Illegal ivory trade threatening African elephant

Illegal ivory trade threatening African elephant



Feb 2007 - The illegal 
ivory trade is flourishing and threatens to undermine efforts 
to save the African elephant from extinction, according to a 
new study released Monday. Poaching of the species has risen 
to a level not seen in two decades, researchers report, and 
could doom the world's largest land animal unless western 
governments step up efforts to halt the illegal trade. 
"The illegal ivory trade recently intensified to the highest 
levels ever reported," according to the study, published in 
the online edition of the Proceedings of the National Academy 
of Science. 
China's burgeoning economy is a major force driving the growth 
of the illegal trade, escalating prices and attracting 
organized crime. 
Poaching continues to threat one of the world's most 
intelligent species. 
A kilogram of ivory that $200 by 2004 now fetches some $750, 
the researchers said, and from August 2005 through August 
2006, authorities seized some 24 tons of illegal ivory 
destined for Asia. 
But that figure represents only about 10 percent of the 
estimated illegal shipments, bringing the total closer to 240 
tons - an amount that would require the slaughter of more than 
23,000 elephants, about 5 percent of the estimated wild 
African population. 
"Policing this trafficking has been hampered by the inability 
to reliably determine geographic origin of contraband ivory," 
according to the study. "Ivory can be smuggled across multiple 
international borders and along numerous trade routes, making 
poaching hotspots and potential trade routes difficult to 
identify." 
This also makes it difficult to "refute a country's denial of 
poaching problems," the study said, but a new genetic test is 
helping to determine which elephant populations are most 
impacted by the illegal ivory trade. 
The new test, devised by a research team led by University of 
Washington biologist Samuel Wasser, was used to track the 
source of a 6.5-ton shipment of ivory intercepted by 
authorities in Singapore in June 2002. 
The shipment included 532 tusks and 42,000 hankos, small 
blocks of solid ivory used to make signature stamps, or chops, 
that are popular in China and Japan. The seizure was the 
second-largest on record and the largest since the 
international ivory ban took effect in 1989 - it represented 
ivory from 3,000 to 6,500 poached elephants. 
Authorities assumed the ivory had been collected from many 
different places, in particular from forest elephants, but the 
work by Wasser's team has shattered that belief and raised 
concern that regional populations could be decimated by 
poaching. 
DNA analysis traced the ivory to elephants found in a small 
area of southern Africa, centered in Zambia. 
The tusks in the seized shipment weighed an average of 11 
kilograms apiece, more than twice the weight normally seen in 
the market, indicating they came from a large number of older 
elephants. 
"Elephants are majestic animals and are not trivial to the 
ecosystem," said Wasser, the study's lead author and director 
of the Center for Conservation Biology at the University of 
Washington. "They are a keystone species and taking them out 
significantly alters the habitat. It has ripple effects on 
lots of different species." 
Wasser and his colleagues urged western governments to help 
African nations curb the illegal trade by targeting poachers. 
Poor nations, such as Zambia, can't do it alone, they contend. 

"If it really is organized crime that's driving this, then the 
only hope we have of stopping it is to stop the ivory at the 
source, to not let it into the international market," Wasser 
explained. "Because once it's in the international market, the 
trade is very hard to stop." 
Tusks from the second-largest contraband ivory recovery in 
history are laid out on the ground in Singapore after they 
were seized in 2002. 
The world implemented a ban on the ivory trade in 1989 amid 
evidence poachers had decimated the population by some 60 
percent during the 1980s. 
The World Conservation Union estimates some 400,000 to 600,000 
African elephants remain in the wild, down from as many more 
than 1.3 million in 1979. Poaching and habitat loss are the 
key threats to the species. 
Western nations contributed heavily to enforcement efforts 
when the international ban took effect in 1989, the 
researchers note, and in the next four years poaching was 
virtually eliminated. But the success apparently left a sense 
that the problem was solved and the nations withdrew their 
funding. 
In addition to stronger enforcement, the researchers call for 
education programs to discourage poaching in Africa and to 
persuade people in Asia not to use ivory, much of which is 
obtained illegally. 
"If people really realized what is happening they would be 
ashamed to be part of the crisis," Wasser said. "We don't want 
to spend our time catching criminals, we want to stop the 
crime from happening. That's the most effective enforcement 
you can do." 

---