Every one of us should feel saddened and indeed feel ashamed to discover that the human persecution of wildlife is the second major cause of biodiversity loss after habitat degradation. It is understandable that, as the human population passes the 7.7 billion mark this month, the competition for physical space is placing huge pressure on habitat for wildlife but, the extinction of charismatic species through the practice of obtaining animal body parts for self-gratification does appear selfish at the extreme.
The illegal trade in wildlife is the fourth biggest transnational form of organized crime in the world, ranked up there alongside drug trafficking, people trafficking and identity theft. Let’s be clear, we are talking about the mass slaughter of animals, often on the African continent, for the trade in animal body parts– be it elephant tusks, rhino horns or pangolin scales. This economic demand is driving charismatic species, like the elephant, towards extinction at a rate faster than any other single cause. The size of the illegal global market in animal parts is estimated to be in the region of $10 to $20 billion a year – of which the elephant tusk trade is about $4 billion.
In 2013, 50,000 elephants were killed out of a total population of 430,000– 12 percent of the global population of elephants. Just stop for a minute and think about these numbers and the tragedy we are looking at… these are long lived animals with a complex social system and they don’t even start to breed until they are at least 14 years of age, so the loss of experience will make re-establishing populations extremely hard. What is really sad, is that this is totally amoral – armed gangs are being sent by organized cartels into countries on a different continent to slaughter an important wildlife resource for those countries, leading to loss in foreign tourism income, reduced jobs, instability, corruption and conflict. The English language is very subtle here – by using the word amoral the assumption is that the buyers of the ivory in the far east do not actually understand that because of their demands, they are directly driving African wildlife to extinction. If the people in the far east are really aware of what is happening then the word to use is immoral, which means they know what they are doing.
One astonishing fact is that there has only ever been one prosecution of an ivory baron– compare this with the drug barons who are producing and trafficking drugs across international borders and are tracked down and arrested on a fairly regular basis by drug enforcement agencies. Of course, the relative resources available for stopping wildlife trafficking are trivial in comparison with those for stopping wildlife trade, but the lack of successful prosecutions against cartel leaders lead us to suppose there must be significant large-scale corruption involved. Having said that, just a few weeks ago, Tanzania successfully prosecuted “The Ivory Queen,” Yang Fen Glan, who was given a 15-year prison sentence in Tanzania for running an ivory gang accused of exporting the tusks of more than 350 elephants. This is a major breakthrough although it would be nice to prosecute the people in China who were demanding ivory from her. In response, Amani Ngusaru, the WWF in country director said: ” she ran a network that killed thousands of elephants” and contributed significantly to the “industrial-scale” of illegal poaching in Tanzania that has been the main reason elephant numbers have fallen from 1110,00 to 43000 in 2014.
The elephant industry willfully salughtering elephant families just for their ivory is clearly very emotive since it involves mass destruction of one countries wildlife resources and their economy to supply another- and this is beautifully explained in the Vimeo Video ) and Youtube ) “God’s Ivory” by the remarkable journalist and conservation photographer Brent Stirton – watch it. On the one hand it involves understanding thee complex and social subject of the market driving forces originating in China, Vietnam and Thailand and on the other hand, the onsite cartel organization which organize the mass killing and then the shipping of ivory in large containers. This article focuses on hoe science is being used to try and provide insight and support to help protect elephants. A major challenge is to identify the hotspots of where elephants are being slaughtered so that defense force can focus attention .
Prosecuting with DNA
One of the great scientific breakthroughs that is helping the fight against the ivory cartels has been led by the lab of Professor Sam Wasser , Director of the institute for conservation biology at Washington State University. Sam Wasser and his team published a really important study in 2015 that showed how the use of genetic information from elephants can be used to identify the location where the ivory was probably poached.
They travelled extensively throughout the range of the African elephant collecting elephant dung samples, extracting the DNA of the elephant and then looking at the presence and frequency of specific replicated parts of the DNA known as microsatellites. These are highly variable sections of DNA and so variable from one location to another, enabling the production of a spatial map of relative gene frequencies and genetic diversity of elephants across Africa. Given some DNA, that can be extracted from the growing end of the tusks, Sam Wasser and his team can tell you where the elephant came from within 300 kilometers. Of course, when authorities seize ivory, it is either at an African port for export or a far eastern port for import, such as Singapore. So, telling authorities where the ivory originated from can help both the conservation activities of protection and also help prosecute and break up the ivory cartels. Interestingly, more than 80% of the seized ivory were traced to different countries of origin than those countries initially thought as the sources of ivory.
In the ivory seizures, Sam Wasser analyzed, he identified that the ivory was really coming from four key locations. The early ivory seizures between 2002 and 2007 were coming out of Zambia national parks, including Kifuwe and the Luangwa areas. Forest elephant ivory was coming from eastern DRC – a wartorn region. More recently, ivory from forest elephants has come from north eastern Gabon, specifically the Tridom protected area that crosses the border into Cameroun and Congo. More recently, the focus for the savannah elephant has shifted to southern Tanzania and northern Mozambique in the Selous-Niassa ecosystem, which is one of the most extensive areas of miombo woodland in Africa and a little known, but stunningly beautiful and special wildlife area. In the last couple of years, more ivory has come from the Ruaha system, in central Tanzania and the largest national park in Tanzania.
Wasser’s lab has also been able to identify which tusks come from the same individual. They have found that the cartels often spilt the tusks into different shipments and in this way the authorities have been able to link different shipments and show in court that the same gang must have been involved with both shipments and in so doing increased their power for prosecution and harsher sentence term for the offenders. The use of genetic evidence has, without question, provided a more detailed and rigorous analysis that can help prosecute offenders. Sam Wasser is now a scientific hero, sometimes referred to as “The Guru of Doo Doo” and his diligence and rigorous work has been recognized by the prestigious Albert Schweitzer medal.
Of course, genetic data is not the only way we can use science to help fight elephant poaching. Recent statistical tools have been developed to get an estimate of how important illegal killing of elephants is. In 2002 CITES instigated a system of Monitoring the Illegal Killing of Elephants – known as MIKE – that has provided extensive data from 45 sites across Africa on where and when elephants have been killed and compared this with elephants that have died from natural causes. This has allowed estimates of what is happening to the elephant populations in different parts of its distribution and provides independent ways of identifying where anti-poaching efforts should be focused. Indeed, it is now clear that strong anti-poaching efforts that can curb elephant poaching on site can indeed reduce the killing rate – but recall this is just half of the problem. The poachers that are caught are invariably local poor people, recruited in to break the law for financial gain. If the demand for ivory in the far east stopped tomorrow – then all elephant poaching would cease and most of the elephant populations could recover. This requires increased awareness amongst the people of China, Vietnam and Thailand coupled with strong government policy and some custodial sentences.
References
1.Wasser, et al. 2015. Genetic assignment of large seizures of elephant ivory reveals Africa’s major hotspots. Science 349: 84-87
2. Wittemeyer et al. 2014. Illegal killing of elephants for ivory drives global decline in African Elephants. PNAS 111, 13117-13121
