Kenyan rangers arrest poachers with 22 elephant tusks
Rangers have arrested three Kenyan men and seized 22 elephant tusks they tried to sell in a south-eastern Kenya town, a spokesman for the Kenya Wildlife Service said today.
A source tipped off the Kenya Wildlife Service the three were looking for buyers in Garsen, 286 miles south-east of the capital, Nairobi, and two rangers posed as buyers and arrested, said Gichuki Kabukuru.
Two other suspects escaped as the rangers tried to arrest them, Kabukuru said.
The three men were charged in court, he said, adding he had no other details on the case as investigations were continuing.
Kenya’s elephant population has grown from about 16,000 to 27,000 since the UN Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species, or Cites, banned the ivory trade in 1989.
But that is far fewer than the estimated 167,000 elephants that lived in Kenya in 1973, before poaching devastated the country’s herds.
