Threats to Africa’s Elephants

Before we get started on this section, I thought this video might be helpful in getting you to understand why poaching is so harmful for the elephant population. Go ahead and watch it.

Of course, let’s not forget how cruel the process of obtaining ivory is. Elephants are often left for dead after their tusks are removed. When Wayne was working as a ranger in his early days, it became clear to him that Africa’s elephants are in a crisis, due to threats such as habitat loss, human encroachment and farming, climate change. But above all else, there was the illegal trading and poaching of elephants for their ivory tusks.

In 2016, about 60% of the Africa’s elephants’ deaths are in the hands of poachers, and they are dying faster than their rate of reproduction. So why did Wayne chose to work in Tanzania? It is because Tanzania is one of the African countries with the most serious case of poaching and trafficking. This dates back to the 19th century, when Tanzania was the epicentre of ivory trade, striving to satisfy markets in Europe, North America and India.

You might think, why not just ban the sale of ivory? Or ban people from hunting elephants? Actually in 1970, the Tanzanian government did impose a state monopoly over ivory. But this only led to more corruption when illegal traders took advantage of the poor wages of government wildlife officials, police customs etc. The corrupted government allow the illegal trafficking of ivory to continue, thus it wasn’t very effective.

As mentioned earlier, Tanzania is the hub for ivory trade. This attracted Chinese traders such as the “Ivory Queen” Yang Fenglan, who took advantage of the corrupted Tanzanian government to bring back ivory for buyers in East Asia. I hope you are getting the idea of what Wayne was fighting against. It wasn’t just the poachers, smugglers, but also some of the corrupted government officials and police.

The biggest incentive for ivory traders is the economical gains. You can read more about this under the section “Illegal Ivory Trade“.