New elephant study shows catastrophic decline in Africa

http://www.cnn.com/2016/08/31/africa/great-elephant-census/

by adamnemecek • 10 years ago

72 66 10 years ago

Alex3917• 10 years ago

As interesting trivia, the reason why elephants went extinct in northern Africa is largely because of the massive number that were brought to Rome and killed in gladiatorial games.

adamnemecek18• 10 years ago

You guys should consider donating to the International Anti-Poaching Foundation[0][1] which fights these poachers. The founder, Damien Mander[2], is an Australian ex spec-ops sniper who is using his military experience to train the park rangers since they, unlike the poachers, tend to be poorly equipped and trained as well as understaffed.

There is also the David Sheldrick Wildlife Trust[3][4] which takes care of elephant and rhino orphans (most of them are orphans due to poaching). For $50 a year, you can become a sponsor of a particular orphan and they'll send you photos and updates about how your sponsored animal is doing. You can for example sponsor this little fella [5][6]. It's a great gift.

You can also participate in an upcoming hackathon this October 7-9 in London, San Diego, Seattle, Sydney and DC that will aim to fight poaching. [7]

[0] http://www.iapf.org/

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_Anti-Poaching_Fo...

[2] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Damien_Mander

[3] http://www.sheldrickwildlifetrust.org

[4] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Sheldrick_Wildlife_Trust

[5] http://www.sheldrickwildlifetrust.org/asp/orphan_profile.asp...

[6] http://instagram.com/p/sigT3IAUKb

[7] http://www.zoohackathon.com/

P.S. You should subscribe to http://reddit.com/r/babyelephantgifs and http://reddit.com/r/babyrhinogifs for a daily dose of adorable pachyderm content.

dforrestwilson1• 10 years ago

Alternatively, attack the buyer mentality? Promote awareness of the issue to problem countries.

adamnemecek18• 10 years ago

A lot of organizations are trying to do that. Yao Ming is also trying to work on this https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/ex-rocket-yao-ming-aims...

His previous shark fin campaign was successful the demand dropped by like 80% IIRC.

sotojuan2• 10 years ago

Changing thousands of years of culture saying ivory is a sign of wealth and that you should show it off may prove very difficult, unfortunately. Many people simply don't care.

encoderer• 10 years ago

This is great, thanks for sharing. I donated. I hope they see a real HN effect in more than just traffic.

adamnemecek18• 10 years ago

Thanks a bunch! I give them out as presents too, with great success.

vegabook• 10 years ago

let's not mince words. The catastrophic acceleration in decline of elephant populations is directly correlated to the rise in wealth of China and Asia in general. For countries with such advanced IQ and engineering skills, this is a massive stain on their reputation. They need to address this massively.

Now I'm fully aware that most of the decline in the Elephant (and other) species in general in the past 200 years can be blamed squarely on the West. But this does not excuse snuffing out these absolutely priceless brethren of humanity for the most base of barbaric reasons, now that there are so few of them left.

Asia needs to sort this out, like, yesterday. The West has huge historic baggage on this and thankfully was able to turn itself around at the last minute. Now china and Asia seriously need to do the same, pronto. PRONTO.

ralfruns• 10 years ago

Who buys ivory? Are the customers mainly in Asia, and for aphrodisiac purposes, or is this a stereotyp?

adamnemecek18• 10 years ago

Yes, it's mainly in Asia but it's not uncommon in the US either (one of the biggest opponents of total ban is, surprise surprise, the NRA). China is number one, US is number two.

It's not bought as an aphrodisiac (you are thinking of rhino horn), ivory is mostly to make decorative trinkets.

castis2• 10 years ago

just as a heads up, the aphrodisiac thing is a long-running myth.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rhinoceros#Horn_trade_and_use

wehadfun• 10 years ago

1. China makes so much fake stuff any way why not fake ivory.

2. How is the market for trinkets that big.

mhb• 10 years ago

NRA position on ivory ban: https://www.nraila.org/articles/20140305/ivory-ban-fact-shee...

te_platt• 10 years ago

I think your reference to the NRA is a bit misleading in this case. The NRA had similar concerns as people who repair and sell used pianos. That is there is a large existing inventory of guns and pianos that use ivory. A total ban would make criminal many otherwise innocent transactions.

