GPS Tracking Being Used in Thwarting Ivory Elephant Tusk Poaching

African elephants are still declining due to two main historical factors: changes in land use and the high demand for ivory. Today, these two factors are still threatening the existence of the species. And, although there’s been a ban already on international trading of ivory, there are still a large number of African elephants being poached.

Each year, tens of thousands of the elephants are killed for their ivory tusks so that the ivory can be carved into jewelry and ornaments. These products are quite popular with China being their largest consumer market.

Between the years 1979 through 1987, African elephants declined from 1.3 million individuals to 600,000 because of poaching. The largest adult elephants with the biggest tusks had the highest rate of mortality. Old matriarchs were particularly vulnerable. These were the oldest female adults that hold the elephant herds together. They have large tusks and their herds were easier to locate than the individual adult males.

There are more African elephants now being born without tusks since poachers have been targeting the elephants with the best ivory for decades. This essentially altered the gene pool.

For over 30 years now, the head of the Elephant Voices charity, Joyce Poole has been tracking the species’ developments. She informed The Times, in the herds she’s been monitoring; she noticed a direct relationship between the number of females born without tusks and the intensity of poaching.

Researchers say in certain areas around 98 percent of the female elephants don’t have tusks compared to the up to 6 percent on average born without tusks in the past. Females without tusks are more inclined to produce offspring with no tusks as well, Poole said.

There are interventions in place for each stage of the trade. There are:

• Awareness campaigns for reducing demand in the targeted countries
• Anti-poaching patrols for stopping the supply
• Tight border controls for stopping the trafficking

In another study, Bryan Christy who is the Special Investigations Unit’s National Geographic Fellow and Chief Correspondent attached GPS tracking devices in two fake elephant tusks in 2014 and quietly inserted them into Africa’s illegal ivory trade. However, according to Christy, getting them there was not a simple task.

After being held up by airport officials who arrested him for possessing illegal ivory tusks, he proved to them they were fake and part of his study to see where tusks go.

Christy and his team kept track of his fake tusks through GPS tracking signals and tracked them as they were smuggled from Congo’s Garamba National Park making their way to Sudan. And although tusks are traded for medicine or arms in the Darfur region of Sudan, the tusks mostly wind up in China for its ivory.

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