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Field Interview - Elephant Poaching

Submitted by Stephanie from North Carolina on February 23, 2004

A veteran of many wildlife-related trips to Africa, veterinarian Mike Loomis is familiar with poaching and its impact on wildlife. In this field interview, he addresses several key questions regarding poaching and efforts to stop it.

Questions and Answers

Question #1.
Having visited Africa and performed extended research on the forest elephants of Cameroon, what do you think is the biggest threat to elephants today? Do you think that poaching conflicts have taken a backseat to other human conflicts created by now thriving populations of elephants?
Answer:
The underlying cause of most human-elephant conflict is the competition for resources between humans and elephants. These resources include land, water and food. As human populations increase, people encroach on elephant habitat and compete for resources. This results in crop damage and human and elephant deaths.

Poaching remains a significant threat to elephant populations primarily in Central and West Africa. Although poaching for ivory is of concern, poaching for the commercial bush meat market is more significant in some areas. Poaching in the forest sector goes hand- in-hand with logging. As logging roads are opened up, the area is made more accessible to poachers, the logging camps are a ready market for bush meat and logging trucks are involved in the transport of bush meat to urban centers. With the partial lift on the ban for selling ivory, many of my colleagues feel that poaching for ivory will increase.

Question #2.
What is your view on programs such as Zimbabwe's CAMPFIRE (Communal Area Management Program for Indigenous Resources)?
Answer:
For any conservation program to be successful, there has to be a buy-in to the program by the local communities and other stake-holders in the area. That buy-in is usually achieved by allowing the stake-holders to have some say in how resources are managed. Ultimately, the buy-in is tied to financial or other benefits to the community. Many of the communities around protected area have few resources and a lack of ways to make money. It is essential for the local communities to benefit from the conservation projects. That benefit may be in the form of profit sharing from ecotourism, employment, building schools, hospitals, etc. The important thing is for the local community to have something to gain from the conservation project being present, and to have some say in how the project is run. They then become part of the project and many times actively contribute to the project.

CAMPFIRE is one approach to giving the local communities a stake in conservation. It has, in general, been fairly successful. I hope the program continues in light of the recent political situation in Zimbabwe. You may be interested in reading Natural Connections, edited by David Western. It addresses patricipatory conservation projects throughout the world.

Question #3.
Do you think that unstable governments play a large role in the effectiveness of poaching legislation?
Answer:
Unstable governments definitely contribute to the lack of anti-poaching legislation and/or the lack of enforcement of existing legislation. The corruptness of a government is probably the single most important factor in the lack of enforcement of conservation legislation. You might be interested in a recent article in the journal Nature entitled "Governance and the loss of biodiversity." It is in Volume 426 of the journal, on pages 67-70.

Question #4.
From a medical perspective is it necessary to kill the elephant in order to take its tusks or is this primarily done because it makes their removal easier?
Answer:
A tusk is a living tooth. Extraction of a tusk is a very difficult procedure. The blood vessels and nerves do not extend to the end of a tusk, so one could potentially cut off the tips of tusks. If the chamber with the blood vessels was cut, it would be necessary to do a root canal procedure to keep the tusk from becoming infected. Also, elephant anesthesia in the field is time-consuming and puts the elephant at some risk. From a practical consideration, it is not realistic to harvest tusks from living elephants. Poachers do not have the expertise or patience to do it.

One other interesting approach to elephant conservation is "green hunting." In this process, a hunter pays a significant sum of money to accompany a conservation team and is allowed to dart an elephant that is being anesthesized for some conservation reason (placing a tracking collar on the elephant, collecting blood samples, relocating the elephant, etc.). When the elephant goes down, the hunter can have his/her picture taken with the animal, casts can be made of the tusks, and the elephant is given an antidote to the drug and goes on its way.

Question #5.
What do you think is necessary to ensure the future of the African elephant?
Answer:
The future of the African elephant can only be ensured if there is a will on the part of the countries where elephants are found to conserve them. That will require education of the human population on the importance of elephants as keystone species and provision of financial and technical support for countries to develop and enforce conservation programs that are supported by the local population. Conservation can be fairly low on political agendas when issues of childhood mortality, AIDS, hunger, etc. figure into the mix. Having said that, there are some encouraging programs in several African countries. I am fairly optimistic that, in the long-term, healthy elephant populations will thrive in some countries.


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