See:

https://www.nraila.org/articles/20140305/ivory-ban-fact-shee... http://www.ptg.org/scripts/4disapi.dll/4DCGI/cms/review.html...

rusabd• 10 years ago

meantime, people are hunting mammoth tusk

recent report (Russian):

http://www.currenttime.tv/a/tusk-hunters/27948066.html

quote: ``Оборот слоновой кости тщательно контролируется, поэтому особым спросом сейчас пользуются бивни мамонта '' The ivory market is tightly controlled therefore mammoth tusk is in high demand right now

quote: ``Этот 65-килограммовый бивень только что извлекли из вечной мерзлоты. Впоследствии его продали за 34 тысячи долларов.'' - This 65 kg tusk was sold later for 34 thousands dollars.

old report (2013 English): http://ngm.nationalgeographic.com/2013/04/125-mammoth-tusks/...

matt_wulfeck10• 10 years ago

Why not legalize the trade and sale of ivory and have states become the sole monopoly of their sale? where so you think the money is coming from?

Once it's legal you can start to squeeze the black market through legislation and regulation. If it's illegal then you're completely powerless.

There's so many parallels here of drug legalization.

adamnemecek18• 10 years ago

This will not work. What will happen is that

a.) the legal market will serve as a cover for the illegal market

b.) you have no way of determining origin of ivory

c.) where would this 'legal' ivory come from in the first place?

d.) enforcement of these rules is impossible or difficult at best. Currently, there are are 6 Fish and Wildlife service employees that are supposed to monitor all incoming cargo to NY and NJ ports for illegal wildlife products. That's very few people for the job.

There's so many parallels here of drug legalization.

Upon closer inspection there actually aren't. The process of manufacturing drugs isn't actually all that bad (if you ignore the distribution and consumption).

matt_wulfeck10• 10 years ago

This shifts the issue from elephants being killed indiscriminately for their tusks to an issue of state collected taxes and fees. In the long term it's much better to have the latter.

You determine the origin by creating a system that leaves paper trails everywhere, from those that collect to those that sell, to exporters. The beauty of a legal system is that everything is recorded and on the books.

Enforcement is easy when your project is self-funded through the internal and legal trade of ivory.

nanny• 10 years ago

I'm not sure I see the "many parallels". I don't think ivory should ever be legal, whether it's squeezed through legislation and regulation or not.

Why not send our (the West's) soldiers and drones into Africa instead of the Middle East?

matt_wulfeck10• 10 years ago

This is the same thinking of those that thing recreational drug use should be illegal. The reality is there will be a huge market for it potentially forever, and burning cash and power to fight it is an exercise in futility.

Instead ask yourself what's something we can do right now that will completely take the oxygen out of the illegal ivory trade.

Don't you see the legality is part of the mystique around ivory? When it becomes an every day product then morons will stop believing it has secret medicinal powers and move on.

legodt• 10 years ago

I don't think you understand where ivory comes from at all. Drugs come from plants and processing, ivory comes from slaughtering/mutilating endangered species

matt_wulfeck10• 10 years ago

The brutality is there because it's completely illegal and underground. Are you telling me that modern science is unable to safely remove an elephant's tusk without destroying the animal? There's a huge difference between idiots in the bush hacking away with a chainsaw and trained zoologist in a lab.

kazinator3• 10 years ago

As long as this monopolized sale volume is zero, so that elephants aren't being killed, I'm all for it. Except that it won't make a difference in that case (see below).

Your analogy is flawed because: legalization of, say, marijuana doesn't stop marijuana plants from being killed in large numbers.

The goal behind marijuana being illicit isn't to protect the marijuana plant from extinction. (The goal is rather the application of an ideology that is fully understood only by certain people who want to control other people's lives.)

Drug legalization only works when it makes drugs widely available and inexpensive. That's what removes the incentive of the hardened criminals to engage in trafficking, along with all the collateral crime and violence --- not the fact that anything has become legal.

If some commodity is legal but controlled, and licenses are not actually handed out in any significant numbers so that it is still scarce, then the trafficking will continue exactly as before, in the same manner.

matt_wulfeck10• 10 years ago

I'm talking about harvesting and selling every single elephant tusk. That's 100%. There aren't that many Elephants born in Africa, and apparently we're able to track every single one of them.

