A young elephant splashes in a stream that runs through the bai. "Not only do they recognize each other's calls, but the calls go far," she told NPR correspondent Alex Chadwick, who spent days with her back then, observing the elephants with Bill McQuay. I just can't understand why anyone would want to take away any of the amazing qualities and features of an elephant. Theyre looting communities, enslaving people, and killing park rangers who get in their way. Dont yet have access? His army farmed vegetables. Otti liked elephants, Onen recalled, and forbade their killing. The Ugandan military finally attacked Konys Garamba camps in late 2008. The family of Idriss Adoum (second from left) tracked one suspect to Sudan. South Sudan. 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. 4. Garamba is a crucible within a crucible, a park under siege in a country often in civil war in a region that has nearly forgotten peace. As far as Onen knew, the poaching squad he abandoned was still making its way north from Garamba through CAR to Sudan. Elephant slaughter increased in the 1950s, where it is estimated that 250 elephants were killed per day. That's painful to imagine, especially for anyone who's had the chance to watch these animals. Most illegal ivory goes to China, where a pair of ivory chopsticks can bring more than a thousand dollars and carved tusks sell for hundreds of thousands of dollars. National Geographic television producer J.J.Kelley takes the floor in the waiting area. We plunge eight hours through elephant grass so tall and thick its possible to get lost just 20 feet from the man in front of youdown grass ravines, up hills exposed to the enemy, across a murky, waist-deep pond. Katy Payne/The Elephant Listening Project What can be done to help save the elephants? I just can't understand why anyone would want to take away any of the amazing qualities and features of an elephant. They shot 26 elephants and cut out their tusks. All rights reserved. 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. Soldiers killed elephants for their ivory tusks, which were extremely valuable. 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. Im not an animal lover, he snaps. Beginning on Christmas Eve, his soldiers spread out in small teams and murdered civilians. FANIE PELLETIER: It's one of the most detailed example of how human activity can influence the genes of a population. But Dante, who is one of the worlds most respected taxidermists, has never done what Im asking him to do. She well remembers the day when the war came to the bai. We would follow them using Google Earth. AAAS is a partner of HINARI, AGORA, OARE, CHORUS, CLOCKSS, CrossRef and COUNTER. After six hours on the dark river, they got to safety, to a campsite in the Congo. They can get what they want today, he said, and keep it there for two, three, or even more than five years.. 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. Some 30,000 African elephants die each year at the hands of poachers to satisfy the global demand for ivory. Andrea Turkalo looks through a scope in 2002 from the observation platform she built along the edge of the bai. They have flashbacks. "They were terrified. Two genes stood out: MEP1a and AMELX, which are active in tooth development in other mammals, were present in seven elephants with tusks, but had unique mutations in 11 tuskless elephants. The U.S. State Department named Kony a specially designated global terrorist in 2008, and the African Union has designated the LRA a terrorist organization. a. percentage of elephants killed only for their meat 19/129 = 14.7% b. percentage of elephants killed only for their tusks 75/129 = 58.1% c. percentage of elephants killed for both their tusks and meat 27/129 = 20.9% 5. A small proportion of females . RESEARCH: Heidi Schultz, Brad Scriber. At the time Sudans north and south were in a civil war, and Kony offered Sudans government, in Khartoum, a way to destabilize the south. Thanks to stepped-up enforcement, the park hasnt lost an elephant to poachers since 2012. By the time you read this, my tusks might have gone to Khartoum. They were relieving a ranger team that had raided a Sudanese poachers camp three weeks before and seized more than a thousand rounds of ammunition; mobile phones holding photographs of bloated, dead elephants; a satellite phone with a solar panel charger; two elephant tusks; a pair of camouflage pants; and a uniform with the insignia of Abu TiraSudans notorious Central Reserve Police, alleged to have committed mass killings, assaults, and rapes in Darfur. Andrea Turkalo /The Elephant Listening Project. But instead, that morning the poachers were hiding among trees surrounding the rangers camp. Schreger lines, he says. By Jake Buehler. They included South Sudanese armed forces (SPLA) and Sudanese military, as well as defectors from those militaries and an assortment of Sudan-based rebels. The Rhodesian armed forces lacked the manpower to effectively protect its 1,300-kilometre (800 mi) border with Mozambique against entering ZANLA insurgents. It was just impossible to stay. Six antipoaching rangers and their cook, the entirety of the Hippotrague (French for roan antelope) unit, were awake, dressed in camouflage uniforms, and preparing for morning prayersdevoted even in the darkness. During the same period, neighboring Mozambique is reported to have lost 48 percent of its elephants. CORNISH: You see; while most African elephants have tusks, some female African elephants are born without them and never grow them. Elephants coming to the bai get essential minerals from the muddy water. . NPR transcripts are created on a rush deadline by an NPR contractor. a. percentage of elephants killed . Five of the six men in Zakoumas Hippotrague patrol unit were killed by elephant poachers outside the park; the sixth is presumed dead. The study is extremely thorough and ticks off all the boxes, Roca says. This behavior is associated with mourning, field researchers say. for their tusks. UNIDENTIFIED PERSON: Some elephant populations seem to be missing their tusks. In this scene from the documentary Explorer: Warlords of Ivory, Bryan Christy presents world-renowned taxidermist George Dante with a new challenge: creating a completely convincing fake elephant tusk. 