Bankura (West Bengal): The Bankura district forest department has set fire to elephant tusks to discourage poaching and ivory trading.
Under the Wildlife (Protection) Act, the forest department can destroy ivory on its own initiative. There are many cases where wild elephants die due to electrocution or natural reasons. For the last 10 years, the tusks of the dead elephants were collected and kept under the initiative of Bankura district forest department.
On Tuesday, nearly 57 elephant tusks were destroyed under the initiative of the department. The move is aimed at ensuring that ivory is not used for any unethical purpose.
Umar Imam, forest ranger of Bankura North Forest Division, said, "Ivory is a very valuable thing. We store dead elephant tusks so that smugglers don't get hold of them. We kept more than 50 tusks here for the last 10 years so that these tusks could not be illegally traded. We have now decided to burn the tusks to ashes after the death of the elephants," he said.
According to Imam, West Bengal is likely to be the first state in India to take up the initiative to destroy tusks after amendment of the Act. This is for the first time that ivory was burnt, he added. He said that the tusks were all burnt to ashes to issue a message to the poachers.
Kenya hit the headlines after it burnt 105 metric tons of confiscated ivory at Nairobi National Park in 2016 in order to issue a message against illegal poaching.
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