I'm advocating safely removing the tusk via trained zoologist with modern science so that it leaves the elephant without its tusk.

mikeash• 10 years ago

Virtually everyone on the planet uses drugs of some kind, and they generally see nothing wrong with it. The vast majority of humans go through their entire lives without caring about ivory, and those who do care usually come down on the side of not killing elephants. The lesson to draw from the drug war isn't "bans don't work," but rather "bans don't work when you ban something nearly ubiquitous that people don't see anything wrong with."

panglott2• 10 years ago

If Africa cannot establish a safe habitat for these creatures, we need to establish a breeding reserve for them in the US. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pleistocene_rewilding

adamnemecek18• 10 years ago

One issue with that is that elephants tend to roam over thousands of miles and this could be tricky in the US if an elephant herd came to town. Fun fact, they actually have a 'built-in gps', one elephant can tell another elephant about a location thousands of miles away and the other elephant is able to locate it, https://www.thedodo.com/elephants-travel-humans-help-1353631...

Also it's not just about saving the species but also about the fact that elephants are super important for the ecosystem. Like some of the ecosystems could collapse without elephants.

dTal• 10 years ago

TIL I have a built-in GPS. Neat.

moosey2• 10 years ago

I personally agree with this, but even here on the West Coast (Washington State) we have had recent kill offs of endangered wolf packs, all because they killed a few cattle.

Yes, there would likely be better protection, however the ramifications of such a thing makes it unlikely to pass. Where would they go and who would pay for the ensuing destruction of property, as would happen.

I am very much willing to pay for it through taxes, but this is probably not very politically palatable, which is a statement about the sad state of our politics.

panglott2• 10 years ago

Note I'm also a fan of the Buffalo Commons https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Buffalo_Commons

mrfusion• 10 years ago

We should introduce them in Texas and Mexico as invasive species. I know it sounds silly but they'd probably really thrive.

blisterpeanuts• 10 years ago

At one time, during the late Pleistocene epoch, woolly mammoths roamed North America. They were close cousins of the Asian elephant, and so you could argue that elephants would not be invasive, any more than horses (current North American horses are from Eurasia, original North American horse species is extinct...).

adamnemecek18• 10 years ago

An angry elephant is a lot more dangerous than an angry horse.

patrickburke• 10 years ago

or Columbia the hippos like it there

giarc2• 10 years ago

elephants are actually far more valuable alive than dead...Every elephant killed will earn a poacher just a few hundred dollars...a live elephant can earn more than a million dollars for communities involved in eco-tourism...

Poachers are driven by money, why not hire them as eco-tourism guides. For them they get a stable income and no threat of death by soldier. I guess when you hire one poacher, another 10 are waiting to begin poaching...?

FreedomToCreate• 10 years ago

People who are willing to brutally kill an animal for a few hundred dollars, may not make the best eco-tourism guides. They obviously don't actually care about the environment and animals to begin with.

giarc2• 10 years ago

Sorry for the bad source, I just did a quick search but Naples hired ex-cons, well versed in the trade of scamming tourists to help tourists avoid getting scammed.

http://www.nbcnews.com/video/nightly-news/33773898#33773898

My thinking is they hire a bunch of poachers, basically become informants to learn the poaching trade. Lure them out with money, more than they could earn as a poacher and try to get ahead of these guys.

FooBarWidget• 10 years ago

I think that is the wrong way to look at things. I think many poachers are just poor people who are trying to survive. It is a bit hard to care about the environment if your own meals aren't taken care of. If being an ecotourism guide pays better than being a poacher then it will be a good incentive to do a good job.

crpatino• 10 years ago

That's nonesense. You can brutally kill cats and (smallish) dogs, but anything bigger will fight back pretty badly. Brutalizing any animal that is twice your body size is a good recipe for getting yourself maimed or killed, even in a controled environment. Ask any slaugherhouse worker if you don't believe.

Which takes us back to the economic motive. Once you realize that this people are, for the most part, not saddistic mosters but regular guys who break arbitrary rules for personal gain, you will realize that they do not care about what you care because there's nothing for them to gain there. For the most part, they care about the things the people paying the bills tell them to care about.

So, why are you so afraid of the idea of being the guy who pays the bill and decides what stuff to care about? Is it that you dont want to know what price would you put to an elephant life, or it's just that you love to hate poachers?

Kenji• 10 years ago

I wonder if legalization would enable ivory farms, and if raising elephants could ever be paid for with ivory sales, considering they're such massive animals. Remember, an elephant pregnancy alone takes like 18 months! And the amount of food elephants need. Truly magnificent mammals.

35bge57dtjku• 10 years ago

Someone was trying to flood the market with near-indistinguishable fake ivory.

New elephant study shows catastrophic decline in Africa

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