More than 3,000 fake elephant tusks are to travel to Downing Street as part of a national campaign to stop the ivory trade.

Sussex art student Adrian Andrews made the tusks for the Born Free Foundation, which has launched a petition to stop Britain from being the only European country at a forthcoming international trade convention to vote against banning the trade.

Thousands of elephants are butchered every year for their tusks and campaign organisers hope the image of the plaster tusks will encourage the Government to change its mind.

Adrian, an art and design student at Northbrook College in Worthing, met the charity's chief executive, Will Travers, son of actors Virginia McKenna and Bill Travers, at the Dome Cinema in Worthing to raise the profile of the campaign.

The Horsham-based charity plans to present a petition to Westminster and is organising a procession of people bearing fake elephant tusks.

Mr Travers said: "We hope the mound of tusks will help to bring home to the public the scale of the cruelty which is getting worse and worse in some African countries. The ivory trade was banned in the Eighties but in 1997 three African countries were allowed to start selling ivory to the Far East.

"Since then, elephant killing has escalated all over Africa as poachers try to take advantage of the opening in the market. We estimate that every hour of every day another elephant is slaughtered."

Adrian, 34, of East Preston, said: "Everything must be done to stop this trade from continuing as we are going to see the elephant made extinct if it carries on."

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