The call comes in camp at Sunday breakfast. David Daballenanswers it, walking from the table as he talks. David works for Save theElephants here in Kenya. Moments later he returns, announcing, “Anotherelephant just discovered killed, right across the river in Buffalo Springs,right inside the reserve, right off the road.” That’s shocking. No elephant hastill now been killed so deep inside the reserve, so near tourist lodges. “It’snever been worse,” David says. “We’re going in the wrong direction.”
Surging demand for ivory in China has been well publicized.But the publicity has overlooked the cause: The same international body thatenacted a 1990 global ivory ban allowed China in 2008 to import ivory. Thiscatastrophic reversal can be counted in carcasses – elephant and human. Kenyanrangers recently killed two poachers nearby. Three days later, poachers shotthree more elephants. Jobs here are few. Many poachers are young men withnothing to lose except their lives.
Ivory is about poverty, ethnic rivalry, terrorism and civilwar. Elephant blood lubricates the flow of human blood. Blood ivory has beenhelping to finance Al Qaeda’s Al Shabab wing; Joseph Kony’s Lord’s ResistanceArmy and Sudan’s murderous Janjaweed. That a craving for carvings fuels this issymptomatic of distant and detached international markets, regulators,consumers and governments caring nothing for whom they hurt. Ivory is not justabout elephants. In some ways, I wish it were.
Two nights ago, poachers killed two elephants about 40kilometers away. In the week I’ve been here, local poachers have killed five.In the six weeks prior, they killed 27 elephants from just this population. TheBuffalo Springs and Samburu reserves are among Kenya’s last elephantstrongholds. Roughly 1,000 elephants – minus several per week now – use them.
Africa has lost perhaps 90 percent of its elephants in thelast half-century. Sierra Leone saw its final elephants killed in 2009. Senegalretains under a dozen – if that. Gabon: 11,000 killed in the last decade,nearly 80 percent of its elephants. Democratic Republic of the Congo’selephants have plummeted 90 percent. Chad and Cameroon, shot to pieces.Poaching is intensifying in Kenya and Tanzania – lucrative tourist destinations(in Kenya alone, nearly 500,000 people rely directly on tourism foremployment).
The Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species,or Cites, regulates ...( ivory trading. When elephant numbers were plummetingin the 1980s, Cites had a legal ivory quota system. That system had norestraining effect, because it facilitated easy laundering. Tanzania in the1980s lost a staggering 236,000 elephants. Between 1974 and 1989, Kenya’selephants fell from about 167,000 to 16,000, down 90 percent.
The only effort that has ever proved effective was thebitterly won ivory ban implemented by Cites in 1990. Ivory prices instantlycollapsed. Elephant populations slowly increased. The ban worked.
But it lasted only until 1999. That year, Cites allowedZimbabwe, Botswana and Namibia to sell 50 tons of stockpiled ivory to Japan,calling it a “one-time sale.” Then China wanted in. In a proceduralsleight-of-hand, in 2008 the Cites secretariat let China bid on 102 tons of ivoryfrom Botswana, Namibia, South Africa and Zimbabwe. (Another “one-time sale.”)
Immediately after China got its 2008 ivory pass, killingsurged. In Kenya, for instance, fewer than 50 elephants were killed in 2007;this rocketed to about 250 in 2009 and just under 400 in 2012.
Tanzania – where some estimate 60 elephants are being killeddaily – recently petitioned Cites for a “one-time sale” of stockpiled tusks.Tanzania further sought ongoing permission to sell tusks, hides, feet, ears,tails and – if any remain – live elephants. Following fierce protest, Tanzaniain January withdrew its proposal. For now.
How many elephants are dying? If the 38 tons of tusks seizedin 2011 represented 10 percent of illegal ivory, it translates to somethingover 40,000 elephants killed annually – an elephant every 15 minutes.
Like the one on the hill up ahead. David and I approach thehuge gray corpse. It’s Philo.
Philo was 15 years old, just halfway to contending forbreeding rights. His face and tusks are gone. David determines that he wasstruck over there, ran bleeding 200 meters to here, then collapsed. Severalshots to the head finished him. One wound is still bubbling crimson blood.
Four days earlier, a visiting researcher, Ike Leonard, hadtaken Philo’s last portrait. The photo captures Philo as a promising young bulljauntily showing off a bit of teenage swagger. An elephant keeper with Disney’sAnimal Kingdom in Orlando, Florida, Leonard had come to help with researchsponsored by Disney’s Worldwide Conservation Fund and to observe “how wildelephants live.” We are also observing how elephants die.
Carl Safina is founding president of Blue Ocean Institute atStony Brook University, where he is also co-chairman of the Center forCommunicating Science. His latest book is ``A Sea in Flames: The DeepwaterHorizon Oil Blowout.''
