In June the Tanzanian government announced that the country has lost 60 percent of its elephants in the past five years, down from 110,000 to fewer than 44,000. By 1979, there were only 1.3 million elephants left. We'll tell you more about them Friday, on NPR's Morning Edition. But it could take a long time for tusked females to become as common as they once were. I will use his tusks to hunt the people who kill elephants and to learn what roads their ivory plunder follows, which ports it leaves, what ships it travels on, what cities and countries it transits, and where it ends up. I agree elephants are my favourite animals and it's unfair elephants don't cut of our noses or massively nearly ruin our species so why should we do the same to them. Chad. During the Mozambican Civil War from 1977 to 1992, humans killed so many elephants for their lucrative ivory that the animals seem to have evolved in the space of a generation. Those looking at the tusks think Im an ivory trafficker. You must be a real animal lover, I say. But ammunition is in perilously short supplynot even enough for basic trainingand the rangers largest weapon, a belt-fed machine gun, tends to jam every third round or so. They used Historical records to collect height (estimated to the shoulder), tusk length, and tusk circumference from approximately 600 elephants that were culled in Tsavo East National Park (Kenya) and Mkomazi National Park (Tanzania) between 1966 and 1968. Father Ernest Sugule, who ministers to the village, tells me that many children in his diocese have seen family members killed by the Lords Resistance Army, or LRA, the Ugandan rebel group led by Joseph Kony, one of Africas most wanted terrorists. Later, when Labuschagne examined the trajectory of bullets at the scene, he concluded that the poachers had been trained in how to set up a cross fire, which, combined with evidence found at the scene, pointed to President Omar al-Bashirs Sudan Armed Forces. Fish and Wildlife Service and National Geographic certifying that theyre artificial. "There's such a blizzard of depressing news about biodiversity and humans in the environment and I think it's important to emphasise that there are some bright spots in that picture. The rangers on Heban hill had little reason to be concerned for their safety. In 1994 Kony left Uganda and took his murderous gang on the road. After visiting Garamba, I arrange with a confidential source to put my tusks into the black market near Mboki, a small village in CAR midway between Garamba and Sudan that has been the target of attacks by Konys army and where some people who have escaped from Kony have found safety. Since the 1980s, and beginning in Uganda, Konys minions are alleged to have killed tens of thousands of people, slicing the lips, ears, and breasts off women, raping children and women, chopping off the feet of those caught riding bicycles, and kidnapping young boys to create an army of child soldiers who themselves grow into killers. Before the civil war, about 18.5% of females were naturally tuskless, but that figure has risen to 33% among elephants born since the early 1990s. Garamba is managed through a partnership between the DRCs wildlife department and African Parks, a group based in Johannesburg, South Africa. But Turkalo decided not to leave the region right away. It sort of found me. You did exactly what you were supposed to do, I said, shaking their hands. Without the stress of poaching, the elephants started breeding again, and more than 40 calves have been born. These LRA defectorsall abducted as children and pressed into servicenow fight for the Ugandan military. She well remembers the day when the war came to the bai. After Zakoumas rangers destroyed their camp and confiscated their equipment, the poachers were unable to return to Sudan, so three weeks later they went back to Heban hill and attacked the Hippotrague unit. It was just after 4 a.m. on Heban hill, in Chad, 80 miles from the Sudanese border and 60 miles northeast of Zakouma National Park, home to the countrys largest remaining elephant herd, 450 animals. Meanwhile, as leaders in Europe, the Middle East, and the U.S. strategize about how to stop the ever expanding network of international terrorist organizations, somewhere in Africa a park ranger stands his post, holding an AK-47 and a handful of bullets, manning the front line for all of us. Ive flown from Garamba park headquarters to a dirt airstrip deep inside the park to join an antipoaching patrol. This story launches the National Geographic Societys Special Investigations Unit, which will report on wildlife crimes. I know which house theyre in: Using Google Earth, I see its light-blue roof on my screen. Margaret Acino was 23, pregnant, working in the fields near Gulu, Uganda, when an LRA commander called for a razor and ordered his boy soldiers to slice off her lips, ears, and nose. "It's another example of the imprint of [human] effect on nature," says wildlife ecologist