Kenya must take drastic action to stem a surge of elephant and rhino poaching, veteran conservationist Richard Leakey has warned, lamenting that known ringleaders are operating with "outrageous impunity".
The poachers have "an extraordinary level of international criminal backing... operating with outrageous impunity, killing our elephants and rhinos at levels that will make them extinct within the country," Leakey told reporters on Wednesday.
"It's a national disaster, and we have to stand up and say that it cannot go on."
Kenya, acting as a conduit for smuggling across East Africa, is "now the worst in the world for ivory trafficking," Leakey said, quoting an Interpol report which said 13 tonnes were seized last year.
The rise in poaching - with rhinos being killed even inside the most heavily guarded zones - show that poachers have little fear of tough new laws designed to stem the wave of killings, he said.
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"They could not operate with the impunity we are seeing if you did not have some form of protection from law enforcement agencies," Leakey said.
"It is a problem of a few criminals... the ringleaders are known," he added, claiming that a core group of around 20 to 30 people were organising the mass poaching, but that none had faced justice.
A recent study by the Kenyan conservation campaign group Wildlife Direct found that just four per cent of those convicted of wildlife crime spent time in jail.
While declining to name names, Leakey said it was "unthinkable" security forces "do not know the names of the key players".
Leakey, 69, a Kenyan national and former head of the government's Kenya Wildlife Service (KWS), was key in stemming the rampant poaching of the late 1980s, bringing in extreme measures to combat poachers including sending helicopter gunships into national parks.
Kenya's elephant and rhino populations recovered from the brink of disaster, but more than two decades later the east African nation is once again facing soaring levels of poaching.
