Medical News
Environment
28 May 2019
Do they have a future?Education Images/UIG via Getty
By Adam VaughanThe number of African elephants being slaughtered by poachers annually has more than halved, with the decline linked to waning Chinese demand for illegal ivory.
South-east Asia’s burgeoning demand for illegal wildlife trade products saw elephant poaching surge in the late noughties, with mortality rates peaking at 10 per cent of the continent’s elephant population in 2011.
But rates plummeted to around 4 per cent by 2017, or up to 15,000 elephants killed annually, an analysis of 53 sites across Africa found. The fall was closely correlated with a drop in demand, with the legal trade in mammoth ivory in China used as an indicator of the illegal trade in elephant ivory.
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Colin Beale at the University of York, a co-author on the study, says: “I think it is good news that the poaching rate is coming down. I don’t think they’ve come down enough.”
Elephant populations can grow at around 5 per cent a year. But Beale says evidence suggests a 4 per cent poaching mortality rate is still too high for elephant numbers to be sustainable, because they can also die from natural factors such as drought and young elephants being killed by predators.
Poaching rates are on the decline
Ofir Drori of the Eagle Network, which helps African governments with law enforcement, says such ‘desktop data’ of a reduction in poaching strongly contrasts with his experience in the field. “From fighting the trafficking networks on the ground I can say we see no signs of decline whatsoever, and rather a continued increase in levels of ivory trafficking.”
The reported Africa-wide fall in poaching rates also masks big regional variations. The highest rates are in west and central Africa, while south and east Africa have very low rates. Botswana, which is renowned for low levels of corruption, has very little poaching. Forest elephants are suffering more than savannah elephants, because the heaviest poaching is taking place in forests.
Beale’s analysis found a link between corruption and poverty and higher poaching rates, suggesting in the short term improving governance and lifting people up matters more than improving law enforcement. Long term, he says ending demand is priority number one, but will take time. “Ultimately the only way we are going to stop poaching in Africa is by stopping demand in south-east Asia.”
Journal reference: Nature Communications, DOI: 10.1038/s41467-019-09993-2
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