ELEPHANTS & IVORY

WRITTEN AND EDITED BY DAVID LAVIGNE
WITH CONTRIBUTIONS FROM KELVIN ALIE, JASON BELL, GAY BRADSHAW & STEVE NJUMBI
ELEPHANTS
& IVORY

Published by the International Fund for
Animal Welfare, 290 Summer Street,
Yarmouth Port, MA, 02675, U.S.A.
© 2013 International Fund for Animal
Welfare Inc.
All rights reserved
www.ifaw.org
Available in PDF form from www.ifaw.org
Available in hard copy from info@ifaw.org
Elephants & Ivory/Written and Edited by
Dr David M. Lavigne, Science Advisor,
International Fund for Animal Welfare.
Includes bibliographic references.
ISBN 978-1-939464-02-6
1. Elephant conservation.
2. Biology.
3. Threats.
4. Actions.
Designed by Flame Design, Cape Town,
South Africa
The paper used in this book is 100% post-
consumer recycled, Environmental Choice
Certified, processed chlorine free.
Cover Image © IFAW-ATE/V. Fishlock/
Amboseli National Park, Kenya
© IFAW/N. Greenwood/Mangochi District, Malawi
ELEPHANTS
& IVORY
WRITTEN AND EDITED BY
DAVID LAVIGNE
WITH CONTRIBUTIONS FROM
KELVIN ALIE, JASON BELL,
GAY BRADSHAW & STEVE NJUMBI

© IFAW/D. Willetts/Tsavo National Park, Kenya
TABLE OF CONTENTS
SUMMARY 7
1 | INTRODUCTION 17
2 | WHO ARE THE ELEPHANTS? 23
3 | DISTRIBUTION, NUMBERS, AND CONSERVATION STATUS 29
African elephants 30
Distribution 33
African forest elephants 33
African savanna elephants 33
Numbers of African elephants 33
Conservation status 33
Asian elephants 34
Distribution 34
Numbers 34
Conservation status 34
4 | CURRENT THREATS 37
Expansion of human settlements and development 40
Legal and illegal markets and increasing demand for ivory 40
Additional human threats 42
Implications 43
5 | ISSUES IN ELEPHANT CONSERVATION AND MANAGEMENT 45
The disconnect between science, policy and management 47
There are “too many elephants” 49
The question of culling 52
Economics, conservation, and the real world 52
Elephant conservation, development, and poverty alleviation 53
CITES & the international ivory trade 54
6 | THE NATURE OF ELEPHANTS AND THEIR ECOLOGY :
AN INTERDISCIPLINARY PERSPECTIVE 59
Evolutionary biology – Humans are animals too 61
Ecology 62
Animal psychology 63
Conservation biology 63
Bioeconomics 66
Physics 66
Social Sciences 67
Philosophy 67
Where to from here? 67
7 | A KNOWLEDGE-BASED APPROACH TO ELEPHANT CONSERVATION 69
Putting myths to rest 71
Everything really is interrelated and interconnected 71
A knowledge-based conservation ethic 72
Implications for animal welfare 72
All animals are not created equal 73
If we really want to protect and preserve elephants 73
Dealing with uncertainty 75
Last words 75
8 | ACTIONS FOR INDIVIDUALS AND ORGANIZATIONS 77
9 | CHANGING THE FACE OF ELEPHANT CONSERVATION :
A ROLE FOR INTERGOVERNMENTAL ORGANIZATIONS 81
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS 84
CONTRIBUTORS 84
APPENDICES
1 | Current understanding of elephant taxonomy 85
2 | Numbers of African elephants and range, by country and region 86
3 | Purported numbers of Asian elephants by country 88
ENDNOTES 90

© IFAW/D. Willetts/Tsavo National Park, Kenya
SUMMARY
Modern elephants are the last surviving members
of a once diverse and widely distributed group
of mammals known as proboscideans. Only
some three species remain, and they are either
threatened or endangered.
Our objectives, in preparing this booklet, were
to sort through the copious and often conflicting
and confusing information available on modern
elephants, present the facts as they are currently
known, and discuss some of the issues that
continue to hinder elephant conservation today.
We then examined what a new, knowledge-based
approach to elephant conservation might look
like. We end with some suggestions as to what
individuals, non-governmental organizations
and the international conservation community
might do if they really want to reverse current
trends and improve prospects for elephants. For
convenience, the summary largely follows the
organization of the booklet.
WHO ARE THE ELEPHANTS?
The modern scientific evidence indicates that
there are at least two and possibly three distinct
species of African elephants, and a single species
of Asian elephant, the latter represented by four
distinct subspecies. That some influential
members of the international conservation
community fail to acknowledge current science
and continue to include all African elephants in
a single species is a serious oversight that may
well jeopardize the continued existence of certain
unique elephant populations in parts of Africa.
RANGE
Once thought to range over the entire African
continent, African elephants currently exist in 37
countries: Angola, Benin, Botswana, Burkina Faso,
Cameroon, Central African Republic, Chad, Congo,
The Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC),
Côte d’Ivoire, Equatorial Guinea, Eritrea, Ethiopia,
Gabon, Ghana, Guinea, Guinea-Bissau, Kenya,
Liberia, Malawi, Mali, Mozambique, Namibia, Niger,
Nigeria, Rwanda, Senegal, Sierra Leone, Somalia,
South Africa, The Republic of South Sudan,
Tanzania, Togo, Uganda, Zambia, Zimbabwe, and
Swaziland (where they have been reintroduced).
Historically, Asian elephants ranged from
West Asia, along the Iranian coast, to the Indian
subcontinent, Southeast Asia, including Sumatra,
Java, and Borneo, and up into Central China.
Today, they continue to survive in 13 countries
across parts of Asia. Range states include:
Bangladesh, Bhutan, Cambodia, China, India,
7

