Hey Bungalow Bill, What Did You Kill?

So today’s blog post is going to be a biggie. I stumbled across this article about elephant poaching. It turns out, elephants are being poached for their tusks at a greater rate today than they were before the international ban was established by CITES in 1989. In the decade before the ivory ban, 7.4% of African elephants were killed for their tusks. Today the estimate is 8 percent. If this estimate is correct, African elephants could become extinct by 2020. Poaching has already hit the elephant population hard, bringing the numbers from 1.3 million to only 600,000 in the decade before the ban.

Kathleen Grobush is the lead author of the study, “Long Term Impacts of Poaching on Relatedness, Stress Physiology and Reproductive Output of Adult Female African Elephants”, published in the August 2008 issue of Conservation Biology. The study in Mikumi National Park in Tanzania found that females from disrupted groups (from high-risk areas that were poached heavily in the past) had higher levels of stress and were less likely to be pregnant or have an infant. “If you are in a high risk area and you lack family- that solid group unit- that’s when you’re in trouble,” says Gobush. Her colleague on the study, Samuel K. Wasser, director of the Center for Conservation Biology at the University of Washington at Seattle says, “poaching is the worst in history right now.”

Another study, conducted in a park heavily poached, found that elephant-against-elephant aggression accounted for 90% of elephant deaths, compared to 6% in unstressed areas. The hyper-aggressiveness in males is attributed to their being orphaned by poaching and witnessing the deaths of close relatives.

Yet while all this poaching continues, some areas, such as Kruger National Park in South Africa, advocate elephant culling (purposeful killing to control the population). This topic was covered in an article by Karen E. Lange in the September 2008 issue of National Geographic.

To read more about the group dynamics of elephants, read the article by David Quammen, also in the September 2008 issue of National Geographic, and check out the amazing photo gallery of photos by Michael Nichols.

To read more about elephant poaching and ivory, read the article by Wildlife Conservation Society scientist and conservationist (and one of my heros) J. Michael Fay, in the March 2007 issue of National Geographic. Also check out the amazing photo gallery, once again by Michael Nichols. ADVISORY: Some of the poaching photos are quite graphic.

There is hope for deterring poachers though. The North Luangwa Conservation Project (NLCP) in Zambia has been considered the model for all other community-based conservation initiatives. The project took place in the North Luangwa National Park in Zambia, where elephant populations were severely depleted by poaching, up to 93% of their original numbers, black rhino were entirely wiped out, and many other species had also seriously suffered. The project not only sought to gain scientific knowledge of the elephants that remained in the park, but to stop poaching and to also involve all of the communities that bordered North Luangwa National Park.

Mark and Delia Owens, who founded the project, tried to help the villagers develop legitimate alternatives to poaching and to help them become sustainable in helping the environment around them. They loaned villagers the money to start up different enterprises, with each loan being expected to be paid back in full, to ensure sustainability of the job. They educated the villagers on the importance of the area around them and about conservation, and even assisted in building schools for the children to learn in, in addition to school supplies. This way they were able to start fresh with the next generation, by teaching the children right from the beginning how important conservation is. The children even put on plays for the whole village.

Lastly, the project employed many other villagers with park-related jobs such as park guards and scouts, scientific researchers, and the development of ecotourism. This project was so comprehensive that it is now used as a model around the world. Check out “Secrets of the Savannah” by Mark and Delia Owens to read their accounts of the NLCP project. It is a must-read for anyone interested in elephants or community-based conservation.

Lastly, below are my own photos from Addo Elephant Park in South Africa.