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. As far as Onen knew, the poaching squad he abandoned was still making its way north from Garamba through CAR to Sudan. World Elephant Day: Ten reasons we love elephants, Elephants counted from space for conservation project. 'They seem like white elephants . She looks at the floor while her friends whisper to each other, smile radiantly, and nibble on cookies weve brought for them. Andrea Turkalo sketched the ears and other details of the elephants she studied to help identify them. Kermeen started in the radio-tracking business when he was 15 and has since built electronic trackers and collars for wildlife from Andean bears to California condors to Tasmanian devils. He sits on a plastic chair opposite me in a clearing at the African Union forces base in Obo, in the southeastern corner of CAR, where he is in custody. By the time you read this, my tusks might have gone to Khartoum. SHANE CAMPBELL-STATON: The Howard Hughes Medical Institute - they had this video that was called "The Tuskless Elephants Of Gorongosa." ", But Turkalo's 22 years with those elephants came to a disastrous end last year, when civil war in the republic found its way to the Dzanga bai. Was it genetically inherited at all? 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. Elephant slaughter increased in the 1950s, where it is estimated that 250 elephants were killed per day. 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. Meanwhile, according to Onen, Konys men hid ivory by burying it in the ground or submerging it in rivers. We meet over Skype. Together we can make a difference. Dont yet have access? In June three more Garamba-based officers were killed. The Elephant Listening Project The study is extremely thorough and ticks off all the boxes, Roca says. At that time, about 18% of females there were born without tusks. for their tusks. They shift a few miles. Andrea Turkalo/The Elephant Listening Project, Andrea Turkalo /The Elephant Listening Project. Bryan Christy sets out on his groundbreaking mission to track down the kingpins of the ivory trade. Show your work. FANIE PELLETIER: It's one of the most detailed example of how human activity can influence the genes of a population. Killings of civilians have likewise dropped, from 1,252 in 2009 to 13 in 2014, but abductions are rising again, and it takes the arrival of only a few of the armed militants to send fear ricocheting through communities. Next, researchers wanted to pin down the mechanism of inheritance for tusklessness. Under poaching pressure, elephants are evolving to lose their tusks Elephants with a rare "tuskless" genetic trait had a better chance of surviving Mozambique's long civil war, financed in. . During the civil war in Mozambique, soldiers killed elephants with tusks in order to sell the ivory, so fewer elephants with tusks survived. NPR transcripts are created on a rush deadline by an NPR contractor. To look for genes that might be involved, the team took blood from 18 female elephants in the park and sequenced their genomes. Armed groups help fund operations by smuggling elephant ivory. Can fake tusks with hidden GPS trackers thwartthem? The dogs are Belgian Malinois shepherds, famed for their use in military operations, especially in tough conditions like the dense central African bush. To her relief, the men turned out to be local. The men of the Hippotrague unit assumed that after the previous teams raid, the poachers had all fled home. 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. AUDIO: Justin O'Neill. Female elephants in Gorongosa National Park in Mozambique evolved to be tuskless in response to intense hunting. c. percentage of elephants killed for . By Bryan ChristyPhotographs by Brent StirtonPublished August 12, 2015. These LRA defectorsall abducted as children and pressed into servicenow fight for the Ugandan military. 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. 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. CORNISH: Campbell-Staton had heard all of this before. I know that ivory tusks make millions of pounds but is it really worth it? Chad. We need your help to protect elephants and report on wildlife crime. Now, researchers report this intense hunting dramatically altered a major elephant population there, favoring female elephants born without tusks. Its only the ivory that will make the LRA strong, he recalls Konysaying. A white elephant is a valuable item that has a rate that perhaps surpasses its usefulness. By skewing their evolution, humans fiddle with elephants' role in the ecosystem too. During the rains the park is more lake than land, and elephants split into two groups to escape the floods. When the tortoise Lonesome George, emblem of the Galpagos Islands, died, it was Dante who was tasked with restoring him. Follow theirroute. The teams cook, also wounded, struggled 11 miles to get help. The recent death toll of elephants in Garamba has been staggering, even by central African standards. "You know, a lot of the NGOs, we just cut and run," she tells us matter-of-factly. This pushed the species to the brink of extinction. Dry season in, rainy season out. The story typically would have ended with the wanton killing of these park rangers protecting elephants. Elephant slaughter increased in the 1950s, where it is estimated that 250 elephants were killed per day. 