© IFAW/D. Willetts/Tsavo National Park, Kenya
Indonesia, Laos, Malaysia, Myanmar (Burma),
Nepal, Sri Lanka, Thailand, and Vietnam. Their
current fragmented distribution covers only a
fraction of their known historical range.
NUMBERS
The total number of African elephants was
estimated in 2007 at between 472,269
(“definitely” known) and 698,671 (including
“probable, possible, and speculative” estimates)
animals. The number surviving in 2012 is unknown.
The total number of Asian elephants was
estimated in 2004 at between 38,535-52,566
animals. An additional 15,535-16,300 Asian
elephants were also said to be held in captivity
worldwide. Current figures are unavailable.
CONSERVATION STATUS
African elephants are classified in the IUCN Red
List of Threatened Species as Vulnerable and listed
on Appendix I of the Convention on International
Trade in Endangered Species (CITES), except for
populations living in Botswana, Namibia, South
Africa and Zimbabwe, which have been downlisted
to Appendix II.
Asian elephants are classified in the IUCN Red
List as Endangered and listed on Appendix I of CITES.
THREATS
The major threats to the continued existence of
elephants include:
• The increasing human population, not only
in range states, but regionally and globally.
• Habitat degradation, fragmentation and
loss due to human activities, including –
especially in Africa – those associated with
global warming.
• The existence of national and international
markets for elephant products, particularly
ivory.
• Increasing demand for elephant ivory,
particularly in China, Thailand, and Vietnam;
poaching, especially in Central Africa but
elsewhere as well; and illegal trade, to feed
existing and anticipated market demands.
• Inadequate legislation, enforcement and
compliance; poor governance, and social
and political unrest in some range states.
• The lack of political will by governments, and
the international conservation community
to promote and adopt knowledge-based
approaches to elephant conservation.
ISSUES IN ELEPHANT
CONSERVATION AND
MANAGEMENT
There is considerable controversy about what
needs to be done to mitigate the threats to
elephants in order to protect and conserve the
remaining wild elephant populations. Part of
the problem, which is not unique to elephant
conservation, is that discussions tend to focus on
abstractions of reality, and on myths and fables,
promoted by various participants, each advancing
their own values, objectives and agendas. Issues
discussed here include:
• THE DISCONNECT BETWEEN
SCIENCE, POLICY AND
MANAGEMENT
There is a disconnect between what we know about
elephants and their ecology, the development of
public policy, and the implementation of appropriate
management actions.
Even when scientific information is actually used
to inform elephant conservation decisions, it is done
so in a highly selective and arbitrary fashion. Much
discussion focuses on incomplete and imprecise
data on population numbers and trends, ignoring
that elephants exist not only as populations but as
unique individuals and as components of complex
communities and ecosystems. Important research
from other sciences and other learned fields is
essentially ignored.
Elephant conservation would look remarkably
different today if all our accumulated knowledge
were used to inform policy and management
decisions.
• THERE ARE “TOO MANY
ELEPHANTS”
Although frequently presented as being “scientific”,
claims that there are too many elephants in one
location or another reflect human value judgments.
Science can never tell us how many animals
there should be because no such number exists.
Regardless, when people decide that there are
too many animals, they naturally call for culls to
reduce the number. Science cannot answer the
question whether to cull or not to cull. Scientists
can, however, develop protocols for the scientific
assessment of culling proposals but, to date, no
such protocol has been developed specifically
for the evaluation of proposals to cull elephants.
Instead, where there are more elephants locally
than people are willing to tolerate, the situation
is characterized either as “the elephant problem”
– where elephants are perceived to be having
adverse effects on the environment or biodiversity
– or under the rubric of “Human elephant conflict”
(HEC) – where elephants are having adverse effects
on human activities, e.g. eating crops, damaging
property, or killing people.
Improving the situation for both elephants and
people is admittedly a complex undertaking but
there are signs of progress. In southern Africa, for
example, high densities of elephants can arise when
elephants are fenced in national parks and provided
with artificial watering holes. Remove the fences
and watering holes, and natural density-dependent
population regulation can occur, thereby reducing
local abundance. Another example comes from
Kenya. Over the last ten years, private landowners
have dedicated 1 million hectares of their land to
wildlife conservancies, most of which are critical
elephant corridors and/or dispersal areas.
In addition to reducing elephant densities
locally, an understanding of the elephants’ critical
habitat suggests that HEC might also be reduced
if human settlements and agricultural activities
were not built in the middle of traditional elephant
corridors. Science has much to contribute to the
resolution of perceived conflicts between humans
and elephants, if only we would use it.
• THE QUESTION OF CULLING
In situations where humans decide that there are
more elephants in the local environment than
individual people or society at large desire or
are willing to tolerate, we typically hear calls for
culling programs to reduce the number of animals
in the local environment. This issue is sufficiently
widespread that it deserves further comment.
Culling programs involve either the killing
of individual animals (lethal culling) or their
translocation to other places (non-lethal culling).
Irrespective of the species involved, culling
programs are almost universally initiated without
specific conservation goals; without adequate
scientific assessment; and without any serious
consideration of any alternatives to culling that
might actually achieve the presumed objectives,
both for the target animals and other ecosystem
components, including human society. Almost
invariably, culling programs are initiated without
adequate monitoring schemes that would be
required to evaluate the results of a cull. For these
and other reasons, culling programs rarely if ever
resolve the underlying problems and may, in fact,
make things worse in the longer term.
Culling is one issue that science can actually
help to clarify. At a 1981 meeting that examined
the problem of locally abundant mammalian
populations, the beginnings of a protocol for the
scientific assessment of culling proposals began
to emerge. Now, more than 30 years later, wildlife
culls the world over are still being implemented
without adequate scientific assessment and
monitoring. This example alone reveals the
hypocrisy of governments and agencies that claim
to base their conservation decisions – including
decisions to cull – on the “best available science”.
9

