Abstract
Recent surveys suggest tens of thousands of elephants are being poached annually across Africa, putting the two species at risk across much of their range. Although the financial motivations for ivory poaching are clear, the economic benefits of elephant conservation are poorly understood. We use Bayesian statistical modelling of tourist visits to protected areas, to quantify the lost economic benefits that poached elephants would have delivered to African countries via tourism. Our results show these figures are substantial (∼USD $25 million annually), and that the lost benefits exceed the anti-poaching costs necessary to stop elephant declines across the continent's savannah areas, although not currently in the forests of central Africa. Furthermore, elephant conservation in savannah protected areas has net positive economic returns comparable to investments in sectors such as education and infrastructure. Even from a tourism perspective alone, increased elephant conservation is therefore a wise investment by governments in these regions.
Highlights
Recent surveys suggest tens of thousands of elephants are being poached annually across Africa, putting the two species at risk across much of their range
After controlling for all these independent variables, our model showed that a 1-unit increase in elephant density resulted in a 100 Â (e1.55 À 1) 1⁄4 371% increase in protected areas (PAs) tourist visits
Discussion our results make use of comprehensive, spatially explicit data on elephant densities at PAs across Africa, emerging results from the most recent census efforts suggest that declines in elephant populations in some countries have been even steeper than those previously documented[1,28]
Summary
Recent surveys suggest tens of thousands of elephants are being poached annually across Africa, putting the two species at risk across much of their range. We use Bayesian statistical modelling of tourist visits to protected areas, to quantify the lost economic benefits that poached elephants would have delivered to African countries via tourism Our results show these figures are substantial (BUSD $25 million annually), and that the lost benefits exceed the anti-poaching costs necessary to stop elephant declines across the continent’s savannah areas, not currently in the forests of central Africa. We conduct an economic analysis of the contribution of elephants (grouping both species together) to tourism in Africa’s protected areas (PAs) In taking this approach we aim to elucidate how the tourism benefits that are lost due to elephant poaching relate to the enforcement or anti-poaching costs required to prevent elephant population declines that arise from illegal killing. Even if we entirely ignore other benefits that people derive from elephants[21], their conservation is a wise investment decision for countries in the savannah regions of Africa, not currently so in the forested regions of central Africa
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