It's incredible that even today, with modern technology that places webcams and microchips in even the most unthinkable places, that track and scan people's internal organs on arrival and departure, we can still talk about smuggling elephant tusks.
Yes, because first of all the elephant has to be killed in order to extract its precious bony protuberances, and the operation isn't very quick. Then the loot has to be hidden, transported and finally loaded onto a ship bound for Asia, which, despite China's historic ban in 2018, is still the only market that openly deals with ivory, not so much to make jewellery and objets d'art that would be difficult to trade, but for traditional medicine, presuming who knows what beneficial properties that cannot be sought elsewhere, rather than in the murder of protected species.

But this is not the only illegal destination for African elephant tusks: the IFAW (International Fund for Animal Welfare) has recently analysed the illegal ivory market in some European countries, including Italy (as well as Germany, France, Holland, Belgium and Portugal), finding advertisements and online markets, not only on the dark web, offering ivory items of which only 10% had the necessary legality certification for that small part of objects that are still marketable.
And it is clearly a question of human stupidity, rather than a matter of investment or flaunting values.
This is why, unfortunately, even in Kenya we are witnesses to the continuous killing of elephants and only rarely to the arrest of the culprits, who are often not even the same people who are found with the stolen goods, nor even those who commission the killings, purchase and export the ivory. After many years, after two decades, we have reached zero rhino poaching (their horn is still in high demand to make an alternative ‘viagra’), but the rhino is a more sedentary animal and easier to monitor. But Kenya remains a collection point for other East African countries as well. It's of little use that the parliament has approved strict anti-poaching laws and that the government has strengthened security in the parks to stop poaching, which threatens the vital tourism industry. It's been nine years since, at the behest of the then president Uhuru Kenyatta, 105 tonnes of elephant ivory and one and a half tonnes of rhino horn were burnt in Nairobi National Park, taken from over 7000 animals. Something has certainly improved, but it's not enough to prevent other massacres.

Last weekend, police and KWS rangers arrested three suspected poachers in Meru County who were transporting two elephant tusks weighing 60 kilograms in a jute bag hidden in their car.
The sale value is estimated at around 50 thousand euros; it is believed that the tusks belonged to an animal found lifeless and completely disfigured just outside Meru National Park. Investigations have been launched to trace the entire poaching network. As someone who never loses hope in Africa says, ‘A luta continua’ (the fight goes on).