• ECONOMICS, CONSERVATION, AND
THE REAL WORLD
It is a curious fact of life that conservation,
including elephant conservation, has come to be
dominated by an economic approach that has
proven to be ineffective at solving environmental
problems. The failure can be explained because
the underlying economic principles that have
been driving conservation in recent decades are
founded on a number of myths that simply do not
reflect reality.
Any conservation paradigm that places
economy above the environment and treats
ecosystem components, including elephants,
as interchangeable commodities in an
economic system is clearly not representative
of the real world in which we, and elephants,
live. Experience and reason tell us that the
environment, i.e. the biosphere, is paramount. To
pretend otherwise is anthropocentric hubris and
folly. Without a functioning environment, society
and the economy, not to mention elephant
populations, collapse.
• ELEPHANT CONSERVATION,
DEVELOPMENT, AND POVERTY
ALLEVIATION
These days, when the conservation of biodiversity
is discussed within the conservation community,
it is usually paired with something else, whether
it be development, jobs, livelihoods or poverty
alleviation. This phenomenon is simply an
extension of the economic paradigm that has
come to dominate modern conservation. Yet, these
forced “marriages” have done little to halt the loss
of biodiversity, create jobs, improve livelihoods or
alleviate poverty.
The time has come to get conservation back
on track. The protection and preservation of
wild plants and animals, and the ecosystems
they inhabit, must once again be the foremost
consideration of conservationists and the
conservation community.
• CITES & THE INTERNATIONAL IVORY
TRADE
Renewed concerns about the status of elephant
populations in parts of Africa and Asia have re-
energized the debate over whether international
trade bans, implemented under CITES, have the
desired effect. That debate is largely another
distraction, however, because it ignores the ultimate
problem: the very existence of any legal markets for
elephant ivory, whether international or national.
If one of the goals of conservation today is to
protect elephants from the threats posed by legal
and illegal hunting (poaching) for the marketplace,
and to promote the recovery of depleted
populations, then the only possible solution is to
remove elephant ivory not only from international
trade, but entirely from the global marketplace.
If ivory had no commercial value, there would
be little incentive for anyone to kill elephants
for their tusks and one of the major threats to
their survival would eventually disappear. In the
absence of effective legislation banning all trade
and sale of elephant ivory, coupled with effective
enforcement and compliance, the poaching of
elephants for their ivory will assuredly continue.
Failure to close all commercial markets to
elephant products virtually guarantees that the
poaching of elephants and the illegal trade in
ivory will continue. And, no doubt, the tangential
and unproductive debate over the pros and cons
of international trade bans will continue unabated,
further jeopardizing the status of elephant
populations in many parts of Africa and Asia.
THE NATURE OF ELEPHANTS:
AN INTERDISCIPLINARY
PERSPECTIVE
Elephant conservation today is based on an
arbitrary selection of the available information
on the interrelationships between elephants and
their environments. The biased selection of the
information we use to inform our decisions is a
reflection of historical and, still prevailing, human
attitudes, values, objectives and experience, and
in no way represents the accumulated wisdom of
science and other ways of knowing.
A brief consideration of what is broadly known
from a variety of disciplines about the nature
of animals – in particular, elephants – and their
relationships with humans and the biosphere paints
a very different picture of elephants than the one
that has dominated our discussions thus far.
Evolutionary biology tells us that all living
organisms – humans and elephants included –
share a common ancestry. Humans are animals;
we are part of nature not separate from it and
certainly not above it.
Ecologists have long recognized that the living
world is organized along a continuum from genes
to cells to organs, and from individual organisms
to populations, species and communities. Similarly,
the biosphere can be viewed as a hierarchy of
nested systems, from genetic systems at one
end of the spectrum to ecosystems at the other.
While conservation has traditionally concerned
itself with the welfare of populations, species
and ecosystems, there is no scientific basis
for ignoring the welfare of individual animals.
Ecological knowledge also refutes the underlying
assumptions of the dominant economic paradigm
in conservation today.
Animal behaviour, ethology, psychology and
the neurosciences tell us even more about the
nature of elephants as individuals, populations,
and communities. Groups of elephants, like many
mammals, exhibit a distinct social structure.
Elephants live in matriarchal societies dominated
and led by adult females. And elephants, like
some other higher mammals, are said to have an
identifiable “culture”, where “culture” is defined
as a process involving the social transmission of
new behaviours, both among contemporaries and
between generations.
Individual elephants, like a number of other
mammal species including humans, other
primates, and cetaceans, have large, highly
developed brains and share common brain
structures and processes that govern cognition,
emotion, self-awareness, and consciousness.
Indeed, individual Asian elephants are among a
very few animals known to recognize their own
reflections in a mirror. The mirror test, where an
individual recognizes him/herself in the reflection,
is used by scientists to indicate self-awareness,
a trait that puts elephants into an exclusive club,
whose membership is currently limited to humans,
chimpanzees, bonobos, and dolphins. When
stressed, individual elephants (again like humans
and some other primates) may exhibit symptoms
of Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD). Recent
biochemical evidence indicates that the effects
of stress can be detected in surviving elephants
long after the event and transmitted across
generations culturally and neurobiologically.
Conservation biology tells us that some of the
biological characteristics of elephants – including
their large size, the possession of ivory tusks
coveted by humans, and ranges that extend across
international boundaries – make them particularly
vulnerable to the activities of humans.
The history of conservation reminds us that we
are incapable of managing individual species and
the ecosystems they inhabit. The only things we
might be able to manage are human activities and
our impacts on the biosphere, and we haven’t yet
demonstrated that we can do that very well either.
History has also taught us that, in the face of
uncertainty – and much remains uncertain about
elephants and their ecology – we should always
err on the side of caution. Yet, as fundamental
as the Precautionary Approach is to successful
conservation, the concept is vulnerable to abuse.
For those who argue that “wildlife must pay
its own way in order to be conserved”, economic
analyses indicate that placing monetary value on
a species does not guarantee its survival and may
actually promote its demise. Further, many people
value the Earth and its inhabitants in a variety of
ways beyond the purely economic. At some point,
values other than money may actually determine
quality of human life and happiness. Experience
and reason also tell us that economic activities,
including job creation, poverty alleviation,
11

