The African elephant population
has been decimated by poaching over the past 10 years.
If it continues, this iconic animal
could be extinct within decades.
Elephants are killed for their ivory.
A single tusk can fetch upwards of $4,000
on the black market.
I think the realization has finally hit home
that if we don't stop this trade,
we are in big trouble.
The slaughter is disastrous,
not just for elephants, but for the stability
of African nations.
Almost every recent African conflict
has been fueled by money from ivory.
But, it can be stopped.
In 1989, in an attempt to save the last African elephants,
the species was awarded the highest level
of protection under the Convention on International Trade
in Endangered Species, or CITES.
This meant all trade in elephant parts was prohibited.
It was probably the most important
international legislation that has ever been done
for any wildlife because it literally stopped
poaching across the continent overnight.
The ban was so successful that elephants were starting
to really increase in numbers.
But, the CITES legislation included a clause.
It stated that countries
with well-managed elephant populations
could downgrade their elephants
to a lower level of protection.
This allowed regulated trade and sales
of existing ivory stockpiles.
That was the most devastating change
that could possibly have been made
because it opened the doors for dual listing
which has created all the problems
that we are seeing right now.
One of the biggest sales
of stockpiled ivory was in 2008,
when 102 tons was sold off.
Initially, it was seen as good news for the elephants
because it raised $15 million for local African communities,
much of which was spent on elephant conservation.
But, during the same period, undercover investigators
reported a spike in ivory sales on the black market.
Operating for over 30 years,
the Environmental Investigation Agency, or EIA,
has used undercover techniques to try
to penetrate wildlife trafficking gangs.
They found the legal sell-off in 2008
revived the ivory market.
From our investigations, we're actually engaged
with some of the traders.
We get the impression that there was a feeling
when the legal sale was allowed that,
that business was back.
It was okay to trade ivory again.
The legal sell-off provided
the perfect cover for the illegal trade
because it's hard to tell if an individual tusk
is from a legal stockpile, or has been poached.
Around 70% of the world's ivory is destined
for China where it's revered a symbol of wealth.
Intricate carvings can fetch hundreds
of thousands of dollars.
EIA investigators found that around 90%
of so-called legal ivory on sale in China
was from the black market.
But, once they make a seizure,
the EIA need evidence that the tusks
have been illegally poached.
Dr. Sam Wasser has developed a novel way
to prove where ivory tusks have come from
using elephant DNA.
My laboratory was one of the first
to develop ways to get DNA out of elephant dung
from elephants across their entire range over Africa.
The dung samples enabled Dr. Wasser
to map the location of individual elephant herds.
DNA samples from seized tusks can be cross-referenced
with Dr. Wasser's database to see if there's a match.
We were shocked to find that over the last decade,
virtually 100% of those large seizures came
from just two places.
78% of it was Savannah ivory starting
from northern Mozambique up through Tanzania
into the southern border of Kenya.
And you could see over time how it slowly crept North.
The other major hotspot was from a place called
the Tridom, and that was all forest elephants.
Using radiocarbon dating,
Dr. Wasser and his team are able
to determine the age of the tusks.
So, we took samples from all of the large seizures
that we had, and we did isotope analysis
on each of those seizures and we found
that virtually all that ivory was new ivory.
This research helps conservationists
know where to focus their efforts.
It also provides valuable evidence
when prosecuting ivory traffickers.
Stamping out the illegal trade
is not just a conservation issue.
The trade is run by organized criminal networks
and the money funds militant and terrorist groups.
The Lord's Resistance Army in Uganda,
Boko Haram in Nigeria and Al-Shabaab in Somali
have all been funded by money from ivory.
But, time could be up on the illegal trade.
Some African countries are destroying
their stockpiles to prevent them from ever being sold.
Kenya burned over 100 tons of ivory,
and that whole cascade of events caused the price
of ivory to drop from about $2,000 a kilo in 2013
to now around eight to $700 a kilo.
In July 2016, President Obama's
near total ban on the buying and selling
of ivory in America came into effect.
In December 2017, China, the world's biggest ivory market,
shut down its domestic trade.
Hong Kong soon followed suit.
Britain, the world's biggest exporter of legal ivory,
is consulting on a total ban,
but has yet to implement it.
Closing the last legal markets will stifle demand for ivory,
and remove the cover the illegal trade relies upon.
If we can shut the ivory markets down globally
and domestically so that we eliminate the demand,
then we have hope to save the elephant.