The Elephant In The Room

Of my childhood memories, some of my fondest are those of playing the piano.  I was blessed to be taught by my mother, who first taught me to respect the piano.  Washing hands before playing was non-negotiable to keep the white keys white.  She wanted me to look after the piano, not just in order to keep it looking good, but also because lives had been taken for it.  She’d grown up with these ivory keys.  For me, taking care of the piano was a way to pay my respects to the elephants who’d been killed in its creation, and at times I felt a tension between my love for the piano and my love for elephants.

Today, most new pianos no longer contain ivory, and there has been a growing recognition of both the need to protect elephants and the pain and damage that poaching inflicts on elephant populations, among with other species, yet elephants are still dying.  Although poaching still exists, that is not the only cause of death, but is perhaps the most sensational aspect of the elephant-human struggle.  As with most things, the reality is more complex, yet can arguably be pared back to two simple causes: human greed and survival of both species.

Poaching, the unregulated killing of animals, is what supplies the movement of endangered animals and animal products.  This worldwide illegal trade has an estimated annual worth of US$24 billion and moves nearly 9,000 species closer to extinction.  Money-laundering is an important aspect to the trade, with apparently legitimate companies, especially those in food production, being used to hide the trafficking.  In 2015, seven tonnes of ivory found in Thailand and Singapore could be traced back to a tea company in Kenya.  

Unfortunately, banks, which have been cracking down on terrorism and money-laundering, appear to be oblivious to environmental crime: according to the global economic crime regulatory body, Financial Action Task Force (FATF), out of 45 jurisdictions that contributed to a report on environmental crime, only eight noted at least one suspicious transaction in the past five years.  These data must be wrong given the numbers, but despite the rhetoric, there is no global body with legal authority on illegal trafficking, so it is up to each country to monitor and police their situation.  There is a global regulator: the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Flora and Fauna (CITES), which has voluntary membership of 182 countries and the EU, but, as opined by former Secretary-General of the Secretariat of CITES, John Scanlon, the convention “neither encourages or discourages trade”.  You may be forgiven for wondering what CITES actually achieves, apart from a feel-good factor for the member countries.

When it comes to elephants specifically, there has been a global ban on ivory trade since 1989, yet still up to 20,000 elephants are killed every year.  Since 2007, poaching in the African continent has surged, resulting in a 30% decrease in savannah elephants by 2015, and a 50% decline in some countries by 2017.  In Asia, where only male elephants have tusks, poaching has the additional consequence of sex imbalance on the remaining population.

Recent numbers on illegal trafficking, a proxy for the degree of poaching, suggest that there is a move away from (elephant) ivory and (rhino) horns to other animal products, such as pangolin scales. This decrease in elephant poaching has been attributed to China’s 2017 domestic ivory trade ban, which lead to a drop in price and demand, but there are now concerns that Cambodia is replacing China as an illegal trade centre and that trade in processed ivory is on the up.  Although China is a major player in the illegal wildlife trade, we shouldn’t forget the EU, which has not put a domestic ban on ivory and gets laundered intentionally-aged “old” ivory.  In hypocritical fashion, the EU has condescended to “guide” African countries on how to protect their wildlife, ignoring the fact, as stated by Dr. Kiiru, Senior Technical Advisor of Elephant Protection Initiative Foundation (EPI), that ivory only has value outside of Africa, so the rest of the world has the biggest role to play in stopping poaching.

The inability to effectively stop and prosecute those involved in the killing and selling of elephants, in comparison with the lucrative illegal trade means that there is currently little to deter those who seek to make a profit from endangered species.  In just one recent example from the Indian state of Tamil Nadu, two men, who had personally poached 300 kg of tusks in 10 years and were arrested twice by the authorities, were released on bail and their whereabouts is now unknown; they are free to continue killing elephants and there’s no guarantee that they will face jail time if they are caught again. 

Of course, one way to stop poaching is by convincing people that elephants have are more valuable if kept alive and in this way wildlife tourism is vital: people pay to go on tours to see and photograph these beautiful animals in their natural habitat.  This a win-win situation, as locals earn money by maintaining a natural, safe habitat for elephants, and park rangers patrol the area to monitor and stop poachers.

Tourism typically funds over 50% of wildlife conservation efforts in countries in Africa, which has around 60 million visitors a year.  In Mozambique, 80% of tourists come to see wildlife, and these tourism dollars are the sole source of money for its national conservation authority, Administracao Nacional das Areas de Conservacao (ANAC), which has a strong anti-poaching focus.  

The importance of tourism in protecting elephants is usually tacit, but when tourism stops, money all but disappears, and the ability to monitor such large areas is severely impacted.  With Covid-19, which has resulted in job losses across the board, earlier concerns of a spike in poaching appear to have been justified: some parts of India have seen a 151% increase, whilst Uganda officials found 822 traps laid by poachers in Bwindi Park in the March-April 2020 period, up 800 from the same time last year. 

