I know that ivory tusks make millions of pounds but is it really worth it? Seleka and its rival, anti-Balaka, have set fire to people, thrown them off bridges, and murdered people wantonly, turning CAR into a lawless statethe kind of place where Konys group and other terrorist organizations thrive. He designed a GPS tracker that the U.S. Geological Survey embedded in live Burmese pythons to monitor the invasive snakes in the Florida Everglades. The Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC). Embattled park rangers are often the only defense for wildlife andvillagers. (Special thanks to the National Public Radio - National Geographic Society Radio Expeditions Sound Collection at the Cornell Lab of Ornithology, for sharing the audio.). But its rare to figure out the genetics behind this human-caused evolution, experts say. Researchers looked at why female elephants in Gorongosa national park in Mozambique were frequently born without tusks, and found that the animals were in effect genetically engineered by mass . I just can't understand why anyone would want to take away any of the amazing qualities and features of an elephant. AUDIO: Justin O'Neill. It sort of found me. According to CITES Secretary-General John Scanlon, Sudan does not appear on these lists because CITES sets priorities based mainly on ivory seizures, and there have been few ivory seizures linked to Sudan in recent years. 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%. Although the adaptation comes with a pricean associated genetic mutation kills male elephants before theyre bornthe emerging trait may have helped save the population. Campbell-Staton points out that other species in Gorongosa rely on elephants having tusks to dig up holes for water and strip bark from trees. By the time you read this, my tusks might have gone to Khartoum. 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. 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. 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. Park rangers are often the only forces going up against the killers. 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. Meanwhile, according to Onen, Konys men hid ivory by burying it in the ground or submerging it in rivers. 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. In a public square in Am Timan, shortly before his trial, he shouted, I know who betrayed me! PRODUCER: Janey Adams. Once the war and poaching ended, elephants with tusks were more likely to survive because they could use their tusks to find water and food. Im not an animal lover, he snaps. Andrea says all she was able to rescue were electronic copies of her research data. As Somalia is to piracy, Sudan has become to elephant poaching. On our patrol we dont encounter any poachers or rebel groups. Our next story begins in a place many of us are familiar with - up awake, watching a YouTube video at 3 in the morning. That members of the Sudanese military trade arms for ivory with the LRA raises questions about the highest levels of Sudans government. 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. MCCAMMON: Those changes can ripple through ecosystems. 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 series was one of NPR's earliest adopters of digital technology and led the network in surround-sound production. As far as Onen knew, the poaching squad he abandoned was still making its way north from Garamba through CAR to Sudan. It was thanks largely to efforts by the group Invisible Children and its video Kony 2012 that Kony became a household name in the West. You must be a real animal lover, I say. Jensen, who was executive producer of the series, and Alex Chadwick, chief correspondent, insisted on the highest quality sound recording to complement its reporting. So far theyve traveled 600 miles from jungle to desert in just under two months. UNIDENTIFIED PERSON: Some elephant populations seem to be missing their tusks. They found that the tuskless trait was genetic, found in the X chromosome, and it was deadly in males. "They were terrified. Dont yet have access? But it could take a long time for tusked females to become as common as they once were. "I heard they were on their way. CORNISH: You see; while most African elephants have tusks, some female African elephants are born without them and never grow them. The elephants coat themselves in red clay. As in eye colour and blood type in humans, genes are responsible for whether elephants inherit tusks from their parents. Your tax-deductible contribution plays a critical role in sustaining this effort. 4. You did exactly what you were supposed to do, I said, shaking their hands. ", "We got into a boat; we went downriver," Turkalo says. During the Mozambican civil war, both sides financed their efforts by poaching elephants for ivory. "You know, a lot of the NGOs, we just cut and run," she tells us matter-of-factly. 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. When he returns hours later, he has three chicken dinners and several bottles of beer, paid for by the police chief. Geli Oh, 16, spent longer with Konys army than her two friendstwo and a half terrible years. 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. We would follow them using Google Earth. 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. 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. Their lack of tusks was thought to be a consequence of another human creationthe Mozambican civil war, which lasted from 1977 to 1992 and was partly paid for by the killing of elephants for . This ideathat an animal's perception of danger . During the rains the park is more lake than land, and elephants split into two groups to escape the floods. During a civil war in the country, that lasted from 1977 to 1992, up to 90% of Mozambique's elephant population was killed, mainly for their ivory tusks. Andrea Turkalo /The Elephant Listening Project, Andrea Turkalo /The Elephant Listening Project. Their own families are afraid that theyre devils, or forever soldiers, who might kill them in the night. In March 2015 Boko Harams leader, Abubakar Shekau, pledged allegiance to ISIS, and his group was renamed Islamic States West Africa Province, giving that Middle East terrorist group a foothold in WestAfrica. Click the arrow below to hear the amazing audio tale they brought home. After Sudanese poachers killed his ranger father, Adoum refused diya, a traditional community payment. Ugandan forces killed Binany in 2013 and recovered thediary. In 1978, the elephant was listed as threatened under the United States' Endangered Species Act. A welcome sight returns to Zakouma: babies. During the summer Konys soldiers had killed 25 elephants in Garamba, and they were on their way back to Kony carrying the ivory. Elephants without tusks were normally left alone by hunters, so this made it more likely they would breed and pass on the tuskless trait to their children. Elephants gather in the Dzanga bai, a forest clearing the size of several football fields. 2023 American Association for the Advancement of Science. During the Mozambican Civil War from 1977 to 1992, humans killed so many elephants for their lucrative ivory that the animals seem to have evolved in the space of a generation. These LRA defectorsall abducted as children and pressed into servicenow fight for the Ugandan military. As she sips her tea in the Providence coffee shop, Turkalo is the picture of calm. They killed fewer elephants per hunt but were much harder to track and stop. Another potential knock-on is changes to the broader landscape, as the study has revealed that tusked and tuskless animals eat different plants. It is believed they do this either to cool themselves off or as a reaction to the annoyance of parasites of the skin. He points a finger at me, and yells, You are a liar, bwana! (Bwana is Swahili for sir.). After Lucienne Lanziwas husband died in an LRA attack on Garamba, she got a modest stipend. She's bundled in a heavy coat rarely needed during her years in the African bush. According to data stored in a GPS unit taken off the body of LRA commander Vincent Binany Okumu, who was killed in a 2013 firefight with African Union forces on his return from poaching in Garamba, this village is on the path of ivory headed to Konys base inDarfur. They shot 26 elephants and cut out their tusks. The story typically would have ended with the wanton killing of these park rangers protecting elephants. Subscribe to News from Science for full access to breaking news and analysis on research and science policy. 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. 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. Poachers killed at least 132 last year, and as of this June, rangers had discovered another 42 carcasses with bullet holes, more than 30 attributed to a single Sudanese poaching expeditiona combined loss amounting to more than 10 percent of the parks entire population of elephants, estimated now to be no more than about 1,500. He asks for water for me and is led out of the building. That's painful to imagine, especially for anyone who's had the chance to watch these animals. She had gone to Africa to do aid work, but was drawn to the intricate lives of these elephants. When the American Museum of Natural History wanted to update the hall of North American mammals, taxidermist George Dante got the call. But in the generation born after the war, the rate was 33%, according to decades of observations by the nonprofit group ElephantVoices. COPY EDITOR: Cindy Leitner, Hear Brent Stirton tell their stories in an audioslideshow, Hear Bryan Christy discuss the investigation on. 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. 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. CORNISH: Campbell-Staton had heard all of this before. After six hours on the dark river, they got to safety, to a campsite in the Congo. "This time they covered most of country," she says, "pillage, rape and kill. 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. Veteran ranger Jean Claude Mambo Marindo sits beside almost a hundred tusks seized from elephant poachers at Garamba National Park, in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC). We can't change the last bit we can shape the future. It's nothing extraordinary for humans. October 21, 2021 at 3:01 pm. Andrea Turkalo looks through a scope in 2002 from the observation platform she built along the edge of the bai. By Bryan ChristyPhotographs by Brent StirtonPublished August 12, 2015. During the civil war in Mozambique,soldiers killed elephants with tusks in order to sell the ivory, so fewer elephants with tusks survived. I find a human skull fragment, and I nearly pick up a live hand grenade near where the SPLA had camped, mistaking it for a baby tortoise. But a new study suggests there is a serious reason for why lots of tuskless elephants can now be found in the country of Mozambique in Africa - poaching. Fifty percent will be tuskless. 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. Its only the ivory that will make the LRA strong, he recalls Konysaying. 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. ", Now, a year later, Andrea is stoic about the loss. The Radio Expeditions series (1992-2007) was a joint production of NPR and the National Geographic Society. It was used to make combs, pool balls, knick-knacks, and even piano keys. c. percentage of elephants killed for . A few days later the tusks proceed to Songo, the Sudanese market town where Onen said Konys men trade ivory. They shift a few miles. In . Do we really need to sell ivory tusks in the world just to make money? for their tusks. The men of the Hippotrague unit assumed that after the previous teams raid, the poachers had all fled home. They all report to him, they all obey him. only . It was to become her home, and her life's work. What can be done to help save the elephants? Visit our website terms of use and permissions pages at www.npr.org for further information. Turkalo is compact and direct, and wears her dark hair pulled back in a bun. The Central African Republic (CAR). "We were all women five women." Gathering speed, they continue north before abruptly turning east, in the direction of Khartoum. The teams cook, also wounded, struggled 11 miles to get help. From the moment of his capture, Onen says, he was a complainer. In Mozambique, past hunting pressure led to an increase of . 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