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. But its rare to figure out the genetics behind this human-caused evolution, experts say. Then, like a bobber in a fishing hole, a nibble. Most of these children are very, very traumatized when they come back home. They have nightmares, Sugule continues. He asks for water for me and is led out of the building. Then youre just the man for me.. b. percentage of elephants killed . When north and south Sudan signed a peace agreement in 2005, Kony lost his Sudanese host. It also raises many questions. The Elephant Listening Project The operation was designed by Kony himself, Onen says. HOW MANY TIMES ?? I will use his tusks to hunt the people who kill elephants and to learn what roads their ivory plunder follows, which ports it leaves, what ships it travels on, what cities and countries it transits, and where it ends up. CORNISH: So he made some calls and assembled a team. During the civil war in Mozambique, soldiers killed elephants with tusks in order to sell the ivory, so fewer elephants with tusks survived. It's nothing extraordinary for humans. It hadnt explodedyet. MCCAMMON: Around 90% of the elephants there were killed, but many female elephants without tusks survived and thrived. So far theyve traveled 600 miles from jungle to desert in just under two months. Zakoumas Mamba Team 1 antipoaching unit includes driver Issa Adoum (brown shirt). To identify the elephants, Turkalo learned to draw the animals' ears each ear's shape and markings are unique to each individual. 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. The elephants coat themselves in red clay. Three more are classified as of importance to watch: Angola, Cambodia, and Laos. Theyre in a place 2.2 degrees Fahrenheit cooler than the ambient temperature, so perhaps theyve been buried in the backyard. There, Onen says, Konys men trade ivory with the Sudanese military for salt, sugar, and arms. Fish and Wildlife Service. From the moment of his capture, Onen says, he was a complainer. I unzip my suitcase to expose two fake tusks and hand him letters from the U.S. Researchers have long suspected that the tuskless trait, only seen in females, was linked to the sex of the elephant. 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. Do we really need to sell ivory tusks in the world just to make money? Meanwhile, flouting the cease-fire, his men crossed into CAR, where they kidnapped hundreds of children and made sex slaves of women they brought back to the park. The White Elephant symbolizes distinctive things for both the man and Jig. "But I'm certain I knew a few of the elephants they killed," she says including some that the NPR team had recorded. Back in 1969 Gorongosa National Park was home to over 2200 elephants, but now there is just over 700 in the park. We need your help to protect elephants and report on wildlife crime. "We gave them a little money and said the Seleka were coming," says Turkalo. "It's 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. Boko Haram also uses the bush as a baseNigerias Sambisa Forest, a game reserve south of Lake Chad. The teams cook, also wounded, struggled 11 miles to get help. Or will they go nowhere, discovered before theyre moved and turned in by an honest person? Researchers at the bai learned to identify individual elephants by the shape and characteristics of their ears. They say the more elephants they kill, the more ivory they get.. World Elephant Day: Ten reasons we love elephants, Elephants counted from space for conservation project. It was reassuring to find the Tanzanian law enforcers so vigilant, because the country is plagued by perhaps the worst elephant poaching in Africa, and corruption is rife. Turkalo is back in the U.S. now, living near Providence, R.I. She had to flee Africa last year because of the civil war in the country that is home to the elephants she shared a life with. The men of the Hippotrague unit assumed that after the previous teams raid, the poachers had all fled home. The dogs are Belgian Malinois shepherds, famed for their use in military operations, especially in tough conditions like the dense central African bush. It was supposed to be a short posting, but he saw too much death to leave. In a public square in Am Timan, shortly before his trial, he shouted, I know who betrayed me! Later, when Labuschagne examined the trajectory of bullets at the scene, he concluded that the poachers had been trained in how to set up a cross fire, which, combined with evidence found at the scene, pointed to President Omar al-Bashirs Sudan Armed Forces. Father Sugule introduces me to three young girls, recent LRA kidnapping victims, who are sitting on a wooden bench in his church. - during that 15-year period had all these cascading consequences, all the way up from, you know, a single gene to an entire ecosystem health. Although the adaptation comes with a pricean associated genetic mutation kills male elephants before theyre bornthe emerging trait may have helped save the population. In 2013, Khamis Kagasheki, then Tanzanias minister of natural resources and tourism, declared that the illegal ivory trade involves rich people and politicians who have formed a very sophisticated network, and he accused four members of Tanzanias Parliament of being involved init. This text may not be in its final form and may be updated or revised in the future. In May 2013 Seleka-backed Sudanese poachers attacked Dzanga Bai, an elephant oasis in Dzanga-Ndoki National Park of southwest CAR, killing 26 elephants. 