George Wittemyer of Colorado State University, who was not involved in the research. As Somalia is to piracy, Sudan has become to elephant poaching. So if a tuskless mom had babies CAMPBELL-STATON: She has a 50% chance of passing the trait on to her offspring. Radio Expeditions used interviews, narration, and on-location recording to bring listeners to exotic places around the world. Click the arrow below to hear the amazing audio tale they brought home. But it failed to rout Kony or his leadership. While Dante set about embedding Kermeens tracker inside his tusk mold, a third team member, John Flaig, a specialist in near-space, balloon-based photographyimages taken from at least the height of spy planeswas preparing to monitor the tusks as they moved. Between April 25 and June 17, poachers killed two Garamba rangers and two army . I need Schreger lines too, George, I say, referring to the cross-hatching on the butt of a sawn tusk that looks like growth rings of a tree trunk. A study in Gorongosa revealed that while male elephants did have tusks but almost 50% of female elephants above the age of 20 did not. In Tanzania and Mozambique, elephants . Im not an animal lover, he snaps. When he shows up, he picks up a tusk and runs his finger over the butt end. "And there was moonlight and I could see he had a revolver and he might have been drinking. The soldiers killed the elephants. We protect the elephant to protect the park. I just can't understand why anyone would want to take away any of the amazing qualities and features of an elephant. To me, it seems reasonable to think that the radiomans defection might have slowed the progress of the 25 elephants tusks headed to Kony. The park has four mounted ranger teams because horses are the only way to effectively patrol during the wet season, when the elephants head to drier land outside the park. MCCAMMON: Those changes can ripple through ecosystems. Instead of being made a soldier, he was designated a signalera radioman privy to Konys secret communications. On January 2, 2009, the horror bled into Garambas headquarters, at Nagero, where Kony soldiers burned the park rangers main building, destroyed equipment, and killed at least eight rangers and staff members. So did the African Union military forces, whose CAR-based men in Obo are tasked with finding Kony. Then they head south six miles, back into Kafia Kingi. On the 15th day after they began to move, they cross into South Sudan and from there make their way into the Kafia Kingi enclave, a disputed territory in Darfur controlled bySudan. Once the war and poaching ended,elephants with tusks were more likely to survive because they could use their tusks to find . When the American Museum of Natural History wanted to update the hall of North American mammals, taxidermist George Dante got the call. Get more great content like this delivered right to you! On September 11, 2014, Michael Onen, a sergeant in Konys army, walked out of Garamba National Park carrying an AK-47, five magazines of ammunition, and a story. But she knew she had to leave; she's a researcher for a non-governmental wildlife organization, not some kind of soldier-of-fortune. Such a biased sex ratio would be expected with a recessive gene that kills males when they inherit it. When north and south Sudan signed a peace agreement in 2005, Kony lost his Sudanese host. November 6, 1954, Page 3 Buy Reprints. See the article in its original context from. They shift a few miles. A female forest elephant charges, in Dzanga-Sangha Special Reserve in the Central African Republic. Tusk inheritance patterns in the ElephantVoices database backed up that assumption. CORNISH: Campbell-Staton had heard all of this before. During those years Sudanese poachers arrived in groups of more than a dozen armed men, camping inside the park for months at a time, killing, in one instance, 64 elephants in a single hunt. National Geographic television producer J.J.Kelley takes the floor in the waiting area. But when I ask a gathering of children and elders in the village of Kpaika, about 30 miles from the parks western border, how many of them have visited Garamba, no one raises a hand. Those elephants were featured in an NPR program, Radio Expeditions, in 2002, when former NPR host and correspondent Alex Chadwick and sound engineer Bill McQuay went to central Africa to record them. The relationship is close: SAF warns Kony if theres trouble, Onen says. "As a result there were large numbers of soldiers in the area and a lot of associated. Now, researchers report this intense hunting dramatically altered a major elephant population there, favoring female elephants born without tusks. only . This story was originally published in the September 2015 issue of National Geographicmagazine. RESEARCH: Heidi Schultz, Brad Scriber. Do we really need to sell ivory tusks in the world just to make money? Nov. 6, 1954. At that point she'd already dedicated more than a decade of her life to