(Special thanks to the National Public Radio - National Geographic Society Radio Expeditions Sound Collection at the Cornell Lab of Ornithology, for sharing the audio.). Help News from Science publish trustworthy, high-impact stories about research and the people who shape it. The result was. In 1978, the elephant was listed as threatened under the United States' Endangered Species Act. You did exactly what you were supposed to do, I said, shaking their hands. Dzanga Baialso known as the village of elephantsis a mineral-rich mudhole where the animalscongregate. Wittemyer wonders whether a similar phenomenon happened long ago in Asia, because both male and female fossil elephants there have tusks, but among living Asian elephants, only males have tusks. Our next story begins in a place many of us are familiar with - up awake, watching a YouTube video at 3 in the morning. 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. Some 30,000 African elephants die each year at the hands of poachers to satisfy the global demand for ivory. 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. This pushed the species to the brink of extinction. The rangers also recovered a stamped Sudanese army leave slip granting three soldiers permission to travel from Darfur to a town near the Chadian border. 2023 American Association for the Advancement of Science. CORNISH: The upshot, which they published this week in the journal Science, is that females without tusks are pretty likely to have tuskless babies, which is why the trait was becoming so prevalent. A booming Chinese middle class with an insatiable taste for ivory, crippling poverty in Africa, weak and corrupt law enforcement, and more ways than ever to kill an elephant have created a perfect storm. As long-ranging animals, they shape vast swaths of wildlands, stomping and chomping through them, sparring with trees, rearranging foliage. Jensen, who was executive producer of the series, and Alex Chadwick, chief correspondent, insisted on the highest quality sound recording to complement its reporting. The cook, Djimet Said (below), was shot but survived, walking 11 miles to the nearest village for help. His account was corroborated by Caesar Achellam, a former intelligence chief for Kony who is now in the Ugandan governments custody. ", Andrea Turkalo sketched the ears and other details of the elephants she studied to help identify them. But that's not the end of the story. In ten years hes never made a mistake, he says: The tusks are real. Mostup to 3,000were poached from 2005 to 2008. It is believed they do this either to cool themselves off or as a reaction to the annoyance of parasites of the skin. By Jake Buehler. "You know, a lot of the NGOs, we just cut and run," she tells us matter-of-factly. This comment was removed because it broke the rules. I make a mental note that Konys soldiers and other armed groups walk hundreds of miles from Sudan into this endless grass curtain to kill elephants. It hadnt explodedyet. It was just impossible to stay. Achellam told me that Konys men planned for the future. For example, tuskless motherswho would have had one copy of the dominant tuskless gene, from their own mothershad the same number of daughters with and without tusks. They say the more elephants they kill, the more ivory they get.. When north and south Sudan signed a peace agreement in 2005, Kony lost his Sudanese host. As in eye colour and blood type in humans, genes are responsible for whether elephants inherit tusks from their parents. This story was originally published in the September 2015 issue of National Geographicmagazine. 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. "So we heard this 'rat-a-tat-tat.' 19/129 = 14.7%. East Africa is now ground zero for much of the poaching. Onen had been part of an LRA poaching operation in Garamba consisting of 41 fighters, including Konys son Salim. CORNISH: Campbell-Staton had heard all of this before. This limited the trade of some ivory, but trade still continued across the world. I find a human skull fragment, and I nearly pick up a live hand grenade near where the SPLA had camped, mistaking it for a baby tortoise. Visit our website terms of use and permissions pages at www.npr.org for further information. Which raises the question: If ivory is poached by Sudanese, where is it going? I spend a night in police custody, where Im given a desk to sleep on. ", World Elephant Day: Ten facts about amazing elephants, Elephants and the ivory trade: The crisis in Africa, Safer Internet Day: Top tips for when you're online, Rescue services helping as big quake hits Turkey and Syria, We speak to Junior Bake Off champion about winning the show. 