Although tourism usually works to save lives, regulated trophy hunting is still an acceptable and profitable activity and, in areas where elephant populations are higher, more elephants can be hunted.  There are still people around the world who feel the need to have a picture with a large dead animal and hang some of it up on their wall – and pay a lof of money for it.  When Botswana, which has over 130,000 elephants, made the call in May 2019 to lift a 5-year ban on elephant hunting, it was both distressing and understandable.  With some experts quick to point out that there has been no increase in the elephant population since the ban, it appears that the non-financial goal in lifting the ban was to reduce human-elephant conflict in rural communities.

Human-elephant conflict is arguably a direct consequence of habitat destruction, but is usually treated as a related, but separate issue, and its seriousness may warrant such treatment, being an almost daily occurrence in farming areas in Africa and Asia.  According to the latest figures from India, which is home to around 30,000 elephants, human-elephant conflict results in more than 500 human deaths and 100 elephant deaths a year.  In a country with more than a billion people, 500 deaths may not seem much, but this ignores the injuries and other losses caused by the conflicts.

Although there is no doubt that conflict occurs where farmers have intruded into elephant habitat, it’s important to keep in mind that the affected farmers may have been there for generations and the elephants are now encroaching on human settlements because of recent loss of habitat and migration corridors.  In other words, it’s not necessarily the farmers themselves who are moving closer to the elephants, but rather, the elephants are being pushed closer to the farmers.  

The threat to farmers and their families comes from direct conflict with elephants (who sometimes even come into a house and kill humans) and from the destruction of crops, and with it, food to eat and an income.  In desperation to protect themselves and their livelihoods, some people will use electric fencing (which is fatal), and attack and kill elephants who get too close.  It can be difficult for authorities trying to find a balance in protecting all involved.

There are a few practical ways to protect crops and the people growing them: fencing (not electric); planting crops that elephants don’t like, e.g. citrus, or patchouli as grown in Aceh, Indonesia; and maintaining safe elephant corridors.  No approach is perfect, however: the best crops to plant may not be suited to the community and maintaining corridors can be difficult where, e.g., roads already exist and unprotected areas lie between two parts of a reserve.  Technology can help to overcome challenges, though, with underpass corridors in Jamshedpur, India, and radio collar “geo-fence” alerts in Sri Lanka.

If these approaches do work to protect human communities, they still leave the problem of where the elephants can actually go, and may only add to the problem.

To a lot of us, the simple solution would be just for the humans to move and leave the elephants alone.  It can be easy to look aghast at farmers complaining about – and killing – elephants when people have the choice to go elsewhere, and it feels good to claim the moral high ground… But that is to overlook both the reality for those living next to elephants, which we don’t have to deal with, and our own negative impact on elephants and myriad other species and the environment, albeit one step removed.   

For those of us who are not so closely connected with our natural environment, and who have the luxury to just go to a shop and buy what we need, we should remember that we have a choice as to how we spend our money, and that choice has a huge impact on the lives of others.  When it comes to elephants, we may have stopped buying ivory ornaments, but a lot of us are still killing elephants indirectly through purchasing products that lead to habitat destruction.  It has been several years now since NGOs have raised awareness of the massive deforestation that occurs in the name of palm oil but, sadly, the demand for this product has not waivered.  Palm oil, which is used in everything from detergents, printing inks, and cosmetics to peanut butter and chocolate, has grown more popular with food manufacturers since 2006 when the US’s FDA ordered labelling trans-fat in a product, and palm oil became a viable – and cheaper – alternative.  It also wasn’t that long ago that New Zealanders were up in arms about Cadbury changing its recipe to replace cocoa oil with palm oil.  To get an idea of how destructive our palm oil use really is, the critically endangered Sumatran elephant, with numbers totalling fewer than 3,000, has lost over 70% of its habitat in the last 25 years, and its population has halved, as a result of deforestation for palm oil production.

Initially after palm oil was put in the spotlight, some companies switched to, or advertised, their use of sustainable palm oil, so that we could continue with our obsession without worrying about companies cutting into forest or leaving orangutans homeless.  Companies even got together and formed a Roundtable of Sustainable Palm Oil (RSPO), to certify sustainably-made palm oil.  When I went to the shop and saw palm oil, I checked for anything about the source, and if it ticked the sustainability box, I felt okay – but not great – about buying it.  At least no trees were harmed.  Or so I thought… A 2019 study by Gatti and Velichevskaya found that the majority of certified sustainable palm oil is being produced in areas that were forest less than 30 years ago, and that in Borneo, 23 of the 27 RSPO-certified supplies are located in what was, up until 1999, orangutan habitat.  The authors suggested that the term ‘sustainable’ is valueless when it is applied to areas that were forest just a few years prior, and that the label of sustainability doesn’t stop, but actually hides the practice and scale of deforestation.  So it’s not just the money-launderers who are hiding their tracks.

When I first found out that my 10-yr-old hands were literally “tickling the ivories”, I was shocked: not only could I not believe that people would kill an animal just for that, but I thought that poaching and illegal trade was a thing of the past.  Now, I look back and I realise that I didn’t really think that, but I hoped that.  Being displaced from the world of illegal trafficking, but being ignorant of where a lot of our goods come from, I was still unwittingly contributing to the extinction of one of my favourite animals.

