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By Godfrey Olukya 31-10-2012
Tanzania wildlife authority is shocked at the high rate of killing elephants by poachers in the national parks.
Although the authority, with the help of police have stepped up security in the game parks and the country at large, poachers continue to kill the elephants in big numbers. The tusks are removed from the killed elephants and smuggled out of the country.
The discovery of two hundred and fifteen elephant tusks on Tuesday by police has left officials in police and wild life authority puzzled. They are wondering how such big numbers of tusks can be got by poachers.
One of the officials, Silver Kilenga said, ‘When we seize over 200 tusks, that means that over one hundred elephants were killed in order to get those tusks. That is a big number of elephants. It is terrible.’
He said that the tusks valued at over 1 million US dollars have signs that indicate that they ere recently got from killed animals. He said, ‘The tusk pieces are on high demand in Asian countries. That is the reason why those who deal in them continue doing so even when harsh penalties are imposed by government on whoever is caught in the act.’
The tusk pieces were were reportedly found in a Kenyan’s house in the country’s capital capital Dar es Salaam. Police is holding the Kenyan and four Tanzanians suspected to be responsible for the seized tusks.
Dar es Salaam’s police chief Suleiman Kova said that they have been fighting against the vice for sometime but have failed to completely erase it. He said, ‘ There seems to be a network that traffics tusks. We are continuing with our investigations to dismantle the trafficking network.
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