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. We meet in a busy coffee shop full of students from nearby Brown University. Its not clear why a mutated version of AMELXwhich is located on the x chromosomewould be fatal to males, but researchers suspect one or more nearby genes come along for the ride. 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. Radio Expeditions used interviews, narration, and on-location recording to bring listeners to exotic places around the world. 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. The family of Idriss Adoum (top, second from left) tracked one suspect to Sudan. When he returns hours later, he has three chicken dinners and several bottles of beer, paid for by the police chief. Instead of being made a soldier, he was designated a signalera radioman privy to Konys secret communications. From March 2014 to March 2015, Garambas rangers recorded 31 contacts with armed poachers, more than half of whom were with groups traveling south from the direction of South Sudan and Sudan. Konys men jump back and forth across borders, hiding in countries where governance is weak. 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. Mozambique's elephants declined from an estimated 20,000 to 10,300 during the same period. Froment uses the word war to describe the fight Garambas 150 rangers are in with poachers. This ideathat an animal's perception of danger . Visit our website terms of use and permissions pages at www.npr.org for further information. Or you hear a rumble, and you know it's probably an adult female, rumbling for a family either saying, 'I'm here,' or 'Let's go.' The results suggest that by killing elephants for their tusks, poachers selected for mutated versions of AMELX and MEP1a, which spread in the population and made tuskless elephants more common. Will they go north, the most violent ivory path on the African continent? Diya is for accidents, he says. They killed fewer elephants per hunt but were much harder to track and stop. Mozambiques civil war from 1977 to 1992 had a grim outcome for elephants: During that time, some 90% were killed for the ivory in their tusks, which were sold to finance the war. 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. We ask if she recognized any of the elephants in the photos taken of their carcasses after the poachers fled. Five of the six men in Zakoumas Hippotrague patrol unit were killed by elephant poachers outside the park; the sixth is presumed dead. Now, says the parks director, Rian Labuschagne, of African Parks, my biggest fear is that theyll start coming in pairs.. An estimated 25,000 elephants are killed every year in Africa for their tusks, double the number killed in 2007. Outnumbered and ill equipped, theyre manning the front line in a violent battle that affects us all. When I ask, How many of you have been kidnapped by the LRA?I understand why. In village after village along the road between Father Sugules church and what is now South Sudan, I meet Kony victims who describe being fed elephant meat and how, after elephants were killed, militants took the ivory away. The Central African Republic (CAR). An adviser to the Ugandan military rejects the helicopter accusation, and suggests that the elephants might have been shot in the top of the head after they were down. He and his colleagues analyzed videos, taken before the civil war, of elephants in the park. Dry season in, rainy season out. only . Fifty percent will be tuskless. I know which house theyre in: Using Google Earth, I see its light-blue roof on my screen. National Geographic commissioned the creation of artificial tusks with hidden GPS trackers that were planted in the smuggling supplychain. Where did the tusks end up? Chad. Gathering speed, they continue north before abruptly turning east, in the direction of Khartoum. CORNISH: Consequences that are still continuing nearly 30 years after the war. Since the 1980s, and beginning in Uganda, Konys minions are alleged to have killed tens of thousands of people, slicing the lips, ears, and breasts off women, raping children and women, chopping off the feet of those caught riding bicycles, and kidnapping young boys to create an army of child soldiers who themselves grow into killers. Tusk inheritance patterns in the ElephantVoices database backed up that assumption. When the tortoise Lonesome George, emblem of the Galpagos Islands, died, it was Dante who was tasked with restoring him. Turkalo is now part of an extraordinary operation to protect the surviving forest elephants. In Tanzania and Mozambique, elephants . The women pushed on downriver. Achellam told me that Konys men planned for the future. Issa, who is Chadian, said he joined the team of three Sudanese men and that together they rode more than two weeks to get to Heban, where they killed nine elephants in four days. 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