Mozambique burns world's largest rhino horn seizure

daniel russell

July 6, 2015 4:32 PM

According to WCS, more than 2,400 kilograms (5,280 pounds) of ivory and 86 pieces of rhino horn weighing 193.5 kilograms were put to the torch, in the first major destruction of rhino horn ever.

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As part of a campaign to end an illicit trade that is fuelling a wave of big animal poaching in Africa, Mozambique has burned 2.5 tonnes of seized ivory and rhino horn, a conservation group, Wildlife Conservation Society (WCS) has said.

According to WCS, more than 2,400 kilograms (5,280 pounds) of ivory and 86 pieces of rhino horn weighing 193.5 kilograms were put to the torch, in the first major destruction of rhino horn ever, Reuters news agency reports.

"Today sends a signal. Mozambique will not tolerate poachers, traffickers and the organised criminals which employ and pay them to kill our wildlife and threaten our communities," Mozambique's Environment Minister Celso Correia was quoted as saying.

In May this year, police in Mozambique seized nearly 1.3 tonnes of ivory and rhino horns, obtained from the illegal slaughter of 65 rhinos and 170 elephants, from a house belonging to a Chinese national.

Mozambique is a known source of poachers willing to cross the porous border to South Africa to fill orders for rhino horn from criminal syndicates in east Asia, where some consider it to have medicinal properties.

daniel russell