$26 million of ivory seized by Hong Kong customs

At least 600 elephants were killed for these tusks

October 2012. In a joint operation involving Hong Kong and Guangdong customs officials, 1,209 pieces of ivory tusks and 1.4 kilogrammes of ivory ornaments, weighing about 3,813 kilogrammes, were found inside two containers shipped from Tanzania and Kenya to Hong Kong. The total seizure is worth about $26.7 million.
This seizure comes just 2 months after Kenyan authorities seized two tons of ivory at Nairobi airport. The ivory was destined for Malaysia. African elephants are being slaughtered at a faster rate than at anytime since the 1980s when as many as 100,000 were killed every year. Certainly 10s of thousands are being killed, often in the most brutal ways, by gangs of well armed and organised poachers with modern weapons, communication equipment, and in at least 1 case, helicopters.

972 ivory tusks
Acting on information provided by Guangdong Customs, Hong Kong Customs monitored the two suspicious containers. On October 16, Customs officers located one container arriving from Tanzania which was declared as containing "plastic scrap". Upon examination, the officers found 972 pieces of raw ivory tusks, weighing about 1,927 kilogrammes, and 1.4 kilogrammes of ivory ornaments inside 91 bags of plastics scraps, with an estimated value of about $13.5 million.




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