Container laden with 6,000 kgs of ivory goes missing
By Times Reporter

A CONTAINER laden with 6,000 kgs of elephant ivory that was seized in Manila, Philippines last year has gone missing, Zambia Wildlife Authority (ZAWA) has disclosed.
In January this year, ZAWA was informed that an illegal contraband of elephant ivory believed to have originated from Zambia had been seized in Manila.
ZAWA public relations officer, Maureen Mwape, said in an interview yesterday that ZAWA and the Lusaka Agreement Task Force (LATF) undertook a verification trip to Manila to establish the origin of the seized elephant ivory.
“It is difficult to tell the value of the missing ivory but under the Zambia Safari Hunting, the price of a tusks according to the size of an elephant was at US$10,000,†she said.
Ms Mwape said the officers arrived in Manila on June 3, this year and were disturbed to find the elephant ivory in the container had been stolen.
It went missing while in the custody of the Bureau of Customs before it was surrendered to the wildlife authority in the Philippines.
The Bureau of Customs had insisted on keeping the tusks despite the department of environment and national resources (DENR)’s repeated requests to turn the contraband over to the protected areas and Wildlife Bureau.
The Bureau of Customs has since launched investigation into the missing ivory.
In a similar development, in 2002, an investigation team consisting of ZAWA, LATF, and the Anti-Corruption Bureau (ACB) of Malawi uncovered information on shipment of a 20-foot container with illegal elephant ivory packed in Malawi.
The container was destined for the Far East and at that time they had been shipped to South Africa en-route to Singapore.
In August 2003, the Wildlife Regulatory Branch of Singapore’s Agri-Food and Veterinary Authority (AVA) offered to handover the confiscated ivory to LAFT.
Between September and October 2003, interested parties held negotiations.
In March 2004, the government of Singapore handed over the consignment of 6.5 tonnes of confiscated ivory to LATF. The consignment was subsequently shipped to Kenya.
In June this year, the Singapore authorities seized the consignment, opened it and discovered the ivory weighed about 6.5 tonnes, consisting of whole tusks and 40, 810 rough carved cylinders similar to those used in the Far East.
Ms Mwape said that was one of the largest seizures of contraband ivory ever witnessed in the recent times originating from Africa.
She said the results of the DNA and isotope analysis of the 6.5 tonnes of elephant’s ivory seized in Singapore in June 2002 indicated that the elephant ivory was from Zambia, Malawi and Tanzania.
The DNA analysis was conducted at the University of Washington, Seattle, USA and the Isotope analysis took place at University of Cape Town, South Africa.

surprise, surprise...

I guess that they need to begin looking where it was originally destined for. That would probably be a good starting point.

There's an old saying that goes: "You can buy anything in this world for money."