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. Rangers join a Congolese army platoon on a 21-day mission in Garamba National Park, searching for poachers, especially those with the LRA. Its only the ivory that will make the LRA strong, he recalls Konysaying. It's nothing extraordinary for humans. Otti was furious, Onen says. The reason why the soldiers killed the elephants was to gain ammunition and arms from the money received after selling their ivory. Despite Sudans role as a safe haven for groups known to traffic ivory, such as the LRA, janjaweed, and other poaching gangs, the country has drawn limited official attention as a poaching state. Female elephants do use their tusks, but female elephants in Mozambique are doing just fine without them, according to Long. It was to become her home, and her life's work. ", They were the Seleka the Muslim rebels who had overthrown the national government in the spring of 2013. 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. ", Turkalo says she walked up to the man in charge and saw he had an AK-47 assault rifle. The Central African Republic was peaceful back then. 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. In 2012 as many as a hundred Sudanese and Chadian poachers on horseback rode across central Africa into Cameroons Bouba Ndjidah National Park. To me, it seems reasonable to think that the radiomans defection might have slowed the progress of the 25 elephants tusks headed to Kony. We protect the park to give the people something of value. He fights for elephants because he knows that without the animals presence, no one will support Garamba, and the parkwhich he calls Africas heartwill be lost. It is assumed that the girls were raped, so its difficult for them to find husbands. In three weeks Konys brutes killed more than 800 people and kidnapped more than 160 children. Three more are classified as of importance to watch: Angola, Cambodia, and Laos. Their own families are afraid that theyre devils, or forever soldiers, who might kill them in the night. The cook, Djimet Said (opposite), was shot but survived, walking 11 miles to the nearest village for help. After six hours on the dark river, they got to safety, to a campsite in the Congo. The Elephant Listening Project It sort of found me. Elephant ivory is a key source of funding for armed groups in central Africa . All around me I hear the click-clack of automatic weapons being loaded. Do we really need to sell ivory tusks in the world just to make money? I order a satellite shot of their location from DigitalGlobe, a commercial vendor of space imagery, and ask for outside help interpreting it. CORNISH: That's Fanie Pelletier, a wildlife biologist in Canada who wasn't involved in the work. Unlike Savanna elephants, forest elephants don't have natural predators, such as lions. Zakouma breathes its elephants. Instead of signing a peace agreement, Kony had his peace negotiator executed. She looks at the floor while her friends whisper to each other, smile radiantly, and nibble on cookies weve brought for them. Elephants gather in the Dzanga bai, a forest clearing the size of several football fields. So I said to myself, 'I better go into a very passive mode.' Today, poaching has stopped in Gorongosa, and the elephant population is recovering. To identify the elephants, Turkalo learned to draw the animals' ears each ear's shape and markings are unique to each individual. It's run by a band of men who, if not exactly soldiers-of-fortune, certainly are trained warriors who can deal not just with poachers, but with civil war, too. This find suggests the mutation for tusklessness may kill male elephants, per the New York Times. After months of tinkering, Kermeens final bespoke ivory-tracking device arrives in the mail. 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. In 2009 Bashir became the worlds first sitting head of state indicted by the International Criminal Court (ICC) in The Hague for war crimes and crimes against humanity. Professor Robert Pringle of Princeton University said: "Tusklessness might be advantageous during a war, but that comes at a cost.". A small proportion of females . Instead of being made a soldier, he was designated a signalera radioman privy to Konys secret communications. It was the rainy season, and the rangers, like the elephants they were guarding, had left the park for higher ground. The relationship is close: SAF warns Kony if theres trouble, Onen says. We'll tell you more about them Friday, on NPR's Morning Edition. These LRA defectorsall abducted as children and pressed into servicenow fight for the Ugandan military. "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. ", Now, a year later, Andrea is stoic about the loss. DESIGN AND DEVELOPMENT: Kevin DiCesare, Joel Fiser, Jaime Hritsik, Brian Jacobs. As of this writing, my artificial tusks sent out their last communication from a Sudanese town called Ed Daein, 500 miles southwest of Khartoum. Show your work. Poaching has been curbed in Chads Zakouma National Park, but rebuilding the parks herd, now at 450, will take years. Although the adaptation comes with a pricean associated genetic mutation kills male elephants before theyre bornthe emerging trait may have helped save the population. The poaching issue is a governance issue, Froment says. Then they head south six miles, back into Kafia Kingi. Their path is consistent with the route Konys defectors tell me ivory takes on the way to the warlords Kafia Kingi base. c. percentage of elephants killed for . Copyright 2021 NPR. 