August 22, 2011 Forest elephant in Gabon. Photo by: Rhett A.
Butler. Congolese officials arrested the thirty-five year old
Chinese trafficker in January as he attempted to return to
Beijing with five elephant tusks, three ivory carvings, 80 ivory
chopsticks, and many smaller ivory pieces. The smuggler
attempted to conceal the ivory paraphernalia in aluminum sheets,
but law enforcement officials with the Ministry of Sustainable
Development, Forest Economy, and the Environment noted the
unusual luggage. "We are still a long way away from protecting
Africa's elephants from irreverent trafficking networks
dependent on weak enforcement policies, but a sentence like this
is a morsel of hope if its merit can be conveyed to policy
makers and its seriousness communicated to illegal traffickers,"
explained Naftali Honig, coordinator for the Project for the
Application of Law for Fauna (PALF), which provided technical
assistance to Congolese officials. The smuggler's sentence,
handed down August 10 by the Brazzaville hi