KWS Officers Recover 8 Elephant Tusks

By: Gichuki Kabukuru

Kenya wildlife service security officers recently arrested three Tanzanian nationals in an operation that saw them recovered 8 elephant tusks.

The three Tanzanians who are currently facing charges of being in possession of Ivory illegally have already been charged in a Tanzanian court. The decision to arraign the three in Tanzania, intimates Julius Kimani, Assistant Director, Kenya Wildlife Service, “was necessitated by the fact the unlike Kenya, Tanzanian courts metes out stiffer penalties to anyone found in possession of game trophies without a valid permit.”

According to Julius Kimani, “the three culprits are said to have pilfered the ivory from the dead jumbo’s that had earlier been struck by lightening at a cross-border village known at Kavuma along the Kenya side before escaping to Tanzania where they were arrested in a village called Karamba.

“Strange as the case may be, our investigations reveal that the six elephants had been struck by a powerful lightening killing them instantly, it is then that these herdsmen decided to profit where they had not labored,” a candid Kimani states.

Though this very strange occurrence is said to have happened around the 6th of May, “the sighting and reporting of this information to our Tsavo West National Park team took a few days. Indeed a week elapsed during which the philanderers had executed their pranks and were in the process of offloading their goodies; but as soon as this information was relayed to our security team in Tsavo West National Park, a serious security operation was mounted to help recover the ivory and arrest the culprits,” a stern Kimani intimates.

“When we were informed that our six jumbos had been sighted dead along the Kenya Tanzania border, we marshaled every support we could as we were of the opinion that poachers were on a killing spree,” recounts Kimani of the events prior to the recovery.

In what appears to be an act that is stranger than fiction, the initial report from the ground team was one, which even Kimani, an experienced warden could not buy at first.

“I mean, I have witnessed the killing of a cow by lightening, I have even heard of people killed by the same and even recently in the rift valley, a number of pelicans were struck dead by lightening; but jumbo’s - those massive animals no! I could not buy that story, not at first! Not until all the stones in that particular case were turned,” a smiling Kimani revealed.

The three culprits, investigations later revealed, only pounced on the elephant “tusk cache” after they realized that lightening had butchered the six elephants for them.

“Dead in one place, four adults and two juveniles, the site where the jumbos had been struck dead was indeed strange! Strange even to our own investigators,” Kimani revealed.

Armed tooth and nail in their efforts to arrest the culprits, but first establish the possible cause of such an extensive butchering of jumbo’s reminiscent of the poaching spree of the late 70s and early 80s, questions such as what weapons had been used in the killing of the entire six in one place, and how many people would have been involved to make such a killing successful, kept popping in the minds of the officers investigating the strange case of the six dead jumbos.

Recounting the shock that his ground operations team met with at the site of the dead jumbos, Kimani notes, “without any visible injuries and no bullet holes, leave alone the use of metal detectors to try and see if any ammunition was used, it is then that an operation was mounted with the help of our Tanzania counterparts revealing that indeed the killings were as a result of lightening.”

Kimani states, “we took a contingent of officers to oversee and run the operation which included a ballistic expert, metal detectors and even the tracker dogs, only to be informed by herdsmen living along the border area that the elephants had been struck-dead by lightening.”

According to Kimani, “though we have already recovered the eight elephant tusks that had been poached from the four adults, our Kenyan team together with our Tanzanian counterparts are still investigating the possibility of finding and busting what appears to be an illegal ivory market in Tanzania.”

While acts of poaching continue to pose a threat to the wildlife figures, a candid Julius Kimani is of the opinion that, “the Kenya Wildlife Service has intensified security operations and patrols in all its facilities and any of the areas that have abundant wildlife.

“We know that many factors among them, poverty, population increase and even traditional practices continue to pose a threat to our wildlife heritage, but as the organization mandated to protect and conserve this heritage, KWS is doing all that it possibly can to guarantee our wildlife resource the requisite security.

Ends