Recently killed elephants are fueling the ivory trade

By Virginia Morrell | Science Magazine

The illegal trade in elephant ivory is being fueled almost entirely by recently killed African elephants, not by tusks leaked from old government stockpiles, as had long been suspected. That’s the conclusion of a new study, which relies on nuclear bomb tests carried out in the 1950s and ’60s to date elephant tusks and determine when the animal died. The findings could help efforts to halt the illegal trafficking of ivory, but they also reveal just how little is known about the criminal networks behind elephant poaching.

“It’s a really important study, and shows that elephant ivory is going practically straight from where an animal was poached to the market,” says Elizabeth Bennett, a wildlife biologist and vice president for species conservation at the Wildlife Conservation Society in New York City, who was not involved in the study. “It tells us that if we can stop the poaching, we can dry up the ivory pouring out of Africa.”

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