he Kenyan government has spent the past month assembling ivory from some 10,000 elephants into a dozen pyres. These captured tusks intended for trade have gathered dust for decades, but authorities will destroy them all in a spectacular message to poachers.

Authorities will publicly burn the stockpile, weighing more than 100 tons, on Saturday. It'll be the largest such burn in history -- and a last-ditch effort to curb a poaching trade that kills 35,000 elephants a year.

Casualties this large are hard to quantify, but if all of the elephants who once owned the ivory in Kenya's stockpile were walking across the African savannah, trunk to tail, they'd stretch for more than 30 miles, according to National Geographic explorers-in-residence Dereck and Beverly Joubert. ..
Huffington post

Burnt to Ashes. .

This is NOT RIGHT.It is kind of retarded. Just sell this Ivory -for the last time- and use the money to fund education or care for orphans.

panafrican:
This is NOT RIGHT.It is kind of retarded. Just sell this Ivory -for the last time- and use the money to fund education or care for orphans.

The problem with selling is that it would require a lifting of the ban on trade by the international community, and in the past, that facilitates the killing by poachers who pass their illegal ivory as the stock pile.

The other reason for burning, the action diminishes the market value of Ivory, by making it less prestigious.

Making progress

Kenya wins world support for global ban on ivory trade

Kenya's bid for domestic ivory markets to be closed received a major boost from world governments, weeks ahead of a convention on endangered animals and plan....

More than 100 resolutions and recommendations have been adopted by IUCN members – a unique global environmental parliament of governments and NGOs.

They called on third parties to take action on a wide range of urgent conservation issues.

Key decisions included closure of domestic markets for elephant ivory, the urgency of protecting the high seas, the need to protect primary forests, no-go areas for industrial activities within protected areas and an official IUCN policy on biodiversity offsets.

The IUCN congress which is held every four years helps shape the direction of conservation and sustainable development.

Experts believe shutting down domestic ivory markets will send a clear signal to traffickers and organised criminal syndicates that ivory is worthless...

http://www.the-star.co.ke/news/2016/09/11/kenya-wins-world-support-for-global-ban-on-ivory-trade_c1418621