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. hide caption. According to Cline Sissler-Bienvenu, Francophone Africa director for the International Fund for Animal Welfare, who led a group into the park after the slaughter, the poachers were most likely from Darfurs Rizeigat tribal group, with ties to the janjaweedthe violent, Sudanese-government-backed militias that have committed atrocities in Darfur. 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. One possibility is that surges of intense hunting have occurred on and off in Gorongosa over millennia, letting the genes occasionally provide a benefit. The reason why the soldiers killed the elephants was to gain ammunition and arms from the money received after selling their ivory. The cook, Djimet Said (below), was shot but survived, walking 11 miles to the nearest village for help. Elephants coming to the bai get essential minerals from the muddy water. From Garamba, Kony sent an exploratory team to Darfur to look into forging a new relationship with the Sudan Armed Forces (SAF), who had supported him against Uganda, hoping to exchange ivory for rocket-propelled grenades and other weapons. 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. ", Andrea Turkalo sketched the ears and other details of the elephants she studied to help identify them. During those years Sudanese poachers arrived in groups of more than a dozen armed men, camping inside the park for months at a time, killing, in one instance, 64 elephants in a single hunt. Kafia Kingi is so widely recognized as a Kony hideout that in April 2013 a coalition of groups, including Invisible Children, the Enough Project, and the Resolve, issued a report called Hidden in Plain Sight: Sudans Harboring of the LRA in the Kafia Kingi Enclave, 2009-2013. LRA defectors I spoke with consistently placed the warlord in the Kafia Kingi area too. Three more are classified as of importance to watch: Angola, Cambodia, and Laos. On September 11, 2014, Michael Onen, a sergeant in Konys army, walked out of Garamba National Park carrying an AK-47, five magazines of ammunition, and a story. I know which house theyre in: Using Google Earth, I see its light-blue roof on my screen. only . If we've learned anything from the COVID-19 pandemic, it's that we cannot wait for a crisis to respond. Otti was furious, Onen says. b. percentage of elephants killed . The three of us eat together (the police chief, a Muslim, leaves the beer to us). Researchers took blood samples from elephants in order to sequence their genomes. "I don't know which ones they killed," she replies. Zakoumas Mamba Team 1 antipoaching unit includes driver Issa Adoum (brown shirt). When ivory poachers target elephants, the hunters can affect more than just animal numbers. They all report to him, they all obey him. Our airport incident was one of many hiccups with the artificial tusks. Soumaine Abdoulaye Issa had been in Darfur, he told a team of African Parks investigators, when he heard about an elephant poaching mission to Chad led by a member of the Sudan Armed Forces. 4. For ten years Khartoum supplied him with food, medicine, and arms, including automatic rifles, antiaircraft guns, rocket-propelled grenades, and mortars. Professor Robert Pringle of Princeton University said: "Tusklessness might be advantageous during a war, but that comes at a cost.". Those elephants were featured in an NPR program, Radio Expeditions, in 2002, when former NPR host and correspondent Alex Chadwick and sound engineer Bill McQuay went to central Africa to record them. Sudan is also a well-documented supplier of ivory to Egypt and is the recipient of substantial Chinese infrastructure investment, which typically comes with Chinese workers, a source of ivory smuggling in many parts of Africa. National Geographic television producer J.J.Kelley takes the floor in the waiting area. After more than an hour of animated debate, they phone the airports wildlife expert. By 1913, the African elephant population had dropped to an estimated 10 million. Konys force has declined from a peak of 2,700 combatants in 1999 to an estimated 150 to 250 core fighters today. My artificial tusks sit motionless for several weeks, a pair of tear-shaped blue dots on my computer screen, which displays a digital map of the eastern corner of CAR. 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. ", Now, a year later, Andrea is stoic about the loss. 