studying forest elephants, which for centuries had remained hidden within the dense canopy of the rain forest. Elephants without tusks were normally. Female elephants in Gorongosa National Park in Mozambique evolved to be tuskless in response to intense hunting. Having worked extensively throughout central Africa, Froment transferred to Garamba in early 2014 after rangers discovered dozens of elephant carcasses in the park. Ivory operates as a savings account for Kony, says Marty Regan, of the U.S. State Departments Bureau of Conflict and Stabilization Operations. hide caption. During a civil war in the country, that lasted from 1977 to 1992, up to 90% of Mozambique's elephant population was killed, mainly for their ivory tusks. A white elephant is a valuable item that has a rate that perhaps surpasses its usefulness. Konys force has declined from a peak of 2,700 combatants in 1999 to an estimated 150 to 250 core fighters today. The UN estimated that the massacre displaced more than a hundred thousand Congolese and Sudanese. Seven surgeries later shes forgiven them. Will artificial tusks planted in a central African country head eastor westtoward a coast with reliable transportation to Asian markets? Michael K. Nichols/National Geographic/Getty Images. 5. "I don't know which ones they killed," she replies. We were expecting to find an amazing new world of sound to record, and the experience lived up to its reputation the insects, the tropical downpours, and of course the cacophony of the elephants themselves. Diya is for accidents, he says. In March 2006 he fled for the DRC and set up camp in Garamba National Park, then home to some 4,000 elephants. The Central African Republic was peaceful back then. After months of tinkering, Kermeens final bespoke ivory-tracking device arrives in the mail. Now its under siege for its ivory, mainly by rogue soldiers from national armies and by the terrorist group the Lords Resistance Army (LRA). CORNISH: You see; while most African elephants have tusks, some female African elephants are born without them and never grow them. At the same time, the apartheid government and the Smith regime lost Portugal as an ally and with it the tens of thousands of soldiers that had been deployed in the Portuguese colonial wars. " Turkalo and the other women stopped their boat, afraid they'd be fired on if they kept going. East Africa is now ground zero for much of the poaching. When he returns hours later, he has three chicken dinners and several bottles of beer, paid for by the police chief. Ranger Dieudonn Kumboyo Kobango, standing with his son, Genekpio, who escaped soon after the LRA seized him, says, I search for the LRA on every patrol.. The culprits are believed to have been South Sudanese, according to African Parks. PELLETIER: The reason why that's important is because if you stop the killing right now, you know, the time it would take for the population to, you know, restore that traits would be much longer now that there's been a change in the genes than if it wasn't. They can get what they want today, he said, and keep it there for two, three, or even more than five years.. During the same period, neighboring Mozambique is reported to have lost 48 percent of its elephants. Professor Robert Pringle of Princeton University said: "Tusklessness might be advantageous during a war, but that comes at a cost.". The result: Some 30,000 African elephants are slaughtered every year, more than 100,000 between 2010 and 2012, and the pace of killing is not slowing. Seleka and its rival, anti-Balaka, have set fire to people, thrown them off bridges, and murdered people wantonly, turning CAR into a lawless statethe kind of place where Konys group and other terrorist organizations thrive. The Ugandan military finally attacked Konys Garamba camps in late 2008. Sudan is not on these lists, even though Sudanese poachers are a primary reason elephants are killed in several of the countries listed by CITES as of primary or secondary concern. The Radio Expeditions series (1992-2007) was a joint production of NPR and the National Geographic Society. In village after village along the road between Father Sugules church and what is now South Sudan, I meet Kony victims who describe being fed elephant meat and how, after elephants were killed, militants took the ivory away. If true, Soumaine Issa will find poachers working with Seleka. An official in Dar es Salaams international airport, in Tanzaniaone of several countries I scouted for launching my tusks into the illegal tradesquints at an x-ray screen as my luggage rolls through hisscanner. As long-ranging animals, they shape vast swaths of wildlands, stomping and chomping through them, sparring with trees, rearranging foliage. CORNISH: Consequences that are still continuing nearly 30 years after the war. CAMPBELL-STATON: But then I realized that there wasn't actually a lot of empirical data about what the response was from, you know, what the genetic basis of the