Table of Contents
What is the main reason for the poaching of elephants?
Poachers kill about 20,000 elephants every single year for their tusks, which are then traded illegally in the international market to eventually end up as ivory trinkets. This trade is mostly driven by demand for ivory in parts of Asia.
Why elephants should not be poached?
Elephants are poached primarily for ivory, and rhinos for their horns. Poaching threatens many species and can contribute to extinction. It can also have a tremendous impact on the environment, especially when a keystone species such as the elephant is targeted.
Is elephant poaching illegal in Africa?
There are countries in Africa, including Botswana and the Congo, where it is legal to shoot and kill poachers if they are caught in the act. These regulations, often referred to as shoot-to-kill policies, have been widely discussed and are a very controversial topic in Africa (White, 2014).
How can we stop poachers killing elephants?
3 Ways to End Elephant Poaching
- Increased Protection. While this one is a fairly basic solution, there are many different ways of implementing it.
- Communal Conservancies. Despite global trends, Namibia has done something extraordinary.
- Legalize Ivory Trade. No, you heard that one right.
How can we save African elephants?
To get there, we employ five major strategies:
- Prevent illegal killing.
- Protect elephant habitat.
- Monitor elephant numbers, poaching rates, and threats to elephant habitat at key sites in Africa and Asia.
- Reduce ivory trafficking.
- Reduce the demand for ivory.
Why are African elephants hunted?
The illegal demand for ivory is the biggest driver of elephant poaching. Despite a global CITES ban on international sales of ivory since 1990, tens of thousands of elephants are killed to meet a growing demand for ivory products in the Far East.
How many elephants are killed by poachers every year?
Even though the international trade in ivory has been banned since 1990, some 30,000 African elephants are still killed by poachers each year, out of a continent-wide population of about 400,000.
How can poaching be stopped?
The current wave of poaching is carried out by sophisticated and well-organised criminal networks – using helicopters, night-vision equipment, tranquilisers and silencers to kill animals at night, avoiding law enforcement patrols.
What is being done to protect the African elephant?
Currently, international elephant conservation measures focus on controlling ivory stockpiles, establishing and strengthening the borders of protected reserves, anti-poaching patrols, and preventative methodologies to reduce human-elephant conflicts.
Why is it important to save elephants?
Elephants help maintain forest and savanna ecosystems for other species and are integrally tied to rich biodiversity. Elephants are important ecosystem engineers. They make pathways in dense forested habitat that allow passage for other animals.
How can we save elephants from poaching?
What is being done to save the African elephants?
Fighting Illegal Wildlife Trade. To reduce the illegal trade in elephant products, WWF supports antipoaching efforts within and around protected areas. We also work to establish new protected areas to provide safe havens for elephants.
Why should African elephants be protected?
What happens if elephants go extinct?
The bush would choke out thousands of acres of grasslands and replace them overnight with thorny scrub if there were no elephants. There wouldn’t be any herbivores because there would be no places for them to graze; no predators because they would have no prey.
Are elephants being poached in Africa?
Sites are outlined in black. New research led by Elephants Without Borders (EWB) reveals that poaching of African elephants for their ivory has not decreased since 2011 in Western, Southern, and Central Africa. As a result, continued efforts to combat poaching will be necessary to save elephant populations.
How many elephants are killed by poachers each year?
Today, it’s estimated that poaching is responsible for the deaths of 10,000 to 15,000 elephants every year. With only about 350,000 elephants left in Africa, the animals are in danger of being eliminated there.
How do we measure poaching rates in Africa?
The Monitoring the Illegal Killing of Elephants (MIKE) Program is administered by CITES. At MIKE sites, rangers record the number of elephant carcasses they find. The proportion of those carcasses that were killed illegally was used as the measure of poaching rates in the new study. Data for the new study came from 53 sites in 28 African countries.
When did the poaching of elephant ivory start?
The new study was published today, June 23rd in Scientific Reports, in collaboration from researchers at the University of Washington and the Amboseli Trust for Elephants. Across Africa, a wave of elephant poaching for ivory began around 2005.