Ivory trinkets are openly for sale in Kinshasa

A spokesman said poaching began for meat two years ago in the Garamba National Park near the border with Sudan, but the object now was ivory.

A park official told the BBC that 200-300 people were involved.

He estimated only 14,000 elephants remained in DR Congo compared to 90,000 before the country's war began in 1997.

Images

Environmentalists have been meeting this week in Kinshasa to discuss how the country's five national parks have been affected by war.

Pictures taken by wardens show two carcasses of elephants with their tusks chopped off. They also show armed men, with donkeys carrying elephant tusks.

The BBC's Arnaud Zajtman says that, despite an international ban, at the main tourist market in the Congolese capital, Kinshasa, ivory is still being sold.

With the five-year war now over, the Congolese government is hoping to develop tourism to the parks, which are classified by UN cultural organisation Unesco as world heritage sites.