sustainable development and “sustainable use”,
among other distractions, are human activities
that occur within the environment. Without a
functioning environment, both society and the
economy collapse.
The recognition of the continuum that exists
between humans and other animals, including
elephants, in terms of a common evolutionary
legacy, shared genes, anatomy, physiology,
intelligence and social behaviour, has led to the
argument that “there should be some continuum in
moral standards”, a view that seems logical but one
that has yet to gain general acceptance. Regardless,
it is now widely accepted that living organisms and
the nonliving components of the biosphere have
values other than economic value. In particular,
individual organisms and populations have intrinsic
value, i.e. value beyond their utility to humans.
A KNOWLEDGE-BASED
APPROACH TO ELEPHANT
CONSERVATION
It has been said that “…there is no other basis for
sound political decisions than the best available
scientific evidence”. If we take that statement to
be true, it has much to say about conservation
generally, and elephant conservation in particular.
It says, for example, that we must reject the
myths and fables that dominate many discussions
in modern conservation because they do not
reflect current knowledge and understanding. It
also tells us that everything is interrelated and
interconnected. And it suggests that we need to
develop a new Earth-centred conservation ethic,
and an approach to conservation management
that is consistent with “the best available
scientific evidence”.
An Earth-centred conservation ethic would
reflect evolutionary and ecological relationships;
it would recognize that Planet Earth is finite and
cannot support continuous growth, either of the
human population or its economy. The former
realization speaks to the urgent need for better
family planning on a global scale; the latter supports
the argument that the economy (or commerce)
desperately “needs…a new way of seeing itself”.
An Earth-centred conservation ethic would
also remove the artificial separation of individual
animals and populations and put animal welfare
where it naturally belongs – squarely in the middle
of the conservation agenda.
While the best available science reminds us
that all animals, including humans, are related, it
also tells us that some animals – such as elephants
– are sufficiently different from others to warrant
special consideration. Elephants, because of
their biology, are more likely to go extinct as
a result of human activities than many other
species. That elephants possess large brains, are
both sentient and sapient, exhibit complex social
organization, and possess an identifiable culture,
all raise important ethical questions about our
relationships and interactions with elephants.
It is becoming abundantly clear that if science
and knowledge, generally, underpinned our
conservation policies, our approach to elephant
protection and conservation would be radically
different from that currently being advocated and
practiced today.
At a minimum, we would recognize the need
to protect critical habitats for elephants where
they continue to survive. We would also provide
them with movement corridors to allow natural
processes to better regulate their numbers, and
implement a transnational approach to elephant
conservation, such as that now being advanced in
parts of southern Africa.
In order to combat the continued killing of
elephants by poachers, society would unilaterally
close all markets for elephant products, and
ban all international trade in elephant products.
While such a suggestion may seem extreme,
closing markets and imposing trade bans are
commonplace when dealing with other species,
especially marine mammals. So, why not extend
the idea to elephants and, for that matter, other
threatened species in commercial trade?
The international community would also
support and enhance the efforts of some national
13
© IFAW/J Hrusa

© IFAW/M. Booth/Mangochi District, Malawi
governments and international agencies to
gain the upper hand on poachers and, more
importantly, on the international wildlife crime
syndicates that drive poaching and illegal
international trade today. To do that would require
much tougher legislation, both nationally and
internationally, with severe penalties imposed
on anyone and everyone found in violation of
the law. It would also require a crackdown on the
corrupt governments, government officials, and
foreign nationals who currently help to facilitate
such illegal activities. It would require enhanced
enforcement, both in range states where elephants
are killed and in the international community
where illegal trade continues to flourish.
Just about everything associated with
elephants is uncertain, not just their future. We
are still debating how many species currently
survive. We really don’t know much about their
current distribution in large parts of their
presumed range. We don’t know how many
elephants remain alive today – the most recent
data are at least five years old and, even back
then, only about half of their presumed range in
Africa was actually surveyed. We know that many
elephants are poached each year but we don’t
know how many. We also know that elephant
tusks and carved ivory are frequently seized in
illegal international trade, but we don’t have any
idea what these artifacts represent, including the
number of dead elephants involved or when they
actually died or were killed. And, while the demand
for ivory appears to be increasing at an alarming
rate, the extent of the current demand and its
potential for growth remains unknown and, likely,
unknowable.
In addition to the scientific uncertainty
associated with the available data, elephants,
particularly in Africa, have to contend with the
uncertainties associated with civil unrest and
military conflicts. They also have to contend with
the new environmental uncertainties associated
with global warming.
If ever there were a compelling case for
implementing a precautionary approach to protect
and conserve a unique and threatened group of
animals, it would surely include elephants.
ACTIONS FOR INDIVIDUALS
AND NON-GOVERNMENTAL
ORGANIZATIONS
Elephants are in serious trouble and many people,
scientists included, are wondering just how long
they will survive if we don’t soon do something
different to protect them from the activities of
humans. Clearly, we need to do more to reduce
the threats to elephant populations. Individuals
and organizations must insist that the responsible
authorities base future conservation actions on
what is actually known about elephants and their
ecology, rather than on the many myths that
dominate elephant conservation today. They could
support national governments in providing enhanced
protection of elephant habitat. Individuals and
organizations could also help by putting pressure
on governments and international conventions to
remove all elephant ivory from the marketplace
and to ban all international trade – both legal and
illegal – because the commercial exploitation of
animals like elephants almost invariably leads to
their depletion. Consumers can refuse to purchase
elephant ivory products. National governments and
the international community must be encouraged
to enhance laws to protect elephants from illegal
activities and provide increased enforcement to
reduce poaching and illegal trade. The international
conservation community must also take the lead in
developing and delivering public education programs
aimed at reducing demand for elephant ivory,
especially in parts of Asia.
CHANGING THE FACE OF
ELEPHANT CONSERVATION: A
ROLE FOR INTERGOVERNMENTAL
ORGANIZATIONS AND
CONVENTIONS
Reversing the current declines of elephant
populations and their habitats, especially in
parts of Africa, and promoting some recovery
from their current precarious state will require
major changes to how we approach elephant
conservation in the years to come. It will require
a more realistic, knowledge-based appraisal of
current circumstances, and the public and political
will to deal with the obvious problems that
confront us.
As with any major societal change, changing
the face of elephant conservation will require
leadership. Ideally, that leadership would come
from national governments, intergovernmental
organizations and international conservation
conventions. These could include, especially, IUCN
– the World Conservation Union, CITES, and the
United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP).
Asking massive bureaucracies and
governments to make sweeping changes in how
they approach elephant conservation may seem
naïve, almost futile. But, if we really want to
conserve elephants and offer them the protection
they so clearly need and deserve, we have to
try new approaches. The alternative, doing the
same things over and over again and expecting
different results, is – to put it bluntly – the very
definition of insanity.
Ultimately, it is only through moral judgment
and political choice that we will take the steps
necessary to safeguard the future of elephants.
The question that remains is: will we?
15
© IFAW/M. Booth/Mangochi District, Malawi