trait was. Onen is short and looks even smaller wearing a camouflage-patterned Ugandan army uniform thats too long for him in the sleeves. Our next story begins in a place many of us are familiar with - up awake, watching a YouTube video at 3 in the morning. In March 2015 Boko Harams leader, Abubakar Shekau, pledged allegiance to ISIS, and his group was renamed Islamic States West Africa Province, giving that Middle East terrorist group a foothold in WestAfrica. The Central African Republic (CAR). On our patrol we dont encounter any poachers or rebel groups. We would follow them using Google Earth. They have flashbacks. As far as Onen knew, the poaching squad he abandoned was still making its way north from Garamba through CAR to Sudan. Michael Onen, the defector from Konys army, told me that the LRA and the janjaweed had battled over ivory, with one group robbing the other, and that it was the janjaweeds success in trading ivory that originally gave Kony the idea to start killing elephants. In Mozambique, past hunting pressure led to an increase of . This behavior is associated with mourning, field researchers say. Tusklessness, according to a new paper in Science, can be attributed in large part to a dominant mutation on the X chromosome a genetic change that also explains the sex skew Poole saw. In Songo the tusks are held for three days in what looks like a clearing outside town. They set up camp and in a four-month rampage killed up to 650 elephants. From March 2014 to March 2015, Garambas rangers recorded 31 contacts with armed poachers, more than half of whom were with groups traveling south from the direction of South Sudan and Sudan. VIDEO: J.J. Kelley, NG Studios. a. percentage of elephants killed only for their meat 19/129 = 14.7% b. percentage of elephants killed only for their tusks 75/129 = 58.1% c. percentage of elephants killed for both their tusks and meat 27/129 = 20.9% 5. The family of Idriss Adoum (top, second from left) tracked one suspect to Sudan. Dzanga Baialso known as the village of elephantsis a mineral-rich mudhole where the animalscongregate. By Bryan ChristyPhotographs by Brent StirtonPublished August 12, 2015. That's painful to imagine, especially for anyone who's had the chance to watch these animals. 19/129 = 14.7%. Where did the tusks end up? Will they go north, the most violent ivory path on the African continent? "And they were yelling at us," she says. " Another potential knock-on is changes to the broader landscape, as the study has revealed that tusked and tuskless animals eat different plants. Subscribe to News from Science for full access to breaking news and analysis on research and science policy. Garamba National Park, in the northeast corner of the DRC and on the border with South Sudan, is a UNESCO World Heritage site, internationally famous for its elephants and its boundless ocean of green. Visit our website terms of use and permissions pages at www.npr.org for further information. - during that 15-year period had all these cascading consequences, all the way up from, you know, a single gene to an entire ecosystem health. MCCAMMON: But the number of tuskless elephants was multiplying in Mozambique during and after the country's decades-long civil war, which ended in 1992. The story typically would have ended with the wanton killing of these park rangers protecting elephants. The rangers Im going out with have each been allocated a handful of rounds for old and unreliable AK-47s, most of them seized from poachers. They say the more elephants they kill, the more ivory they get.. A small proportion of females . 'They seem like white elephants . Dont yet have access? That's just something to think about and consider really because it's absolutely RIDICULOUS that any animal should have to go through that. We need your help to protect elephants and report on wildlife crime. Geli Oh, 16, spent longer with Konys army than her two friendstwo and a half terrible years. By 1913, the African elephant population had dropped to an estimated 10 million. Villagers sometimes taunt returned children with the same expression used for Konys men: LRA Tongo Tongo. LRA Cut Cuta reference, Sugule explains, to the militants vicious use ofmachetes. In May 2013 poachers with the insurgent group Seleka massacred 26 elephants at Dzanga Bai, amineral-rich watering hole in CAR. Gathering speed, they continue north before abruptly turning east, in the direction of Khartoum. But its rare to figure out the genetics behind this human-caused evolution, experts say. DNA suggests that some of the ivory is from elephants killed in May 2013 at Dzanga Bai in CAR. 4. Sudan. RENAMO also had imposed a system it called Gamdira whereby villagers were required to produce food, transport goods and ammunition, and village women were forced to be sex slaves. In Zimbabwe, a recent survey shows massive losses in some parks. Being small, he balked at having to carry the heavy bundles that Konys militants ferry from camp