Here’s big news: Elephants see memorable gains
Decline in ivory trade, GPS have helped rangers
MIKUMI NATIONAL PARK, Tanzania — The elephant staggered and keeled over in the tall grass in southern Tanzania, where some of the world’s worst poaching has happened.
It wasn’t a killer who targeted her but a conservation official, immobilizing her with a dart containing drugs. Soon she was snoring loudly, and officials propped open her trunk with a twig to help her breathe. They slid a 26pound GPS tracking collar around the rough skin of her neck and injected an antidote, bringing her back to her feet. After inspecting the contraption with her trunk, she ambled back to her herd.
The operation was part of a yearlong effort to collar and track 60 elephants in and around Tanzania’s Selous Game Reserve, widely acknowledged as “Ground Zero” in the poaching that has decimated Africa’s elephants in recent years.
The Associated Press traveled to the area to witness how the battle to save the continent’s elephants is gaining some momentum, with killings declining and some herds showing signs of recovery. Legal ivory markets are shrinking worldwide, and law enforcement has broken up some key trafficking syndicates, say experts.
But it’s far too early to declare a turnaround. Poachers are moving to new areas and traffickers are adapting, aided by entrenched corruption. The rate of annual elephant losses still exceeds the birth rate. And the encroachment of human settlements is reducing the animals’ range.
“The trend in poaching is going in the right direction, but we have a long way to go before we can feel comfortable about the future for elephants,” said Chris Thouless of Save the Elephants, a group based in Kenya, where elephant numbers are rising again.
In a move to crack down on demand, Britain this month announced a ban on ivory sales. In China, trade in ivory and ivory products is illegal as of 2018. And in the U.S., a ban on ivory apart from items older than 100 years went into place in 2016.
If poaching can be brought under control here in Tanzania, there is hope that the killing of elephants can be stemmed elsewhere on the continent.
Africa’s elephant population has plummeted from millions around 1900 to at least 415,000 today. Intelligent and emotional, with highly developed social behavior, elephants have been hunted for their ivory for centuries. A ban on commercial trade in ivory across international borders went into effect in 1990, but many countries continued to allow the domestic buying and selling of ivory.
Increased demand from consumers in China fueled a new wave of killings.
In Tanzania alone, the elephant population declined by 60 percent to 43,000 from 2009 to 2014, according to the government. Much of the slaughter happened in an ecosystem comprising the Selous and the adjacent Mikumi National Park. A tourist guide told The Associated Press that several years ago, he and a client saw an elephant family at sunset in the Selous reserve. They returned the next day to the ghastly sight of carcasses of elephants slaughtered for their tusks.
The killings in Tanzania appear to have slowed down. A count in the Selous-Mikumi area last year added up 23 carcasses of poached elephants, just 20 percent of the number found four years earlier. And African elephant poaching has declined to pre-2008 levels after reaching a peak in 2011, according to some.