© IFAW/N. Greenwood/Liwonde National Park, Malawi
1 INTRODUCTION

© IFAW/J He/Xishuangbanna, China
Modern elephants are the only surviving members
of the ancient mammalian order Proboscidea.
Proboscideans originated in the Cenozoic Era, some
60 million years ago. 1 Once a diverse group of large
herbivores, with at least 175 species and subspecies
belonging to 42 genera and ten families described in
the fossil record, 2 they spread to all parts of the planet,
except for Australia, New Zealand and Antarctica. 3
Today, only three recognized species remain. They are
restricted to parts of Africa and Asia and represent the
largest of all living terrestrial mammals.
The remaining wild elephants are under
ever increasing threat, largely because of
human activities. These activities, which have
dramatically reduced the distribution and numbers
of elephants throughout past centuries, include:
habitat fragmentation, deterioration, and loss; the
poaching of animals (mainly for their tusks) to feed
a seemingly insatiable demand for ivory in the
marketplace; confinement in nature reserves and
on private property; and the removal of animals
from the wild to populate zoos and circuses, and
to provide beasts of burden and animals for use in
traditional cultural ceremonies. 4 Without significant
changes in human behaviour, it seems unlikely that
this once successful group of mammals will survive
much longer. 5
At this stage in the 21st Century, poaching and
illegal commercial trade represent the most visible
threats to elephants in the wild. But that narrow
view overlooks an overarching threat: the continued
existence of legal commercial markets for elephant
ivory at both national and international scales. It is
the very existence of such markets that provides the
incentive for poaching and illegal trade. As Frederick
Vreeland quietly observed almost a century ago, 6
“
As long as there are dealers in game you
will find men who will kill it in spite of
anything you may do to the contrary.
”
19

While poaching and illegal trade undeniably
represent serious threats to elephants, habitat
fragmentation, deterioration and loss continue
to impact elephants virtually everywhere. These
threats are not so immediately obvious – there
are no dead bodies or piles of seized ivory to
photograph. Yet elephants, like all species, cannot
survive without viable habitats.
IFAW – the International Fund for Animal Welfare
– believes wild animals belong in the wild. IFAW is
opposed to the commercial exploitation of wildlife,
based on the historical and scientific evidence
that such activities invariably cause a variety of
animal welfare and conservation problems. Such
problems include the unnecessary and avoidable
suffering of individual animals, and the depletion of
wild populations. We also understand that as their
habitats disappear, so too do the elephants. And
so, we sponsor research aimed at understanding
elephant ecology, and work to protect viable habitats
where elephants can continue to live and thrive.
Our aim, in producing this little book, is to
provide some relevant facts about elephants as
they are known today, including their taxonomy,
distribution, population trends and conservation
status, and the current threats to their continued
existence in the wild. We discuss some of the issues
that continue to hinder elephant conservation today
and then examine what a new, knowledge-based
approach to elephant conservation might look like.
We end with some suggestions as to what needs
to be done to protect and conserve elephants if we
really want to give the largest remaining land animal
reasonable prospects for survival.
21
© IFAW/D. Willetts/Tsavo West National Park, Kenya

© IFAW/M. Booth/Amboseli National Park, Kenya
2 WHO ARE THE
ELEPHANTS?

© IFAW/F. Onyango/Tsavo East National Park, Kenya
“
Distinguishing one independent population from another [is] one of the most basic requirements
for successful conservation and management, especially of exploited species. ”7
Scientists have estimated that there are
some five to more than 50 million species of
organisms on the planet. 8 The wide range of
uncertainty is usually explained away by the
existence of untold numbers of viruses, bacteria,
nematodes, insects, and other organisms that
remain to be discovered, described, classified
and named, especially in tropical forests and
in the world’s oceans. Such uncertainty takes
on new meaning, however, when we look at the
elephants. Even though they are the largest
surviving land mammals, conservationists have
yet to agree even on how many species remain!
Before we can begin to identify independent
populations and implement appropriate
conservation measures for each, we must be able
to distinguish individual species.
In 1978, when Asian elephants were first listed
on Appendix I of the Convention on International
Trade in Endangered Species (CITES), two species
were recognized: the African elephant, Loxodonta
africana, and the Asian elephant, Elephas maximus.
The situation remained unchanged when African
elephants were added to Appendix I in 1989.
Although our scientific understanding of
elephant taxonomy has advanced considerably
over the past 30 years, the conservation
community has failed to keep up. While state-of-
the-art molecular genetics techniques reveal
that there are at least three and, possibly, more
species of living elephants, 9 CITES and IUCN – the
World Conservation Union (the keeper of the
Red List of Threatened Species), 10 among others,
continue to recognize the existence of only two.
Moreover, they rationalize their intransigence,
claiming that “more extensive research is required
to support the proposed re-classification”. 11
Ignoring the opinions of the wider scientific
community (such as the one cited in opening
quotation above), they curiously argue that
“Premature allocation into more than one species
may leave hybrids in an uncertain conservation
status”. The obvious answer to that argument
is that failure to recognize a genetically distinct
species may actually leave an entire species in an
uncertain conservation status.
A recent genetics study 12 confirms that the
African elephants belong to at least two distinct
species – the African savanna (or bush) elephant
(L. africana) and the African forest elephant
(L. cyclotis). The evidence now indicates that
these two species are “as or more divergent” as
mammoths and Asian elephants, having separated
some 2.6-5.6 million years ago. Major differences
between African savanna and African forest
elephants, and Asian elephants are summarized in
Table 1. 13
25

