Today, across the planet from where I am, in Kenya, a giant bonfire is underway. Twelve funeral pyres were set alight, 11 piled with 105 tons of elephant tusks and another with 1.35 tons of rhino horns, all intercepted from illegal poaching of 8000 elephants and more than 300 rhinos.

Trade in ivory from African elephants has been illegal since 1989 but that hasn’t stopped it and in recent years there has been an alarming increase in poaching. In 1979 there were an estimated 1.3 million African elephants, today that number is around 400,000. Continue reading →