Led by President Uhuru Kenyatta, other dignitaries will join to witness the lighting of a fuel gel which will flow into the center of each pyre and ignite pieces of confiscated endangered African sandalwood.
In 2014, 164 elephants were killed, down from 302 in 2013. Currently, there are an estimated 38,000 elephants in the country, a significant rise from 16,000 a decade ago.
In 2008, the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Flora and Fauna allowed Namibia, Botswana, Zimbabwe and South Africa, to sell their 102 tonnes of ivory and rhino horns.
Some of the world’s leading conservation groups are rooting for enforcement of laws and serious legal measures against well connected individuals, feeding the illicit ivory trade.
This is not the first time the country has resorted to burning or crushing elephant tusks to deter poachers. According to the World Wildlife Fund, which calls the move “a symbolic gesture with real potential to stop wildlife crime,” Kenyan authorities destroyed nearly 40 tonnes of ivory between 1989 and 2015.
According to the World Wide Fund for Nature, there are only 470,000 of the African elephant left today, a number that has gone down from over three million in the first half of the twentieth century.
Despite the rise in their numbers, the African elephant, which is also the largest land animal still faces extinction.