ELEPHANT SPECIES
TRAIT AFRICAN SAVANNA AFRICAN FOREST ASIAN
DNA Genetically distinct Genetically distinct Genetically distinct
HEIGHT
WEIGHT
TUSKS
EARS
HEAD SHAPE
TRUNK
TOENAILS
Males 3.3 metres
Females 2.7 metres
Males 6 tonnes
Females 3 tonnes
Occur in both males and
females, curve upwards.
Large, shaped like map of
Africa, reach up over neck.
Rounded head, dome
shaped.
Males 3.3 metres
Females 2.7 metres
Males 6 tonnes
Females 3 tonnes
Occur in both males and
females, but smaller,
thinner, and straighter than
those in African savanna
elephants.
Smaller than in the African
savanna elephant; do not
reach up over neck.
Rounded head, dome
shaped.
Trunk is more heavily ringed and not as hard as that of
Asian elephants; tip of trunk has two finger-like projections
that are used to pick up and manipulate objects.
4 nails on front feet; 3 on
back.
5 nails on front feet; 4 on
back.
2.5-3.0 metres
Males 5.4 tonnes
Females 2.7 tonnes
Tusks occur only in some
adult males. Some females
and a small percentage of
males have rudimentary
tusks called tuches.
Small, shaped like map of
India, do not reach up over
neck.
Twin domed head with dent
in the middle
Has only one “finger”, holds
objects against underside of
trunk to manipulate them.
5 nails on front feet; 4
(rarely 5) on back.
TABLE 1 | Major differences between African savanna and African forest elephants, and Asian elephants.
Failure to accept the best available science
on the number of elephant species represents a
serious conservation threat, especially for the
imperiled African forest elephant, about which
very little is known.
The latest taxonomic information for living
elephants is summarized in Appendix 1. Further
research is still needed since there have been
suggestions that an additional species of
elephant may exist in West Africa. 14 There is also
considerable on-going debate about whether there
are three or four genetically distinct subspecies of
Asian elephants. 15
Sorting out genetically distinct elephant
species and populations is essential if we are
really concerned about the conservation of
elephants in both Africa and Asia. CITES, IUCN,
and the global conservation community should
move quickly to recognize the differences between
African savanna elephants and African forest
elephants, and to adjust their approaches for
protecting those populations that are currently
known to be threatened or endangered, largely
as a consequence of human activities. Can we, for
example, continue to permit legal international
trade in elephant ivory when we know that
poaching compromises elephant populations
throughout much of their range and especially in
central and West Africa, where the little known
and threatened forest elephants live?
AFRICAN SAVANNA ELEPHANT
© IFAW/D. Willetts/Tsavo East National Park, Kenya
FOREST ELEPHANT
© IFAW/MDDEFE/Odzala-Kokoua, Republic of the Congo
ASIAN ELEPHANT
© IFAW/C. Dafan/Nuo Zhadu, Pu’er, Yunnan province, China
27

© IFAW/N. Grosse-Woodley/Tsavo West National Park, Kenya
3 DISTRIBUTION,
NUMBERS, AND
CONSERVATION
STATUS

“
The public likes the
spurious certainty
of numbers. ”16
If describing the numbers of species of elephants
today is difficult, then describing their distribution
in space and time, and estimating their numbers
and population trends, are arguably even more
problematic.
AFRICAN ELEPHANTS
As noted in the previous chapter, most of the
conservation literature on African elephants treats
them as if they all belong to a single species.
As a result, most of the current information on
distribution, numbers and conservation status
does not provide separate information for African
savanna elephants and African forest elephants.
In the account below, the term “African elephants”
refers to the two (and, possibly, three) species
combined. Where information does exist for
individual species, they are identified by their
distinct common names.
31
© IFAW/J Hrusa/Kruger National Park, South Africa

