Scientists scramble to save African elephants

'We stopped poaching once and can do it again'
Now that enforcement knows where to concentrate, Wasser and his colleagues are calling for a strategic reinstatement of the strong enforcement that nearly shut down the trade in elephant tusks just after 1989. Poor countries like Zambia need enforcement support from the United Nations and other governments, he said.

"If this does not happen, elephants will soon be gone over most of Africa, and especially in the forests of Africa," Wasser told LiveScience. "We stopped poaching once and can do it again. We just have to avoid repeating past mistakes."

Countries such as Ghana and Mali present promising cases for elephant conservation, as their populations are not at the brink of extinction yet and conservation efforts there seem to be working, said Kolokotronis.

The situation is complicated because even though there are larger populations of elephants in regions such as southern Africa (more than 250,000 individuals), more of the genetic diversity among elephants is found in western and central Africa where poaching tends to go unchecked and populations of forest and savanna elephants are in peril, Kolokotronis said. 

No prosecution
No one will likely ever be prosecuted for the Singapore seizure because there is too much money involved and too many people willing to accept it, Wasser says.

"People also fear for their lives," he said.

Elephants are more than the largest living land animals. They also create a continuous natural disturbance in habitats that other species have evolved to depend upon, Wasser said. And elephants help to control the amount of woodland and are key to the dispersal of plant seeds.

Between 1970 and 1989, the African elephant population plunged from 1.3 million to about 600,000 in 1989, according to the IUCN. The current population is estimated to be around 600,000 or lower.

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