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Total donates Sh1m fuel as Kenya sets ablaze 106 tonnes of ivory

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A Total service station worker holds one of the 25,000 elephant tusks incinerated over the weekend. Total Kenya donated 20,000 litres of fuel. PHOTO | COURTESY

Oil marketer Total Kenya donated fuel worth Sh1 million that was used to torch an estimated five per cent of the world’s seized ivory last Saturday.

The event was graced by several heads of state, renowned conservationists and celebrities.

The 105 tonnes of ivory and 1.35 tonnes of rhino horn were set ablaze by a mixture of diesel and kerosene sprayed under the tusks with pipes and jets to fuel the fire.

The mixture of kerosene and diesel fuel is highly inflammable and offered the amount of heat that was needed to reduce the pile into ashes.

The system was designed by Robin Hollister, who used it in 1989 when the then President Daniel Moi led the burning of a 12,000-kilogramme stockpile.

Hollister waited for President Uhuru Kenyatta to put a flame on the stack of ivory and then switched on a spout of fuel that ignited the stockpile resulting in a huge blaze that got the incineration going. This was the fourth time Kenya was burning ivory.

READ: Kenya burns world’s biggest ivory haul to save elephants

The first ivory bonfire was led by President Moi in 1989, President Mwai Kibaki burnt a stockpile in 2011 and President Uhuru Kenyatta last year.

The government hopes Saturday’s event will be a firm statement against poaching which threatens to wipe out the remaining elephants and rhinos in the Kenyan wild.

On Thursday, Mr Kenyatta, British actress Elizabeth Hurley and dozens of African dignitaries and leaders attended the Giants Club Summit in Laikipia  to discuss how to  protect Africa’s remaining elephants.

Total Kenya has annually held The Rhino Charge event to raise money to construct an electric fence surrounding the Aberdares, Mt Kenya and Mau Eburu forests to protect elephants and rhinos from poachers.