GUINEA-
BISSAU
GAMBIA
SENEGAL
GUINEA
MOROCCO
MAURITANIA
SIERRA LEONE
CôTE D’IVOIRE
( IVORY COAST )
WEST AFRICA
BURKINA
FASO
LIBERIA
SAHARA DESERT
MEDITERRANEAN SEA
ALGERIA LIBYA EGYPT
MALI
GHANA TOGO
BENIN
CENTRAL AFRICA
ATLANTIC OCEAN
NIGERIA
CAMEROON
EQUATORIAL GUINEA
GABON
SOUTHERN AFRICA
NIGER
CONGO
CHAD
CENTRAL AFRICAN
REPUBLIC
ANGOLA
NAMIBIA
DEMOCRATIC
REPUBLIC OF THE
CONGO
ZAMBIA
BOTSWANA
SOUTH AFRICA
BURUNDI
SUDAN
SOUTH SUDAN
UGANDA
MALAWI
ZIMBABWE
RED SEA
ETHIOPIA
SWAZILAND
ERITREA
KENYA
RWANDA
TANZANIA
MADAGASCAR
MOZAMBIQUE
SOMALIA
INDIAN OCEAN
EASTERN
AFRICA
DISTRIBUTION
Early in recorded human history, African elephants
are said to have ranged throughout the entire
African continent, from the Mediterranean Sea
to South Africa, including the Sahara. Later, their
distribution became limited to the sub-Saharan
region. Today, their range has been further
reduced to parts of West, central, eastern and
southern Africa (Figure 1). 17
African elephants currently exist in 37 countries
(Figure 1): Angola, Benin, Botswana, Burkina Faso,
Cameroon, Central African Republic, Chad, Congo,
The Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC),
Côte d’Ivoire, Equatorial Guinea, Eritrea, Ethiopia,
Gabon, Ghana, Guinea, Guinea-Bissau, Kenya,
Liberia, Malawi, Mali, Mozambique, Namibia, Niger,
Nigeria, Rwanda, Senegal, Sierra Leone, Somalia,
South Africa, The Republic of South Sudan,
Tanzania, Togo, Uganda, Zambia, Zimbabwe, and
Swaziland (where they have been reintroduced).
African elephants have been declared regionally
extinct in Burundi, Gambia, and Mauritania. 18
AFRICAN FOREST ELEPHANTS
African forest elephants inhabit the rainforests
of Central Africa – the Congo basin (Cameroon,
Central African Republic, Democratic Republic of
Congo, Republic of Congo, Gabon and Equatorial
Guinea) – and West Africa, although it has been
suggested that another distinct elephant species
may reside in West Africa. 19
AFRICAN SAVANNA ELEPHANTS
African savanna elephants are said to live
throughout the sub-Saharan regions of eastern,
and southern Africa. 20
NUMBERS OF AFRICAN ELEPHANTS
The most recent estimates of African elephant
numbers were compiled by IUCN and published in
the African Elephant Status Report 2007. 21 At that
time, the total number of elephants “definitely”
known was estimated as 472,269. Adding in
probable, possible, and speculative estimates
raised this total to 698,671 (see Appendix 2 for a
summary of numbers by region and country). In
reflecting on the significance of these numbers,
it is sobering to realize that they are based on
surveys covering only 51 per cent of presumed
elephant range. Clearly, no one really knows how
many elephants remain in Africa today. All we can
really say is that – based on current knowledge –
the number may be somewhere between 470,000
and 700,000. The range of uncertainty associated
with such estimates does not appear to have
been quantified and the number of animals that
continue to survive in the 49% of elephant range
that has not been surveyed is anyone’s guess.
Given the uncertainty about the precise
distribution of individual African elephant species,
and the uncertainty associated with current
estimates of elephant numbers, it is premature to
attempt individual estimates for African forest and
savanna elephants.
FIGURE 1 | Compiled from various sources; distribution (in red) from IUCN. 18
CONSERVATION STATUS
Where the conservation status of African
elephants has been designated by international
organizations and conventions, little attempt has
been made to distinguish between species. African
elephants are listed as Vulnerable on the IUCN Red
List of Threatened Species. All African elephants
were included in Appendix I of the Convention on
International Trade in Endangered Species (CITES)
in 1989. 22 Today, they remain on Appendix I, with
the exception of those populations that live in
Botswana, Namibia, South Africa and Zimbabwe,
which are now listed on Appendix II. 23
The Convention on Migratory Species (CMS)
stands apart from IUCN and CITES in that it
recognizes the existence of both the African
savanna elephant and the African forest elephant.
It includes both species on its Appendix II. 24
33

ASIAN ELEPHANTS
Asian elephants are described as belonging
to a single species, with four distinct and
geographically isolated subspecies (Appendix 1).
The Indian (sometimes called Asian) subspecies
lives on the Asian continent. The other three
subspecies are confined to Sri Lanka, Sumatra,
and Borneo, 25 respectively.
DISTRIBUTION
Going back some 6000 years, Asian elephants
are said to have ranged from West Asia (including
modern day Syria and Iraq), along the Iranian
coast and into the Indian subcontinent, Southeast
Asia, including Sumatra, Java, and Borneo, and up
into central China, at least as far as the Yangtze
River, an area of over 9 million km 2 . 26 Asian
elephants are now extinct in West Asia, Java, and
most of China.
Asian elephants continue to survive in 13
countries. Range states include: Bangladesh,
Bhutan, Cambodia, China, India, Indonesia, Laos,
IRAN
Malaysia, Myanmar, Burma, Nepal, Sri Lanka,
Thailand, and Vietnam. Their current fragmented
distribution covers only a fraction of their known
historical range (Figure 2).
NUMBERS
It is impossible to estimate the current numbers
of Asian elephants. Blake and Hedges reviewed
the published “estimates” for total wild Asian
elephants from 1978-2003. 27 They noted that the
frequently cited estimate of about 30,000-50,000,
is really nothing more than an educated guess.
That “estimate” has not changed much in 25
years, despite the major losses of elephant habitat
that have occurred over that time.
The IUCN Red List acknowledges Blake and
Hedges’ assessment but continues to quote a
41,410–52,345 estimate provided by Sukumar
in 2003. 28 The most recent assessment appears
to come from IUCN’s Asian Elephant Specialist
Group in 2004. It revises a few numbers in the
INDIA
SRI LANKA
NEPAL
BHUTAN
BANGLADESH
BAY OF BENGAL
earlier estimate but once again provides a similar
total of 38,535-52,566 Asian elephants. Some
15,535-16,300 Asian elephants are also said to be
held in captivity worldwide. 29 A breakdown of the
purported number of Asian elephants by country
is given in Appendix 3.
CONSERVATION STATUS
The Asian elephant is listed as Endangered on the
IUCN Red List of Threatened Species. They have
been included in Appendix I of the Convention on
International Trade in Endangered Species (CITES)
since 1978.
MYANMAR
( BURMA )
THAILAND
LAOS
CAMBODIA
MALAYSIA
CHINA
VIETNAM
SOUTH CHINA SEA
SINGAPORE
INDONESIA
BRUNEI
FIGURE 2 | Compiled from various sources;
distribution (in red) from IUCN. 27
35

