MP Jeremy Corbyn pleads: ‘Hand over ivory’

Published: 8th April, 2011

THESE huge tusks once belonged to a magnificent African elephant, killed by poachers who sell the ivory on the lucrative black market. They were seized in Warwickshire by the Met’s Wildlife Crime Unit after being illegally imported.

Last Wednesday, Islington North Labour MP Jeremy Corbyn and Sergeant Rowan Healey, of the Wildlife Crime Unit, posed with the tusks to publicise an International Fund for Animal Welfare (IFAW) campaign asking people to hand over old ivory trinkets to stop them find­ing their way onto the black market.

The illegal trade is worth £12bn a year but IFAW says many people don’t realise the elephant has to be killed for the tusks to be extracted.