Authorities seize tusks of 58 elephants at Kenya airport

AUTHORITIES in Kenya have seized the tusks of 58 elephants — totalling one ton of ivory — after sniffer dogs led investigators to containers at the country’s main airport that were bound for Nigeria.

Joseph Ngisa, the officer in charge of criminal investigation in the country’s airports, said no arrests had been made. It was not immediately clear why the ivory was being transported to the West African nation; the most common destination for smuggled ivory is Asia.

Patrick Omondi, an expert on elephants at the Kenya Wildlife Service, says illegal ivory smuggling in Africa rose after the 2007 temporary lifting of a ban by the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species.

In Kenya in 2009, 271 elephants were killed and 187 were killed in 2010.