Chinese smuggler nicknamed ‘Queen of Ivory’ arrested in Tanzania

A Chinese woman nicknamed the "Queen of Ivory" has been arrested in Tanzania and charged with smuggling at least 706 elephant tusks worth about $2.5 million, along with many of her suppliers. Running a sophisticated supply chain between East Africa and China for about 10 years, Yang Feng Glan is thought to be the most notorious ivory trafficker arrested in East Africa in the last decade.

An African bull elephant in Tanzania

Yang 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.

Horn of Saint Blaise, 1100-1200 AD, made of ivory

Said Elephant Action League, a nonprofit group that fights crime against wildlife,

"Across Africa, they keep arresting small fish here and there. They have finally caught a big fish.”

Yang 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 and began trafficking ivory as far back as 2006. Described as "extremely wealthy and extremely connected" in China and Tanzania, Yang 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.

The waterfront of Dar es Salaam

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. And China has long been cast as the source of the problem as the largest ivory importer in the world.

Ivory comb

Said Elephant Action League,

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

(All images - credit: Wikimedia Commons under Creative Commons licence)