Chinese queen of Ivory arrested in Tanzania

A Chinese woman Yang Feng Glan nicknamed the “Queen of Ivory” has been arrested in Tanzania and charged with smuggling at least 706 elephant tusks that authorities say are worth about $2.5 million.

Glan, 66, is thought to be the most notorious ivory trafficker arrested in East Africa in the last decade. She ran a sophisticated supply chain between East Africa and China for about 10 years, Tanzanian authorities say. Many of her suppliers were also arrested.

She was denied bail at an appearance before Tanzania’s High Court on Thursday

“Across Africa, they keep arresting small fish here and there,” said Andrea Costa, a spokesman for the Elephant Action League, a nonprofit group that fights crime against wildlife. “They have finally caught a big fish.”

Glan is thought to have come to Tanzania as a Swahili-Chinese translator in 1975, when China began to build a railway in the East African nation, according to Elephant Action League. Tanzanian law enforcement says she began trafficking ivory as far back as 2006.

Described as “extremely wealthy and extremely connected” in China and Tanzania, Glan owned businesses, including a large restaurant, in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania’s largest city, and she was even serving as the secretary general of the Tanzania-China Africa Business Council.

A source close to the investigation told CNN that Glan was under surveillance when, on September 28, an elite police task force swooped in on her in Dar es Salaam. After a brief car chase, she was apprehended. She appeared before Tanzania’s High Court on Thursday and was denied bail.

This counts as a major success for Tanzania, which is referred to by some as ground zero of elephant poaching in Africa. The East African nation has lost almost two-thirds of its elephants in the last decade, the Environmental Investigation Agency, a UK-based nongovernmental organization, said in a report last year.

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The arrest was carried out through a new specialized wildlife trafficking unit, part of a larger task force on serious crimes known as the Tanzanian National and Transnational Serious Crimes Investigation Unit. Sources say the unit has arrested at least one wildlife trafficker per day since its inception.

Government spokesman Assah Mwambene says the government, through the elite unit, has “stepped up Tanzania’s war on poaching.”

Many say the issue is with demand, and China has long been cast as the source of the problem as the largest ivory importer in the world.

“The elephant species is in the hands of the Chinese President,” Costa said. “Once the President decides to close down the legal market of ivory and elephant in China, the poaching of elephants will end.”

The Chinese government has recently made strides to reduce the ivory trade in the country.

In September, Chinese President Xi Jinping and U.S. President Barack Obama made history by announcing that the two countries would protect elephants from the poaching crisis with nearly complete bans on ivory imports and exports, promising “significant and timely steps to halt the domestic commercial trade of ivory.”

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