miacollis

Worth More Alive

On April 30th the Kenya Wildlife Service burned the largest store of elephant ivory and rhino horn ever assembled in one place.

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For the month of April 2016 a military operation took over the Nairobi National Park.

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The complex process of cataloguing and transporting 105 tons of Ivory begins in the strong room of KWS.
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A KWS ranger holds a tusk as it gets put into the inventory and then into a container.

The Kenya Wild Life Service partnered with Stop Ivory began to sample, catalogue, transport and stack thousands of pieces of ivory and rhino horn that was to be incinerated in front of the world.

A KWS ranger holds a tusk as it gets put into the inventory.
A KWS ranger holds a tusk as it gets put into the inventory.
A KWS ranger holds a tusk as it gets put into the inventory.
A KWS ranger holds a tusk as it gets put into the inventory.
A KWS ranger holds a tusk as it gets put into the inventory.
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Piles of exotic animal skins are added to the pyres inclduing confiscated colobus monkey skins.

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During that time, hundreds of people came to pay their respects to the tusks that were assembled there.

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Activists, mothers, daughters, soldiers, celebrities and every day Kenyans stood in front of the pyres for a portrait to demonstrate their commitment to ending the ivory trade.

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Kenya took one of the biggest steps that has ever been taken to confront the illegal wildlife trade.

 

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Ivory and rhino horn have no intrinsic value and Kenya was shouting at the world that these creatures are #worthmorealive