to camp in their patrols across central Africa, and for his whining, he was beaten with a machete. A welcome sight returns to Zakouma: babies. By 1913, the African elephant population had dropped to an estimated 10 million. These jumbo foragers are masterful engineers of their surroundings. When theyre abducted, theyre very young, and theyre forced to do horrible things. Kony is a former Roman Catholic altar boy whose stated mission is to overthrow the Ugandan government on behalf of the Acholi people of northern Uganda, and to rule the country according to his version of the Ten Commandments. "Not only do they recognize each other's calls, but the calls go far," she told NPR correspondent Alex Chadwick, who spent days with her back then, observing the elephants with Bill McQuay. This comment was removed because it broke the rules. UNIDENTIFIED PERSON: Some elephant populations seem to be missing their tusks. So we Bill McQuay and Chris Joyce, who've worked together on stories from the mountains of China to the copper mines of Michigan recently decided to go see Turkalo and find out what happened. During the summer Konys soldiers had killed 25 elephants in Garamba, and they were on their way back to Kony carrying the ivory. But in central Africa, as I learned firsthand, something more sinister is driving the killing: Militias and terrorist groups funded in part by ivory are poaching elephants, often outside their home countries, and even hiding inside national parks. All creatures should live in harmony! Some 30,000 African elephants die each year at the hands of poachers to satisfy the global demand for ivory. CORNISH: That's Fanie Pelletier, a wildlife biologist in Canada who wasn't involved in the work. (Special thanks to the National Public Radio - National Geographic Society Radio Expeditions Sound Collection at the Cornell Lab of Ornithology, for sharing the audio.). The team calculated that 18.5 percent of female elephants did not have tusks before the war began. They had nowhere to run." A young elephant splashes in a stream that runs through the bai. Several Tanzanian officers who had presided over my arrest at the airport, including the wildlife expert, returned the next day to wish us bon voyage. Konys men jump back and forth across borders, hiding in countries where governance is weak. Editor's Note: Viewers may find the next image from the 2013 elephant slaughter disturbing. Track the GPS unit in an interactive map. From Garamba, Kony signaled his desire for peace with Uganda, sending emissaries to neutral Juba, in southern Sudan, to negotiate with Ugandan officials while he and his men lived unmolested in and around the park, protected by a cease-fire agreement. PELLETIER: The reason why that's important is because if you stop the killing right now, you know, the time it would take for the population to, you know, restore that traits would be much longer. So why elephants? Arent you interested in peace talks?. It was still too dangerous, Turkalo decided, so she made her escape by boat a second time. We meet in a busy coffee shop full of students from nearby Brown University. a. percentage of elephants killed . If he can do this, Ill ask him to make several more tusks. Otti liked elephants, Onen recalled, and forbade their killing. Six antipoaching rangers and their cook, the entirety of the Hippotrague (French for roan antelope) unit, were awake, dressed in camouflage uniforms, and preparing for morning prayersdevoted even in the darkness. It hadnt explodedyet. Elephant slaughter increased in the 1950s, where it is estimated that 250 elephants were killed per day. Congos own soldiers threaten the parks southern border, and villagers around the park sometimes poach elephants too. This is a photocopy of the diary of the LRAs Lt. Col. Vincent Binany Okumu, who, defectors say, was in charge of ivory hunting in Garamba National Park. Ugandan forces killed Binany in 2013 and recovered thediary. The relatives of murdered Zakouma ranger Idriss Adoum tracked one of the alleged Heban hill poachers to Sudan and arranged to have him brought back to Chad to stand trial. We ask if she recognized any of the elephants in the photos taken of their carcasses after the poachers fled. This is the long shadow of that human imprint that is going to take generations to erase, Pringle says. He wasnt contrite. During the civil war in Mozambique, soldiers killed elephants with tusks in order to sell the ivory, so fewer elephants with tusks survived. Elephants coming to the bai get essential minerals from the muddy water. Andrea Turkalo looks through a scope in 2002 from the observation platform she built along the edge of the bai. On some days more then 100 elephants at at a time visit the clearing. It was supposed to be a short posting, but he saw too much death to leave. Meanwhile, according to Onen, Konys men hid ivory by burying it in the ground or submerging it in rivers. 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