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. So I said to myself, 'I better go into a very passive mode.' Click the arrow below to hear the amazing audio tale they brought home. There were armed combatants roaming the countryside. It was the rainy season, and the rangers, like the elephants they were guarding, had left the park for higher ground. for their meat. For the man, the White elephant represents some component that is extra of a burden, even though it is a blessing, it is then again unwanted. By Jake Buehler. Read about our approach to external linking. Ive met more than a thousand children who have been abducted, he says as we talk inside his church in the nearby town of Dungu. We would follow them using Google Earth. " Turkalo and the other women stopped their boat, afraid they'd be fired on if they kept going. It's called the Dzanga bai a clearing the size of several football fields that's rich in the mineralized mud that the elephants depend on. Visit our website terms of use and permissions pages at www.npr.org for further information. Some 30,000 African elephants die each year at the hands of poachers to satisfy the global demand for ivory. Rogue militias and army soldiers from the DRC, Sudan, and South Sudan are slaughtering elephants in the park. In Zimbabwe, a recent survey shows massive losses in some parks. 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. 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. After Sudanese poachers killed his ranger father, Adoum refused diya, a traditional community payment. Its hissanctuary.. only . They also had twice as many daughters as sons. Tusklessness became more common in the female elephants of Mozambique 's Gorongosa National Park after rampant ivory poaching during the country's 15-year civil war. A pilot study published this year showed that the presence of a beehive fence reduced the odds of an elephant crossing the river by 95%. "And they were yelling at us," she says. " Theyre looting communities, enslaving people, and killing park rangers who get in their way. Researchers are still trying to pinpoint all the genetics that underpin . Zakouma National Park has lost nearly 90 percent of its elephants since 2002. Issa claimed he was merely a lookout, not a poacher. That members of the Sudanese military trade arms for ivory with the LRA raises questions about the highest levels of Sudans government. I unzip my suitcase to expose two fake tusks and hand him letters from the U.S. Maybe I could get my fake tusks to Konytoo. Get more great content like this delivered right to you! The Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC). This story was originally published in the September 2015 issue of National Geographicmagazine. This ideathat an animal's perception of danger . Seleka rebels had a stock of about 300 ivory tusks that they sold, which enabled them to get the supplies that helped them overthrow President Franois Boziz in CAR, Ongwen told African Union forces, according to his debriefing. Geli Oh perks up at the word elephant. She saw many elephants in Garamba National Park, she says, which is where the LRA took her. Before the civil war, about 18.5% of females were naturally tuskless, but that figure has risen to 33% among elephants born since the early 1990s. But Dante, who is one of the worlds most respected taxidermists, has never done what Im asking him to do. So we Bill McQuay and Chris Joyce, who've worked together on stories from the mountains of China to the copper mines of Michigan recently decided to go see Turkalo and find out what happened. National Geographic commissioned the creation of artificial tusks with hidden GPS trackers that were planted in the smuggling supplychain. 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. In the criminal world, ivory operates as currency, so in a way Im asking Dante to print counterfeit money I canfollow. And someoneits unclear whois believed to be killing elephants from helicopters, as evidenced by bullet holes in the tops of skulls and the removal of tusks by what can only be chain saws. Earlier this year Kony suffered the defection of his commander of operations, Dominic Ongwen, who told African Union forces that Konys desire for ivory was reinforced by Seleka. Using Kermeens technology, he could adjust how many times a day they tried to communicate with a satellite via the Internet. Among the recent casualties was a group of rare forest elephants in the Central African Republic. Around us stroll Ugandan army soldiers, who make up the entire African Union contingent based in Obo and are committed to finding and killing Kony. 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. UNIDENTIFIED PERSON: Large-tusked elephants in Gorongosa were killed for their ivory, which was sold to buy arms and ammunition. All creatures should live in harmony! Thousands of elephants die each year so that their tusks can be carved into religious objects. Now, scientists say that drove some elephants to evolve tusklessness. In 1994 Kony left Uganda and took his murderous gang on the road. RESEARCH: Heidi Schultz, Brad Scriber. In the United States, Presidents George W. Bush and Barack Obama supported efforts either to arrest or kill him. 