The Elephant Crisis
The number of elephants in Africa has plummeted in little over a century from approximately 10 million to less than half a million today – a decrease of 95%. Elephants continue to be illegally killed (poached) for their tusks – modified teeth – made of ivory. In the past ivory was fashioned into ornaments and exported to be made into piano keys, brush handles, billiard balls, combs, name seals (hankos) and also used as inlay and for intricate carvings. Today, the legal trade in ivory has been shut down, but there is still an illegal trade run by criminals.
China, previously the world’s largest importer of ivory, closed down its remaining state-owned ivory carving factories in 2017. This sent a strong message to the industry and to those who had collected ivory as an investment (betting on the elephants’ eventual extinction) and over several months the price of raw ivory halved from $2000 / kg to $1000. The illegal trade continues to flourish however, especially in the Far East – in Laos, Thailand and Vietnam. Approximately 20-30,000 African elephants are poached each year – an off-take that the population cannot sustain; a rate of slaughter faster than their birth rate can support. If left unchecked, it will lead to the elephants’ extinction. Conservation efforts focus on three areas: protecting elephant populations to stop the killing; stopping the trafficking of ivory and reducing demand.
Male elephants have the largest tusks, and poachers target them first. The iconic giant Tsavo tusker Satao, who features in the film, had the largest tusks in the world when he was killed in May 2014. His death caused an international outcry as he was the ‘poster-boy’ of giant tuskers – one of the world’s last giant tuskers. Today only a handful of giant tuskers (elephants with tusks weighing over 100 lbs / 45kg ) remain. Estimates vary, but numbers are likely as low as 25-30, of which around 12 live in Tsavo National Park.
After bulls, the largest tusks are found on mature cows and it is the oldest of these (like Athena, the 50yr old Elephant Queen) who become matriarchs. Athena had the largest tusks of any of Tsavo’s matriarchs which would have marked her out as a target for poachers. Killing matriarchs throws their families into turmoil, resulting in split, dysfunctional groups, led by younger less-experienced cows that can never match the stability and leadership provided by the more experienced matriarchs.
Most recently, elephant poaching in Kenya was at it’s worst between 2011-14. Since then it has improved – protection and anti-poaching measures led by Kenya Wildlife Service and supported by conservation NGOs have been effective.
Today, it is not poaching that is the biggest problem, but human wildlife conflict and loss of habitat. As more land becomes farmed, wilderness areas shrink and elephants are either fenced out of their former rangelands or lose their traditional migration routes. In some areas, crops are grown right up to the boundaries of protected areas and when elephants turn to eating crops, they come into conflict with farmers. A herd of elephants can destroy a small farmer’s maize crop in a single night. There are ways to mitigate the conflict – beehive fences, the establishment of elephant corridors, and planting crops like chillies and sunflowers that aren’t attractive to elephants are all important. As elephants lose habitat to an expanding human population that requires more and more land to farm, it will be issue that needs addressing for decades to come. It is why The Elephant Queen Outreach and Education program, working together with Save the Elephants and Bestseller® Foundation is making the area of human-elephant conflict a priority. From late 2021 a mobile cinema will take The Elephant Queen, with Kiswahili and Maa translations into schools and communities next to protected areas across Kenya. A Kenyan team will tour with the film for 8 months to put on plays, initiate conversations, convene workshops and hold classes. The aim is to foster an understanding of elephants that will play a part in their continued coexistence with humans.
In Kenya, elephant populations have stabilised, but across Africa elephant numbers are still in serious decline. The Selous game reserve, a huge wilderness area in Tanzania, until recently had an elephant population of over 100,000 and was regarded as a stronghold for the species – in the space of two decades this has been reduced by 90%, due to poaching. Forest elephants that inhabit the rainforests of Central and West Africa are thought to have declined by 60% in little over a decade. Such catastrophic declines have severe impacts on ecosystems as elephants are keystone-species – they disperse the seeds of trees and their loss will imperil Africa’s rainforests. They create paths and waterholes for other animals and are ecosystem engineers whose loss impacts the entire ecosystem.
Across Africa, poaching is the threat to elephants that needs addressing immediately. In the long term, the major threats to elephants are habitat loss and human-wildlife conflict. Elephants are large free-ranging animals, surprisingly similar to us, that live in family groups led by wise and experienced matriarchs. It is up to every one of us to decide whether we want these remarkable, sentient animals to continue to share the planet with us – the choice is ours.
