Two men arrested with 10 elephant tusks worth Sh8.9 million

Kenya Wildlife Service (KWS) officers have arrested two men with 10 pieces of elephant tusks weighing 89 kilogrammes valued at Sh8.9 million.

The officers from Mwingi, accompanied by a KWS covert team from the headquarters in Nairobi were acting on intelligence information.

The officers intercepted the vehicle the two were in at around 1 pm. KWS said one of the suspects, who was driving the vehicle, was an officer with a government agency.

“The exhibit is detained at KWS, Mwingi office and the suspects are detained at Mwingi police station pending arraignment before Mwingi law court,” the police report said.

On January 16, 2024, A police officer and a civilian were arrested while trying to sell 645 kilos of elephant tusks in the Eastleigh area, Nairobi.

The tusks would fetch about Sh60 million in the black market.

They had tried to sell the trophies to Kenya Wildlife Service officials who had posed as potential buyers.

Ten days earlier, two women were last week arrested with five pieces of elephant tusks that weighed 111 kilos and were valued at Sh11 million in a village in Kwale county.

They were nabbed with the trophies on January 6, 2024, at around 9 am in the Majoreni area of Lungalunga sub-county within Kwale.

This happened as they sought a market for the trophies and approached undercover officials.

They were charged before a Msambweni court for dealing in a wildlife trophy of an endangered species.

Elephant tusks fetch a fortune in the black market as a surge in demand for ivory in the East continues to fuel the illicit trade in elephant tusks, especially from Africa.

Officials say despite a ban on the international ivory trade, African elephants are still being poached in large numbers.

As part of efforts to stop the menace, Kenya has started using high-tech surveillance equipment, including drones, to track poachers and keep tabs on elephants and rhinos