How al-Shabaab is keeping the black-market African ivory trade alive

It has taken a while, but finally the world appears to be taking the illegal trade in ivory seriously. Why now? Reports of a ‘terror trail’ that links al-Shabaab and black-market ivory. The Elephant Action League investigated the ivory trail into Somalia, and found that ivory, or ‘white gold’, is ‘one of the lifelines of al-Shabaab’. EAL found that according to sources within the militant group, ‘between one to three tons of ivory, fetching a price of roughly $200 per kilo, pass through the ports in southern Somalia every month’. Al-Shabaab’s monthly income from ivory is – according to EAL – between $200,000 and $600,000.

On Thursday, Obama organised for a six ton hoard of ivory confiscated in the US, worth millions of dollars, to be crushed in front of ‘visiting dignitaries’ in Colorado in bid to make a stand against the illegal ivory trade. It’s a symbolic move for a country that has the second-largest market for ivory in the world, but opponents to the crush argued