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. The operation was designed by Kony himself, Onen says. In Songo the tusks are held for three days in what looks like a clearing outside town. 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. Congos own soldiers threaten the parks southern border, and villagers around the park sometimes poach elephants too. Andrea Turkalo looks through a scope in 2002 from the observation platform she built along the edge of the bai. The biggest is why a dominant gene associated with deadly effects for males would persist in the population during periods without poaching. The women pushed on downriver. 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. Suddenly they move steadily north, about 12 miles a day along the border with South Sudan, avoiding all roads. The last time an elephant was recorded killed by a poacher in Mozambique's Niassa Reserve was May 17, 2018, according to the Wildlife Conservation Society, a New York -based nonprofit that helps the Mozambican government manage the national reserve. 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. AAAS is a partner of HINARI, AGORA, OARE, CHORUS, CLOCKSS, CrossRef and COUNTER. Ugandan forces killed Binany in 2013 and recovered thediary. The UN estimated that the massacre displaced more than a hundred thousand Congolese and Sudanese. Beginning on Christmas Eve, his soldiers spread out in small teams and murdered civilians. But in the generation born after the war, the rate was 33%, according to decades of observations by the nonprofit group ElephantVoices. First, Campbell-Staton wanted to make sure the proportion of tuskless elephants in Mozambique had indeed changed. Inside the fake tusk, I want him to embed a custom-made GPS and satellite-based tracking system. Was it genetically inherited at all? Konys men jump back and forth across borders, hiding in countries where governance is weak. 'Everybody out, everybody out.' 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. It also raises many questions. "They were terrified. MCCAMMON: Around 90% of the elephants there were killed, but many female elephants without tusks survived and thrived. In Tanzania and Mozambique, elephants . 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. Tongo Tongo shot two elephants one day, she says. All rights reserved. In Zimbabwe, a recent survey shows massive losses in some parks. One moves north toward Heban, the other west toward centralChad. Click the arrow below to hear the amazing audio tale they brought home. The White Elephant symbolizes distinctive things for both the man and Jig. My interpretation, says Jean Marc Froment, then director of the park, is that the Ugandan military is conducting operations inside Garamba and at the same time taking some ivory. But, he adds, the poachers could be SPLA, which uses the same type of helicopter seen over the park. 5. His control is absolute.. Now, researchers report this intense hunting dramatically altered a major elephant population there, favoring female elephants born without tusks. He and his colleagues analyzed videos, taken before the civil war, of elephants in the park. That's just something to think about and consider really because it's absolutely RIDICULOUS that any animal should have to go through that. "I don't know which ones they killed," she replies. She turned her life around to be near them, settling in a rough camp in the rainforest and building an observation platform where she could safely watch the animals that congregate there. CAMPBELL-STATON: You know, people during the Mozambican Civil War were not thinking about the evolution of elephants, I imagine, in the slightest. 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. Sugule is the founder of a group that provides assistance to victims of Konys army. 