4 ideas
Leakey staged the burn as a televised spectacle aimed at the international press and the CITES negotiations. It helped secure the global ban on ivory trade later that year by showing that a poor range state would destroy the ivory rather than sell it.
Any legal ivory channel, whether stockpile sales or regulated quotas, launders poached ivory and keeps prices high enough to pay poachers. Collapsing the market price through a total trade ban does more for elephants than enforcement alone. Burning the stock removes the state's own incentive to profit from the trade.
The decisive battles for elephants and rhinos were fought over patronage, budgets, ministerial turf and presidential favor, not in the bush. Seen this way, the book's real subject is how a reformer uses and then loses political cover. Leakey's leverage came from Moi's backing and donor money, and it disappeared when rivals persuaded Moi he was a threat, which led to his forced resignation in 1994.
Leakey turned a corrupt, underpaid wildlife department into the semi-autonomous Kenya Wildlife Service. He purged staff complicit in poaching, raised ranger pay, and armed rangers with authority to shoot poachers. He also funded the agency through tourism revenue and foreign donors so it did not depend on a patronage-driven treasury. That financial independence made the agency effective, and it also made the agency a political target.