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Elephants on the downward slope

Published March 6, 2007 at midnight

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The report of a National Academy of Sciences panel on elephant poaching was blunt and direct: "The illegal ivory trade recently intensified to the highest levels ever reported." And that's despite a 1989 U.N. treaty banning international trade in ivory.

The Washington Post concluded from the report, "An international effort to halt the illegal killing of elephants for their ivory has all but collapsed in Africa, leaving officials and advocates alarmed about the survival of the species." The nation of Botswana is a happy exception to the slaughter.

Elephants repopulate quickly where they are protected, but elsewhere in Africa researchers say that last year more than 23,000 were killed, approximately one in 12.

The causes for the growing disregard of the treaty are many: the huge profits to be made in a desperately poor continent; the lawlessness in many regions; the reckless demand for ivory in places like Japan and China; and the fact that with all its other problems, protecting elephants is just not a priority for Africa.

In the abstract of their report, the researchers wrote, "Policing this trafficking has been hampered by the inability to reliably determine geographic origin of contraband ivory. Ivory can be smuggled across multiple international borders and along numerous trade routes, making poaching hot spots and potential trade routes difficult to identify. This fluidity also makes it difficult to refute a country's denial of poaching problems."

However, Samuel Wasser of the University of Washington and his research team have devised a method of DNA tracking that narrows the origin of the ivory down to fairly specific locations. And if law-enforcement officials know where, they stand a much better chance of determining who.

One big seizure of ivory in Singapore was traced back to Zambia and led to a shakeup in the Zambian government.

The tools are there. What's lacking is money for enforcement and educational campaigns and political will. Otherwise, the African elephant is headed toward the fate the 1989 treaty was intended to prevent.