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.. This shift might be due to random chance or inbreeding after a population goes through a bottleneck. A global march demanding action to stop elephant and rhino poaching will be held . Andrea Turkalo /The Elephant Listening Project, Andrea Turkalo /The Elephant Listening Project. Normally both male and female African elephants have tusks, which are really a pair of massive teeth. After Lucienne Lanziwas husband died in an LRA attack on Garamba, she got a modest stipend. Although the adaptation comes with a pricean associated genetic mutation kills male elephants before they're bornthe emerging trait may have helped save the population. Onen is short and looks even smaller wearing a camouflage-patterned Ugandan army uniform thats too long for him in the sleeves. Dry season in, rainy season out. But its rare to figure out the genetics behind this human-caused evolution, experts say. November 6, 1954, Page 3 Buy Reprints. Science and AAAS are working tirelessly to provide credible, evidence-based information on the latest scientific research and policy, with extensive free coverage of the pandemic. Female elephants in Gorongosa National Park in Mozambique evolved to be tuskless in response to intense hunting. The Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora (CITES), a treaty organization that governs international trade in ivoryand its continuing banhas identified eight countries of primary concern when it comes to international ivory trafficking: China, Kenya, Malaysia, the Philippines, Thailand, Uganda, Tanzania, and Vietnam. Between April 25 and June 17, poachers killed two Garamba rangers and two army . Do not lose even one tusk, he instructed the group, according to Onen, who said the plan was to carry the ivory to a rendezvous in CAR and then on to a market town in Darfur called Songo, not far from the Sudan Armed Forces garrison in Dafaq. Konys army had arrived in Garamba in 2006 with little ammunition left to continue its war, Onen tells me. Next, researchers wanted to pin down the mechanism of inheritance for tusklessness. Rogue militias and army soldiers from the DRC, Sudan, and South Sudan are slaughtering elephants in the park. So far theyve traveled 600 miles from jungle to desert in just under two months. Locals, including poor villagers and unpaid park rangers, are killing elephants for casha risk theyre willing to take because even if theyre caught, the penalties are often negligible. Subscribe to News from Science for full access to breaking news and analysis on research and science policy. Schreger lines, he says. We ask if she recognized any of the elephants in the photos taken of their carcasses after the poachers fled. Thanks to stepped-up enforcement, the park hasnt lost an elephant to poachers since 2012. 4. 75/129 = 58.1%. I unzip my suitcase to expose two fake tusks and hand him letters from the U.S. World Elephant Day: Ten reasons we love elephants, Elephants counted from space for conservation project. They included South Sudanese armed forces (SPLA) and Sudanese military, as well as defectors from those militaries and an assortment of Sudan-based rebels. 4. As we talk over my design needs, Dantes brown eyes sparkle like a boys on Christmas morning. In . On some days more then 100 elephants at at a time visit the clearing. I mean, I've been through a lot of poaching.". During the civil war in Mozambique,soldiers killed elephants with tusks in order to sell the ivory, so fewer elephants with tusks survived. 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. They all report to him, they all obey him. The NPR team had spent hours on that platform with Andrea, seeing these huge animals in a way few people in the world have a chance to do, and with someone who could "translate" what they were doing. for their meat. 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. Its 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. He wasnt contrite. It consists of a battery capable of lasting more than a year, a GPS receiver, an Iridium satellite transceiver, and a temperature sensor. Andrea says all she was able to rescue were electronic copies of her research data. Do we really need to sell ivory tusks in the world just to make money? At least 26 elephants were massacred at the Dzanga Bai in the Central African Republic in the spring of 2013. Fifty percent of her sons will be tusked, but that other 50% would die. a. percentage of elephants killed . All creatures should live in harmony! The team calculated that 18.5 percent of female elephants did not have tusks before the war began. Professor Pringle said it was possible to reverse this trait over time as long as work to recover elephant populations from the brink of extinction continues. It was thanks largely to efforts by the group Invisible Children and its video Kony 2012 that Kony became a household name in the West. All rights reserved. So 50% of her daughters will be tusked. These jumbo foragers are masterful engineers of their surroundings. Two army for higher ground did not have tusks before the civil war, Onen why did soldiers kill elephants in mozambique Konys had! Involved in the Ugandan governments custody higher ground elephants have tusks before the war.. Radioman privy to Konys secret communications breaking News and analysis on research and the people something of value season and... 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