Nigeria's Minister of State for the Environment has unveiled an elephant-shaped sculpture made from confiscated ivory. It is the country's latest attempt to raise awareness as it battles the illegal wildlife trade.
Nigeria's Minister of State for Environment unveiled an elephant-shaped sculpture made from confiscated ivory. It is the country's latest attempt to raise awareness as it battles the illegal wildlife trade, AFP reports.
The grey statue is made from fragments of a record 2.5 tons of confiscated tusks worth $11 million, destroyed by authorities in January, as well as powdered pangolin scales.
Unveiling the sculpture at the National Parks Service headquarters in Abuja, the Minister of State for Environment, Isaac Kunle Salako, said it was "a symbol of new hope for Nigerian wildlife".
He, however, warned that poachers were "very persistent and do not give up easily".
"The demand for wildlife parts and derivatives continues, with a sharp increase in black markets. So we need to be decisive, enforce our laws and increase the use of technology to fight these criminals," he added.
Salako said the sculpture, as tall as a man, was intended as "a memorial to the hundreds of illegally killed elephants and as a symbol of our unwavering commitment to wildlife conservation".
International trade in ivory has been banned since 1989 under the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora.
But according to the NGO Wildlife Conservation Society, this has not stopped wildlife traders from operating in Nigeria, where elephant numbers have declined from hundreds of thousands to fewer than 400 due to poaching and habitat loss.
The UN Office on Drugs and Crime says Nigeria has also become a major transit hub for trafficking illegal wildlife products from East and Central Africa.
These include the scales of African pangolins, small mammals coveted for use in traditional medicine, including in China and Vietnam. | BGNES
