19 years of data from 64 sites suggest why

It’s a grim sight and all too common for rangers in some of Africa’s nature reserves: the bullet-riddled carcass of an elephant, its tusks ripped out by poachers. African elephant populations have declined by 30% since 2006. Poaching has fueled the decline.

Some reserves, such as Garamba in the Democratic Republic of Congo and Selous in Tanzania, have lost hundreds of elephants to poachers over the past decade. But others, like Etosha National Park in Namibia, have been attacked much less. What could explain this difference?

That’s what we set out to explore in our new article, now published on Proceedings of the Royal Society B. We investigate why poaching rates vary so widely across Africa and what this might reveal about what drives, motivates and facilitates poaching. To do this, we used a statistical model to relate poaching levels from 64 African sites to various socioeconomic factors. These included the quality of a country’s governance and the level of human development in the area surrounding a park.

Our findings suggest that poaching rates are lowest where there is strong national governance and where local levels of human development, especially wealth and health, are relatively high. Strong law enforcement at the site level and declining global ivory prices are also keeping poaching levels low.

Understanding these dynamics is crucial. Illegal wildlife trade is one of the highest value illegal trade sectors globally, worth several billion dollars each year. It represents a great threat to biodiversity and ecosystems, which are the basis of human well-being. And elephants are more than just a culturally significant icon. They are “ecosystem engineers” who can increase carbon stocks in forests and diversify habitats through their diet. Their presence in national parks and reserves also has economic benefits, generating valuable tourism revenue.

The deaths of poachers and rangers in the continent’s violent “war” on biodiversity also underscore our findings: when elephants lose, we all lose.

Data collection

We developed a statistical model using 19 years of data on 10,286 poached elephants at 64 sites in 30 African countries. These data were collected, mostly by park rangers, as part of the global Monitoring the Illegal Killing of Elephants (MIKE) program, administered by the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species (CITES).

We then linked the poaching data with key socioeconomic data related to areas around the parks, individual countries, and global markets.

Poaching of high-value species such as elephants and rhinos is driven primarily by sophisticated criminal syndicates. So we used criminology theory and evidence from the scientific literature to generate hypotheses about the factors that might drive, facilitate, or motivate the decisions of these syndicates and the local hunters they recruited. We then identified datasets that represent these factors, such as the Uppsala Armed Conflict dataset and the Global Data Lab Subnational Human Development Index.

Our custom statistical model allows us to test the effect of one hypothetical driver of poaching while accounting for the others. It also means that we can analyze local, national, regional and global factors together.

key results

Parks with higher levels of human development (based on health and wealth metrics from household surveys) and stronger law enforcement experienced less poaching. Poaching was also lower in countries where there was a strong quality of national government. We measure this using the World Bank’s governance indicators.

Socioeconomic and political drivers were much more common than ecological ones. The accessibility and size of a park, the density of its vegetation, and its elephant population did not affect its poaching levels.

The strong associations we found between poaching and factors such as corruption and human development do not necessarily imply that these factors directly cause poaching. Correlation does not imply cause. Further investigation at particular sites will reveal what underlying processes are at play and offer a better understanding of cause and effect.

But we do have some suggestions as to what might be behind the associations we found. These have their roots in previous studies.

Solutions transcend biodiversity

Why, for example, would higher levels of local human well-being in an area be associated with less poaching?

One explanation could be that, in areas of economic deprivation and in the absence of alternatives, local residents might engage in poaching to meet their basic needs or earn additional income.

Another interpretation could be that criminal ivory syndicates seeking to recruit local hunters are targeting areas of lower human welfare because they can operate there more effectively.

Various biodiversity conservation stakeholders, such as government wildlife departments or environmental NGOs, have already recognized the value of focusing on improving human well-being around parks and reserves. A stellar example is the Namibian conservation model. It achieves effective conservation through local communities that govern and benefit from wildlife.

Our study highlights that site-based conservation action alone cannot control illegal killing. Much of what drives and facilitates elephant poaching is beyond the reach or control of conservationists.

Conservationists cannot be expected to solve local human development problems or hold governments accountable on their own. Broader social action is required to address poverty. This could include empowering women, increasing access to basic education, and promoting resilience to climate change. Such action is valuable in its own right, but it will likely also generate benefits for the elephants.

Finally, the positive relationship we found between poaching and ivory prices suggests that addressing the demand for illegal wildlife in end markets is a key part of the puzzle.

We suggest that addressing elephant poaching, and indeed the illegal wildlife trade in general, requires addressing the broader systemic challenges of human development, corruption, and consumer demand. It is not enough to focus only on actions traditionally defined as “wildlife conservation”.

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.