africa. my next guest keith somerville is an expert on the ivory trade he's the author of the book ivory tower and poaching in africa. is good to have you on the day this is a very dramatic action is there any evidence to suggest that it will change things on the ground for elephants. none whatsoever there have been burnings and crushing and various other media events to destroy ivory very publicly it hasn't all suits the level of poaching it doesn't seem in any meaningful way to of or to demand ivory particularly in china and it's really just a p.r. stunt if anything is counterproductive because it tells those involved in the illegal trade we have just destroyed the ivory for $300.00 elephants that ivory no longer exists the tool will never come on to the market and if anything it's an impetus to more poaching and possibly even an impetus to rise in the price of illegal ivory therefore making it more attractive in the future which you know we we've seen similar vents in the past there is this event most famously the president of kenya who set fire to a heap of elephant tusks back in 1809 and

locust forecasting officer at the un's food and agriculture organization keith good to have you with us if the situation across africa right now well this situation is the worst situation we've seen in the last quarter of a century in canyon which you were mentioning in your program it's the worst situation in 70 years so we were very concerned of course on the upcoming forecast and predictions of what could happen this summer to make it even worse. there just give me an insight as to what's causing these forms of locusts why are they arriving right now well this is a response to whether in fact very very good weather conditions that just didn't start now but it started about 2 years ago in 2018 when there were 2 cycles in the indian ocean that brought very heavy rains and then this was exacerbated by flooding in yemen after that and then another cycle last year at the end of the year in somalia ok let's return to kenya and how has it been dealing with this 2nd generation of these past. well they've had now 2 generations of reading so this has required extensive efforts to control them mainly by aircraft so this is a