The story of the plight of the elephants may seem unique, but this is likely only due to the unique qualities of the animal itself: being trapped in a world ruled by greed, lies and human population growth that destroys the natural world and leaves those at the margins struggling to survive, is all too common a narrative.  

References

**Most articles were accessed via elephantnews.org, which is provided by Save the Elephants. A huge thank-you to that organisation!**

Illegal Trafficking and Poaching

Awori, R. (The Independent) 6 August 2020. Europe’s double-standards on saving elephants.
https://www.independent.co.uk/voices/campaigns/GiantsClub/europe-doublestandards-saving-elephants-a9657081.html

Basquillo, J. (Global Trade Review) 8 July 2020. Banks on alert as soft commodities trade targeted by wildlife traffickers.
https://www.gtreview.com/news/global/banks-on-alert-as-soft-commodities-trade-targeted-by-wildlife-traffickers/

Boyle, L. (The Independent) 2 June 2020. Confront illegal wildlife trafficking with international criminal laws, former global trade chief says.
https://www.independent.co.uk/environment/stop-the-illegal-wildlife-trade-coronavirus-cites-un-animal-trafficking-a9543156.html

Murphy, F. & Maclean, W. (New York Times) 10 July 2020. Illegal Ivory Trade Shrinks While Pangolin Trafficking Booms, U.N. Says.
https://www.nytimes.com/reuters/2020/07/10/world/10reuters-un-wildlife-crime.html

Tourism and Hunting

Alim, A. N. (The Independent) 28 July 2020. Conservation efforts threatened by coronavirus and poachers in Mozambique.
https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/africa/mozambique-conservation-covid19-poachers-stop-illegal-wildlife-trade-campaign-a9641496.html

BBC News. 7 February 2020. Botswana auctions off permits to hunt elephants.
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-africa-51413420

Ledger, E. (Evening Standard) 15 July 2020. Stop the illegal wildlife trade: poachers taking advantage of COVID crisis are threatening a global catastrophe for wildlife.
https://www.standard.co.uk/news/stop-wildlife-trade/stop-the-illegal-wildlife-trade-covid-crisis-a4498831.html

Sibanda, A. (Botswana Daily News via AllAfrica) 16 July 2020. Botswana: COVID-19 Impacts On Mining, Tourism.
https://allafrica.com/stories/202007170090.html

Human-Elephant Conflict

Bose, A. K. (The Wire Science) 23 July 2020. A Review of Human-Elephant Conflicts in Kerala.
https://science.thewire.in/environment/a-review-of-human-elephant-conflicts-in-kerala/

Giri, P. (Hindustan Times) 21 July 2020. Elephant electrocuted at Dooars in north Bengal; third incident in 5 weeks.
https://www.hindustantimes.com/india-news/elephant-electrocuted-at-dooars-in-north-bengal-third-death-in-5-weeks/story-gRWojkuG3YcbqYx48f4DIP.html

Hindustan Times. 10 August 2020. More than 500 people, 100 elephants die every year due to conflict with each other: Officials.
https://www.hindustantimes.com/india-news/more-than-500-people-100-elephants-die-every-year-due-to-conflict-with-each-other-officials/story-83lyktQprBi0DgMYcyT7xH.html

Ledwaba, L. (Daily Maverick) 9 July 2020. Rangers shoot down four elephants in human-wildlife conflict, but this is of little help to farmers helpless against the giants of Africa.
https://www.dailymaverick.co.za/article/2020-07-09-close-encounters-of-the-fourth-kind-limpopo-farmers-consume-marauding-elephants/#gsc.tab=0

Majumdar, P. (Telegraph India) 29 July 2020. Construction work of underpasses along elephant corridor gains momentum (India).
https://www.telegraphindia.com/jharkhand/construction-work-of-underpasses-along-elephant-corridor-gains-momentum/cid/1787666

Nurbaiti, A. (The Jakarta Post) 4 July 2020. Planting right crops may prevent elephant-human conflicts: Expert (Indonesia).
https://www.thejakartapost.com/news/2020/07/04/planting-right-crops-may-prevent-elephant-human-conflicts-expert.html

Outlook India. 3 July 2020. Injured tusker dies despite treatment (State of Tamil Nadu, India).
https://www.outlookindia.com/newsscroll/injured-tusker-dies-despite-treatment/1885155

Rodrigo, M. (Mongabay) 26 July 2020. Problem pachyderms? ‘Geofencing’ helps reduce Sri Lanka’s human-elephant conflict (Sri Lanka).
https://news.mongabay.com/2020/07/problem-pachyderms-geofencing-helps-reduce-sri-lankas-human-elephant-conflict/

Palm Oil

Website
http://www.asianelephantsupport.org/the-palm-oil-crisis

Tomsk State University (Phys.org) 14 July 2020. Certified ‘sustainable’ palm oil fields endanger mammal habitats and biodiverse tropical forests over 30 years.
https://phys.org/news/2020-07-certified-sustainable-palm-oil-fields.html