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. Forest elephants linger on a misty morning at the Dzanga bai. COPY EDITOR: Cindy Leitner, Hear Brent Stirton tell their stories in an audioslideshow, Hear Bryan Christy discuss the investigation on. With an average of 16 years in the bush with the LRA, the men bring a wealth of experience to the hunt for Kony and his fighters. Since the 2008-09 attack by Konys soldiers, rangers have finished building a new headquarters and acquired two airplanes and a helicopter. Eight more are considered of secondary concern: Cameroon, Congo, the DRC, Egypt, Ethiopia, Gabon, Mozambique, and Nigeria. Congolese soldiers undergo training by Mathieu Eckel of African Parks, an NGO that manages Garamba National Park with the DRCs parks authority. Garamba is managed through a partnership between the DRCs wildlife department and African Parks, a group based in Johannesburg, South Africa. 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. 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 now that there's been a change in the genes than if it wasn't. In Songo the tusks are held for three days in what looks like a clearing outside town. I just can't understand why anyone would want to take away any of the amazing qualities and features of an elephant. The White Elephant symbolizes distinctive things for both the man and Jig. We are in charge of the futures of our animals and earth and making a world for future generations to thrive in. That's painful to imagine, especially for anyone who's had the chance to watch these animals. Erik Stokstad is a reporter at Science, covering environmental issues. 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.' According to Col. Mike Kabango, of the African Union forces, the image shows a large tent and two smaller ones; to Ryan Stage, a remote-sensing specialist in Colorado, it shows a large truck and two small tents. In 2002, NPR host and correspondent Alex Chadwick and sound engineer Bill McQuay went to central Africa to see and gather sound from the rare forest elephants of the Dzanga bai. But she knew she had to leave; she's a researcher for a non-governmental wildlife organization, not some kind of soldier-of-fortune. To gain more troops it recruited civilians into its armyincluding child soldersafter mass abductions. Congos own soldiers threaten the parks southern border, and villagers around the park sometimes poach elephants too. 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. During the summer Konys soldiers had killed 25 elephants in Garamba, and they were on their way back to Kony carrying the ivory. 19/129 = 14.7%. 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. EVERY SINGLE animal on this planet is special and this doesn't happen to monkeys or crocodiles or birds does it? His account was corroborated by Caesar Achellam, a former intelligence chief for Kony who is now in the Ugandan governments custody. To test ivory, dealers will scratch a tusk with a knife or hold a lighter under it; ivory is a tooth and wont melt. But its rare to figure out the genetics behind this human-caused evolution, experts say. The Central African Republic (CAR). 3. But it could take a long time for tusked females to become as common as they once were. Sudan is not on these lists, even though Sudanese poachers are a primary reason elephants are killed in several of the countries listed by CITES as of primary or secondary concern. They found that the tuskless trait was genetic, found in the X chromosome, and it was deadly in males. Year after year, the path to many of the biggest, most horrific elephant killings traces back to Sudan, which has no elephants left but gives comfort to foreign-born poacher-terrorists and is home to the janjaweed and other Sudanese cross-continental marauders. 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. My tusks will have to act like ivory. Radio Expeditions used interviews, narration, and on-location recording to bring listeners to exotic places around the world. Fifty percent of her sons will be tusked, but that other 50% would die. Track the GPS unit in an interactive map. By 1979, there were only 1.3 million elephants left. It is believed they do this either to cool themselves off or as a reaction to the annoyance of parasites of the skin. In a public square in Am Timan, shortly before his trial, he shouted, I know who betrayed me! As she sips her tea in the Providence coffee shop, Turkalo is the picture of calm. But time is stalking our team: Months later, on April 25, 2015, while on patrol, the ranger who led me into Garamba, Agoyo Mbikoyo, was shot and killed by a gang of poachers. ", Turkalo says she walked up to the man in charge and saw he had an AK-47 assault rifle. Tongo Tongo shot two elephants one day, she says. The biggest is why a dominant gene associated with deadly effects for males would persist in the population during periods without poaching. At the sound of a twig cracking or the detection of an unexpected scent on the wind, a ranger in front of me, Agoyo Mbikoyo, signals caution, and I drop with the team into a collective crouch and wait silently. Onen had been part of an LRA poaching operation in Garamba consisting of 41 fighters, including Konys son Salim. 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