E OF DEATH
with the price of a single tusk fetching ween £160,000 and £241,000, it is easy ee why there are an estimated 400 ivory rkshops in Beijing. This is the stark reality ind the booming trade revealed in the flix documentary The Ivory Game. iCaprio’s team also follows activists and ce in Africa as they play cat and mouse h the poachers. ll too often they are too late to save phants from being slaughtered by locals o are paid just a few pounds for the tusks.
Devil
ne elderly poacher caught with a tusk in ya revealed he would get £5.60 for it. ut the men who sell the ivory on can make 400 a tusk – and they are the real quarry an anti- poaching squad led by Elisifa owi. The film shows them at work in Tanzania. They are hunting notorious poacher Boniface Matthew Mariango – known as Shetani (The Devil). Mr Ngowi, who was the Counter Terrorism chief in Tanzania before leading his anti-poaching force, said: “He is the number one target. He is responsible for 10,000 elephant deaths.”
But he admitted his chances of snaring Shetani are not good as he does not even have a photograph of him.
And it is dangerous work. The poachers carry AK47 rifles and they are prepared to use them. Mr Ngowi said: “It’s him or us.”
Every poacher and smuggler caught is a small victory.
On the day DiCaprio’s film was released this week, the woman known as the Ivory Queen was facing charges in Dar es Salaam.
Yang Fenglan, a 66-year-old Chinese, is accused of leading one of Africa’s biggest ivory smuggling rings. She is said to have
been responsible for more than 700 tusks worth £ 1.7million illegally leaving Tanzania.
But activists say the only way stop the wicked trade and save the elephants is to end the huge demand for tusks in China.
Kenyan Craig Millar, head of security at the Big Life Foundation, summed up the twisted logic of the traders.
He said: “Traders in ivory actually want the extinction of elephants.
Bonfire
“The fewers elephants there are, the more the price rises. The more the price rises, the more people want to kill them.” Ian Craig, who was awarded an OBE in June for decades of conservation work in Kenya, said: “We are at a watershed. “Helicopters and guns and anti-poaching squads can’t win this war. There’s simply not enough men to cover the ground. We need a political solution. “Are we going to allow the biggest land animal to disappear? The world wants elephants.” Mr Craig, a friend of Prince William, was one of the driving forces that led to 105 tons of confiscated i vory being destroyed in a huge bonfire in Kenya in April. That was to stop corrupt officials stealing it and selling it on the black market. But even that was a drop in the ocean. For Africa still has hundreds of tons of illegal and soughtafter tusks stockpiled.
Mr Craig added: “This isn’t Africa’s problem. It’s an international problem. It’s too big and complex for individuals.”
Conservationist Andrea Crosta, who founded Wildleaks to fight for the elephants, said: “The reason they are slaughtered is the market in China. Hundreds of tons of ivory go into China every year. “It’s big business. You don’t go to the police. You could risk your life.”
A thousand wildlife rangers have been killed in Africa over the last decade while trying to foil poachers like Shetani and traders like the Ivory Queen.
The evidence gathered by i nvestigators working with Wildleaks persuaded the Hong Kong government to agree to outlaw the trade in ivory within the next five years.
But China has yet to agree to do the same – which horrifies Mr Crosta.
He said: “One person holds in his hands the fate of elephants – the president of China.
“I think this is the first time in history that one person has in his hands the destiny of an entire species.”
The film’s directors Richard Ladkani and Kief Davidson hope it will persuade governments to put pressure on the Chinese to outlaw the trade.
Mr Ladkani told the Sunday People: “We are presenting evidence that is undeniable.
“All the things activists are doing on the ground deter and disrupt the killings – but it’s not enough. This trade is driven by greed. There is so much money in it.
“We need to see Kenya’s burning of a stockpile repeated around the world. People shouldn’t have ivory in their homes. The only place for ivory is on a living elephant.
“We got great influencers like Leonardo DiCaprio on our side to get as many people behind the cause as possible so they will join the fight to stop this evil trade.” The Ivory Game is out now, exclusively on Netflix.