seizure in which police, in collaboration with KWS officers, nabbed Ksh60 million worth of elephant tusks and arrested another police officer who had accompanied the seller in Eastleigh.
The two were arrested after KWS posed as the would-be buyers of the ivory and suggested that they meet in Eastleigh.
Measures against poaching
In 2013, Kenya imposed stringent measures to control the trade in ivory tusks, among other banned items, ostensibly to protect rhinos and elephants from poachers.
The Kenya Wildlife Conservation Act of 2013 stimulates a maximum fine of Ksh20 million or life imprisonment for perpetrators found guilty of killing elephants and rhinos for trophy items.
The Act classifies the African elephant as an endangered species due to poaching, which threatened its existence, with Kenya having led the ban on game hunting to contain the vice.
Ivory tusk ban
While the ivory trade was banned in 1989 at the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species, the underground trafficking of the items has continued, fueled by a demand for the products in Asia and the Middle East.
KWS statistics indicate that in the 1970s and early 1980s, the nation’s elephant count was estimated at 170,000 individuals, but this dropped sharply to 16,000 elephants by the end of 1989 due to international demand for ivory.
Through the government’s continued interventions, including legal and policy measures, the downward trend has been reversed, resulting in the national elephant population shooting by more than five per cent to the current of 36,000 by August 2023.
