A chinese businesswoman popularly known as “Ivory Queen” has been sentenced for 15years in jail.
Yang Fenglan has been sentenced by the Tanzanian government for smuggling hundreds of elephant tusks.
She was found guilty together with other two Tanzanian men.
According to reports Yang was operating one of Africa’s biggest ivory-smuggling rings, responsible for smuggling $2.5m (£1.9m) worth of tusks from some 400 elephants.
Yang was convicted on charges relating to the smuggling of around 800 pieces of ivory between 2000 and 2014 from Tanzania to the Far East.
She had been under investigation for more than a year when she was arrested in 2015, following a high-speed car chase.
Ivory poaching is said to have caused a 20% decline in the population of African elephants in the last decade.
The International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN), a global environmental body, says the population of African elephants has fallen to 415,000 – a drop of 110,000 over the last 10 years – as a result of poaching.
The illicit trade is fuelled by demand from China and east Asia, where ivory is used to make jewellery and ornaments.