You wouldn’t think a room as big as a warehouse could feel this airless— not even a maximum-security warehouse, like this one. At the same time, the place seems odorless. Which also seems strange, with so much evidence of death shelved in wire-mesh bins and stacked up like firewood on all sides. But the overwhelming impression is utter soundlessness, except for the tread of armed paramilitary escorts’ boots.Few other outsiders have ever seen the inside of the Tanzanian government’s notoriously secretive Ivory Room. Whenever the country’s law enforcers catch ivory poachers or smugglers, or find an elephant dead of natural causes, the tusks are supposed to be sent to this repository in the African nation’s largest city, Dar es Salaam. At present the government-owned stockpile holds more than 137 tons of ivory. Its retail value on the ground in Hong Kong would be more than a quarter of a billion dollars—if only the worldwide ban on ivory trade didn’t prohibit such sales.For now, however, the ivory continues to pile up. And the worst of it is that what arrives in this government warehouse represents only a fraction of the total kill in Tanzania alone, never mind the rest of the… Read full this story
- Endangered white rhino is born at Disney’s Animal Kingdom and park officials say both the mother and calf ‘are doing well’
- Adolescent woolly rhino with hazel coloured fur that has been preserved in the Siberian permafrost for up to 40,000 years is thawed out for the first time
- Extinction crisis: 'The window of opportunity is closing'
- Northern White Rhino Dies, Leaving Only 4 Left on Earth
- World's Oldest Female White Rhino Lives in New Orleans Zoo
- Royals' bloody trophy hunting past when Queen posed with tiger shot by Prince Philip
- Delingpole: We Didn’t Ask For it, But Boris the Con Man’s Great Green Revolution Whopper is Coming
- African powerhouse
- Anti-Qatar alliance renews attack on al-Jazeera Arabic
- Hundreds of Dead Pelicans in Senegal Infected With Highly Pathogenic Bird Flu, Reports Say
The Economics of Extinction: Africa's Elephants and Rhinos in Danger have 334 words, post on www.newsweek.com at January 29, 2013. This is cached page on GameMax. If you want remove this page, please contact us.