{"id":32706,"date":"2017-02-21T01:51:24","date_gmt":"2017-02-21T01:51:24","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/a-tonne-of-ivory-hacked-into-pieces-seized-in\/"},"modified":"2017-02-21T01:51:21","modified_gmt":"2017-02-21T01:51:21","slug":"a-tonne-of-ivory-hacked-into-pieces-seized-in","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/a-tonne-of-ivory-hacked-into-pieces-seized-in\/","title":{"rendered":"A tonne of ivory, hacked into pieces, seized in Uganda"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>{Ugandan authorities have seized more than a tonne of ivory, chopped into small pieces and treated with a chemical intended to prevent it being detected, the national wildlife protection service has said.}<\/p>\n<p>The haul was made in a Kampala suburb on Saturday, before it could be loaded at Entebbe international airport and flown off to an unknown destination, the authorities said.<\/p>\n<p>A Liberian and two suspects from Guinea Bissau have been arrested in Kampala, Uganda&#8217;s wildlife authority spokesman Simplicious Gessa told AFP.<\/p>\n<p>{{Laws lax }} <\/p>\n<p>&#8220;In a joint operation with police, we recovered over 1,000kg of ivory suspected smuggled from either Tanzania or Democratic Republic of Congo and the operation is ongoing,&#8221; Gessa said.<\/p>\n<p>He added that the Ugandan authorities suspect the smuggling network goes beyond the three in custody &#8220;involving shipping agents and other officials as the consignment was suspected to be going through Entebbe (airport)&#8221;.<\/p>\n<p>The traffickers may have used Uganda &#8220;because our laws are a little lax on trafficking&#8221;, calling for harsher laws against wildlife smugglers &#8220;so that Uganda is not used as a smuggling route&#8221;.<\/p>\n<p>{{30,000 killed }} <\/p>\n<p>Some 30,000 African elephants are illegally killed each year for their ivory tusks, mainly to satisfy demand in the Asian market for products coveted as a traditional medicine or as status symbols.<\/p>\n<p>Uganda is a key transit country for the illegal trade, especially from Congo&#8217;s huge forests.<\/p>\n<p>The trade is estimated to be worth $600 million annually.<\/p>\n<p>According to the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN), the African elephant population recorded its biggest drop in a quarter century last year, with an estimated population of 415,000 elephants, 111,000 fewer than a decade ago.<\/p>\n<figure class=\"spip-document spip-document-18357 aligncenter\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/en-images.igihe.com\/jpg\/iro.jpg\" alt=\"Officials from the Uganda customs and revenue authority check elephant tusks seized at the Entebbe international airport on June 19, 2012. A tonne of elephant tusks were seized at the airport on February 20, 2017.\" \/><\/figure>\n<p>Source:AFP<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>{Ugandan authorities have seized more than a tonne of ivory, chopped into small pieces and treated with a chemical intended to prevent it being detected, the national wildlife protection service has said.} The haul was made in a Kampala suburb on Saturday, before it could be loaded at Entebbe international airport and flown off to [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[99],"byline":[228],"hashtag":[],"class_list":["post-32706","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news","tag-greatlakesnews","byline-afp"],"bylines":[{"id":228,"name":"AFP","slug":"afp","description":"Agence France-Presse is an international news agency headquartered in Paris. It is the oldest news agency in the world and one of the largest. ","image":{"id":0,"url":"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/?s=96&d=mm&f=y&r=g","alt":"Default avatar","title":"Default avatar","caption":"","mime_type":"image\/jpeg","sizes":[]},"user_id":71}],"contributors":[{"id":228,"name":"AFP","slug":"afp","description":"Agence France-Presse is an international news agency headquartered in Paris. It is the oldest news agency in the world and one of the largest. ","image":{"id":0,"url":"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/?s=96&d=mm&f=y&r=g","alt":"Default avatar","title":"Default avatar","caption":"","mime_type":"image\/jpeg","sizes":[]},"user_id":71}],"featured_image":null,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/32706","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=32706"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/32706\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=32706"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=32706"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=32706"},{"taxonomy":"byline","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/byline?post=32706"},{"taxonomy":"hashtag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/hashtag?post=32706"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}