COLOMBO: Sri Lankan authorities on Tuesday crushed and burned ivory worth an estimated $3 million after religious leaders offered prayers for the hundreds of African elephants killed for the tusks.
The ivory came from a single shipment of 359 tusks, weighing 1.5 tons, seized by Sri Lankan customs authorities at the port of Colombo in May 2012.
Subsequent investigations by Interpol, which collected DNA samples from the tusks, traced the slain elephants to northern Mozambique and Tanzania.
The shipment was in transit from Kenya to Dubai when it was confiscated by the Sri Lankan government under international anti-smuggling law.
“No one connected to this specific collection of tusks has been convicted yet,” said Nanda Kodituwakku, assistant director of customs,who headed the local investigation and campaigned to have the ivory destroyed.
Government ministers, diplomats and school children, along with officials from the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora, or CITES, gathered at Colombo’s oceanfront Galle Face area to witness the crushing of the tusks.
It took seven hours to splinter the tusks in an industrial crusher and the ivory shards were then transported to an incinerator under military security. Once burned, the ash will be dumped into the Indian Ocean.
The crushing was preceded by a religious ceremony during which Buddhist, Hindu, Muslim and Catholic leaders delivered short statements about the environmental and social costs of poaching.
“All of human society is responsible for this crime,” said the Ven. Omalpe Sobitha Thero, the Buddhist monk who led the service. “Apologizing for this atrocity is important. This prayer is to honor these creatures and all life.”
This is also the first time a multi-country legal effort identified the origin of the tusks.
“The efforts of Sri Lanka, as a transit state, to intercept illicitly traded ivory and other illicitly traded wildlife is helping to combat these serious crimes and thereby protect precious wildlife assets in Africa and elsewhere,” said CITES secretary general, John Scanlon.
According to CITES, every year around 30,000 elephants are killed in Africa for their tusks, primarily to satisfy the demand for ivory products in Asia. Some African nations, such as Mozambique and Tanzania, have lost more than half their elephants since 2009.
Hong Kong and China are among the largest consumers of ivory and rhino horns, CITES said.
