Abstract
Poaching is contributing to rapid declines in elephant populations across Africa. Following high-profile changes in the political environment, the overall number of illegally killed elephants in Africa seems to be falling, but to evaluate potential conservation interventions we must understand the processes driving poaching rates at local and global scales. Here we show that annual poaching rates in 53 sites strongly correlate with proxies of ivory demand in the main Chinese markets, whereas between-country and between-site variation is strongly associated with indicators of corruption and poverty. Our analysis reveals a recent decline in annual poaching mortality rate from an estimated peak of over 10% in 2011 to <4% in 2017. Based on these findings, we suggest that continued investment in law enforcement could further reduce poaching, but is unlikely to succeed without action that simultaneously reduces ivory demand and tackles corruption and poverty.
Highlights
Poaching is contributing to rapid declines in elephant populations across Africa
Both demand and supply could affect ivory poaching rates, so we identified large-scale ivory seizures and mammoth ivory prices in the main Chinese markets as likely proxies for annual variation in ivory demand and used site- and country-level variables such as infant mortality rate (IMR), poverty density, corruption perception index (CPI), site area and law enforcement adequacy as proxies for supply-limiting processes (Supplementary Table 1)
We found that annual effects for 2014–17 were very similar for the model using training data, compared to a model fitted to all data (Fig. 2a), providing independent support for our model
Summary
Following high-profile changes in the political environment, the overall number of illegally killed elephants in Africa seems to be falling, but to evaluate potential conservation interventions we must understand the processes driving poaching rates at local and global scales. Our analysis reveals a recent decline in annual poaching mortality rate from an estimated peak of over 10% in 2011 to
Sign-in/Register to view highlights & summary 
Published Version (
Free)
Talk to us
Join us for a 30 min session where you can share your feedback and ask us any queries you have
Schedule a callDisclaimer: All third-party content on this website/platform is and will remain the property of their respective owners and is provided on "as is" basis without any warranties, express or implied. Use of third-party content does not indicate any affiliation, sponsorship with or endorsement by them. Any references to third-party content is to identify the corresponding services and shall be considered fair use under The CopyrightLaw.
