After tighter monitoring was applied recently at the Dar es Salaam harbour in Tanzania, East African ivory smugglers moved their export hub to northern Mozambique ports.
Tanzania remains the logistical centre from where the smuggling networks access money and equipment, but evidence shows they increasingly use Mozambican ports such as Pemba, Nacala and Beira to transfer illicit ivory consignments to Asia.
Most of the ivory comes from Niassa National Reserve, Mozambique’s largest game reserve which shares a border with Tanzania. In 2014 Oxpeckers reported that the killing of elephants for ivory was taking place on an “industrial scale” in Niassa, and official complicity was aiding the slaughter. More than 10,000 elephants have been slaughtered in Niassa over the past five years, reducing the population by more than 70%.
Almost three years of monitoring the smuggling networks operating out of Niassa indicates they have vast financial and logistical support from high-ranking contacts, allowing them free and easy mobility everywhere they need to be.
Read the full article in Oxpeckers site
Recent seizure of ivory shipped from Mozambique was done in Cambodia. Read the article published by Club of Mozambique