Poaching Soars: Illegal Ivory Trade Arises From Recent Elephant Killings

A carbon-dating study reveals that the global illegal ivory trade mostly comes from the recent elephant killings. The elephant population in savannah dwelling declined by 30 percent in the last seven years. Meanwhile, elephants in the forests decreased by 62 percent from 2002 to 2013.

Some people are wondering whether corrupt governments are linked to the ivory trade by selling off old ivory. George Wittemyer, a conservation ecologist and elephant specialist at Colorado State University in Fort Collins said that this puts to rest a speculation, which has been at the back of everyone's mind. He further said that conservationists now can focus their resources on safeguarding elephants from poachers instead of worrying so much about fighting the corrupt government.

The analysis of the research was printed in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. The researchers from the Thure Cerling at the University of Utah in Salt Lake City gauged the decay of carbon-14 isotopes in 231 ivory tusks that were confiscated in between 2002 and 2014.

In their analysis, the team identified where the poached elephants lived. They discovered that the elephants in East Africa were killed less than a year ago. Meanwhile, in Central Africa, it was on average more of than two years old, according to Scientific American.

Tom Milliken from the wildlife monitoring network TRAFFIC said that this makes sense as the road network in East Africa is much better than in Central or West Africa. He said that poachers can easily ship the tusks to Asia. He added that this helps them understand the fundamental dynamic in ivory trafficking.

The International Union for Conservation of Nature's latest African Elephant Status Report reveals that with the soaring of poaching for more than the past decade the Africa's elephant population has declined from 526,000 to 415,000 between 2006 and 2015. Milliken said that in Tanzania alone, the elephant's population has dropped to 60 percent in the past three years due to poaching, according to Nature.