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COLOMBO, Sri Lanka — A group of saffron-robed monks chanted as officials crushed more than 300 elephant tusks in a seaside ceremony on Tuesday, as the new government of President Maithripala Sirisena sought to differentiate itself from its predecessor by sending a powerful message of intolerance for elephant poaching.
Sri Lanka is the first South Asian nation to publicly destroy ivory obtained through elephant poaching and the 16th country in the world to destroy confiscated elephant tusks so that they cannot be traded in the black market.
The previous Sri Lankan government, led by Mahinda Rajapaksa, had planned to distribute the tusks to Buddhist temples around the island, including the Sacred Temple of the Tooth, the country’s most revered. That spurred an outcry from Sri Lankan environmentalists and international wildlife agencies, who argued that the ivory would later be traded.
The crushed ivory weighed 1.5 tons, far less than some caches that have been destroyed. But the action was significant because Sri Lanka is a transit hub for trading in illegal ivory, which is popular in Asia as a symbol of prosperity and for use in Buddhist religious ceremonies. More than 100 tons of poached ivory have been destroyed since 1989, according to the World Wildlife Fund.
Vidya Abhayagunawardena, an environmentalist who helped coordinate the event for the Sri Lankan Wildlife Ministry, said destroying the ivory sent a strong message to the Asian region, where the valuable tusks are perceived as symbols of wealth and class, and are used to create religious and cultural objects that continue to drive the illegal trade.
The biggest demand is from several fast-growing economies in Asia, including Thailand and China, the world’s largest consumer of ivory. The United Nations Environment Program says that surveys have documented a tripling of poaching and seizures of illegal ivory headed for Asia since 2007. In central and western Africa, the killing of elephants far exceeds their natural population replacement rate, the group says.
The ceremonial crushing of the 359 tusks began with two minutes of silence, after which the group of Buddhist monks chanted prayers for a “rebirth without suffering” for the elephants killed. In a show of religious solidarity, Hindu, Christian and Muslim leaders joined the monks in their prayers.
After the ceremony, the crushed ivory was transported to a factory in Puttalam, a district in the island’s northwest, for incineration, government officials said. DNA testing found that the tusks had originated in Tanzania, and the stockpile was valued at $2.6 million, the Sri Lanka Customs Department said.
The tusks were confiscated by Sri Lankan customs officials in May 2012, en route to Dubai, in the United Arab Emirates, from Kenya.
Some of the world’s leading wildlife advocates attended the event, held at Galle Face Green, a large seaside park in Colombo, the Sri Lankan capital. It was presided over by John E. Scanlon, the secretary general of the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora, an international agreement between governments that regulates the global wildlife trade. Sri Lanka has been a party to Cites since 1979.
The ivory trade is part of what the World Wildlife Fund estimates is a $10 billion annual trade in illegal wildlife.
http://www.nytimes.com/2016/01/27/world/asia/sri-lanka-destroys-illegal-elephant-tusks.html?_r=0