Scientists scramble to save African elephants

By Robin Lloyd

updated 12:10 a.m. ET Feb. 27, 2007

The illegal trade in elephant ivory is growing again at an alarming pace due to organized crime, but new research that estimates geographic origin could help prevent African pachyderm extinction.

Elephants are hunted for their meat and their tusks—a business that has become especially lucrative in the past few years.

Up to 5 percent of Africa's elephant population were killed by poachers for the year ending in August 2006, said University of Washington biologist Samuel Wasser. That amounted to more than 23,000 elephants, which yielded an estimated 240 tons of ivory.

A kilogram of high-quality ivory sold for $200 on the black market in 2004, but the price tag for that quantity ballooned to $750 last year, Wasser said.

Serious business
The tusks are sought after in some Asian countries, sometimes in the form of hankos, round cylinders of ivory on which some carve their personal seal for use as a prestigious signature stamp. The creamy tusks also are used to carve cane and knife handles and other small objects.

The price of high-quality ivory has created a black market, with commodity speculators driving poaching to never-before-seen levels, Wasser said.

"This is serious business, and if we don't open our eyes to the problem, we can kiss our elephants goodbye," he said.

In fact, elephants have already been poached to extinction in Senegal and to near extinction in Guinea-Bissau, said Sergios-Orestis Kolokotronis, a biologist at Columbia University.

Shipment seized
About five years ago, investigators got a tip concerning a shipping container bound for Singapore that was packed with ivory from between 3,000 and 6,500 elephants. Wildlife agents intercepted the container under a 1989 trade ban. The 42,000 hankos alone in the shipment were worth about $8.4 million, and the tusks weighed an average of 24.25 pounds (11 kilograms) apiece, more than twice the typical weight, indicating they came from older elephants.

Art Wolfe Elephants live in many African countries, so the DNA-matching technique can help investigators determine areas of high poaching activity.

Many agents assumed that the Singapore seizure, the largest illegal ivory seizure since the 1989 ban and the second largest seizure ever, came from forest elephants living all over Africa, but no one was sure. So Wasser and his colleagues worked with Interpol and other enforcement agencies and applied a technique that allows him to match DNA from the tusks to a map he made a few years ago of where elephants with specific genetic variations live in Africa.

The key to poaching prevention for African elephants lies in enforcement of a 1989 international trade ban which was highly effective immediately after it was enacted, but is no longer because governments withdrew funding for its enforcement, Wasser said.

Elephants live in numerous African countries, in savannah and forest environments, so investigators can do better enforcement if they know of poaching trade routes and where activity is high. Three of the largest seizures of ivory after the 1989 ban happened in 2002, and some nations such as Zimbabwe, Botswana, Namibia and South Africa have received suspensions of the ban.

The ivory in the Singapore seizure came from elephants living in an east-west swath centered on Zambia and possibly including parts of Mozambique and Angola, Wasser and his colleagues wrote in the latest issue of the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. Their results are based on an analysis of 67 tusks from the 532 seized in Singapore and demonstrates that the elephants were savannah dwellers, not forest elephants like those found in the Democratic Republic of Congo, Congo, Gabon, Central African Republic and Cameroon.

MORE FROM SCIENCE

Science Section Front

How the Maya lived Vanished Persian army said found in desert What your Facebook photo says about you Lab-grown penis lets rabbits mate like bunnies Experts want debate on animals with human genes Human origins: Our crazy family tree Absence makes a panda’s heart grow fonder Cosmic Log: DNA barcodes make their mark Did Neanderthals have sex with modern man? British scientists challenge government Science Section Front   Add Science headlines to your news reader: