Although the act of hunting elephants was banned in Indonesia in 1931 and the species of the Sumatran elephant is protected under Indonesian law, poaching nonetheless remains as a threat to the conservation of Sumatran Elephants.
Sumatran elephants might have smaller tusks than their African counterparts, however poachers are still tempted to kill them and sell their tusks on the illegal ivory market. Only male Sumatran elephants have tusks and thus with every male elephant poached, the more the sex ratio would be thrown off balance. This would stifle the reproduction rates of the species, and also cause genetic diversity, that is needed to maintain healthy populations, to decrease.
“In most cases in the last year, and previous, there has been an increase in the number of male elephants targeted and removal of ivory,”
– Sunarto, wildlife specialist at WWF Indonesia, 2015
After the elephant is killed and its tusk is hacked off, the ivory is typically then sold off to a middleman and then it makes its way to the hands of traders, retailers or ivory carvers. Majority of the ivory ultimately ends up on the market where it is sold alongside ivory imported from Africa. Most illegal ivory originate from tusks of African elephants, but there is still a demand for Asian ivory as it is perceived by ivory carvers to be of superior quality.