© IFAW/R. Sobol/Moscow, Russia
4 CURRENT THREATS30

© IFAW/A. Ndoumbe/Bouba Ndjida National Park, Cameroon
The major threats to species diversity, both
historically and today, are habitat degradation,
fragmentation and loss, and hunting. The latter
may include hunting for food or hunting for the
marketplace (including both live and dead animals,
their parts and derivatives), 31 killing for “sport”
(e.g. trophy hunting), and the killing of animals
perceived as pests (i.e. problem animal control) or
competitors (i.e. culling). 32
In the case of elephants, habitat loss and
hunting have both been involved in their
precipitous decline in both distribution and
numbers throughout much of Africa and Asia.
While both factors remain operative today, it is
habitat degradation, fragmentation and loss,
driven by continued human population growth,
that are now considered to be the major threats
to elephants everywhere. Habitat degradation,
fragmentation and loss reduce the distribution and
numbers of animals relatively slowly and insipidly
over time. Over the long term, however, no species
(including elephants and, for that matter, humans)
can survive without viable habitats.
Illegal killing (poaching) of elephants for ivory
and other products has also been a major cause
of population declines, and remains a significant
and growing threat in some areas, particularly in
Central Africa, but elsewhere as well. 33 In contrast
to habitat issues, killing individuals or groups of
elephants has the immediate and highly visible
result of reducing the numbers of animals in
an area; the longer term implications are more
complicated and depend on a variety of factors.
Regardless, the discovery and documentation of
dead elephants, e.g. victims of poaching, or ivory
seized in international trade, have an immediate
and powerful visual and visceral impact, and –
superficially, at least – appear easier to quantify.
As a consequence, poaching and illegal trade seem
to receive more attention than habitat issues in
many discussions of elephant conservation today.
In this chapter, we attempt to place habitat
loss and the hunting of elephants into clearer
perspective, beginning with the ultimate threat,
which surely must be the ever increasing and
unsustainable 34 human population and its various
interactions with surviving elephant populations
(Figure 3).
Asian elephants live in some of the most
densely populated parts of the world. In contrast,
African elephants live on a continent that for
centuries was less densely populated than Asia.
Today, however, some African range states
are exhibiting the highest growth rates of any
human populations. 35 Furthermore, much of the
developed world continues to look to Africa as a
means of sustaining and growing its ecological
footprint in order to support and grow their
already unsustainable life styles. 36 This reality has
implications for elephants too.
39

EXPANSION OF HUMAN SETTLEMENTS
AND DEVELOPMENT (INCLUDING
FORESTRY AND AGRICULTURE)
An increasing human population continually
requires an expansion of development activities,
including the construction of roads and highways;
the clearing of forests for settlements, for
unsustainable agriculture to feed the expanding
human population, both at home and abroad; and
for other alternative uses, e.g. logging, and the
development of rubber plantations in China. 37
Such activities not only destroy elephant habitats,
they have a direct effect on elephant distribution.
They may also bring humans and elephants into
increasing conflict for space and food, leading
to the further exclusion of elephants from their
traditional habitats.
Living in proximity also results in the deaths
of individuals, both human and elephant. Humans
are killed by traumatized elephants and elephants
are killed as perceived pests that endanger human
health and safety in what is now called “Human
Elephant Conflict” (HEC). 38 In the process, elephant
numbers are reduced locally and their habitat is
further fragmented and lost, contributing to the
long-term shrinkage of their viable range and a
continuing decline in their numbers.
LEGAL AND ILLEGAL MARKETS, AND
INCREASING DEMAND FOR IVORY
An increasing human population would be
expected to result in increasing demand for
elephant products, including ivory and meat
from dead animals, and that is happening too.
The demand for live elephants also remains an
issue – to provide animals for domestication in
Sri Lanka, 39 for the circus trade in China, and
for the tourist trade in Thailand. 40 The latter two
examples have involved the illegal trade in live
animals from Myanmar.
The problem of an increasing human
population is exacerbated by social and economic
circumstances. In China, for example, a rapidly
developing middle class now seeks the luxuries
and status symbols (including elephant ivory)
denied to them historically. Thus, increasing
demand for ivory products is driven not only by a
growing human population, but by the increasing
number of people who want, and can now afford,
to purchase such items. The true extent of this
threat, now and into the future, is unknown. The
potential demand, however, is enormous and may
very well exceed current world supply. If every
elephant living today were killed, it is unlikely
that there would be sufficient ivory to meet the
demands of consumers and, increasingly, those
interested in investing in “white gold”. 41
At the other end of the spectrum, extreme
poverty in many places where elephants live
fuels naïve and spurious arguments (even in
the mainstream conservation community) that
elephant conservation – particularly in Africa –
must be compromised to alleviate poverty. Such
arguments simply serve to divert attention and
resources from elephant conservation, effectively
increasing the threats to elephant populations
while doing little to alleviate poverty.
The existence of legal national and
international markets for ivory products places a
price on the head of dead elephants. Increasing
demand, particularly in China, Thailand and
Vietnam, supports and fuels the growth of these
markets and, since ivory is in limited supply,
increasing demand also drives up its price in the
marketplace. 42 This, in turn, provides both an
incentive for poaching and a cover for the illegal
trade in ivory and ivory products.
Not surprisingly, we’re currently witnessing a
catastrophic increase in poaching, especially in
economically deprived parts of Central Africa, 43
where there are insufficient funds for adequate law
enforcement (including anti-poaching patrols) and
where elephants (particularly, forest elephants) are
already seriously threatened by habitat degradation,
fragmentation and loss. 44 Poaching of African
elephants has been escalating since the early 2000s,
with 2011 said to be the worst year for ivory seizures
Expansion of human
settlements, developments,
agriculture
Increased interactions
between humans and
elephants, leading to the
exclusion of elephants
from traditional habitats
and the deaths of
individuals
Degredation,
fragmentation and loss of
elephant habitat
since CITES’ short-lived decision in 1989 to ban the FIGURE 3 | Threats to elephants. Based on many sources, including
http://www.iucnredlist.org/apps/redlist/details/12392/0
http://www.iucnredlist.org/apps/details/7140/0.
INCREASING HUMAN POPULATION
Increase in greenhouse
gases
Contributes to climate
change and global
warming
Changes in vegetation,
availability of water
and, in some locations,
increased frequency and
intensity of droughts
OUTCOMES FOR ELEPHANTS
• Reduced habitat for elephants;
• Detrimental effects on individual elephants,
their societies and culture;
• Decreasing elephant populations;
• Increased endangerment to elephant populations;
• Increasing animal welfare issues, including
avoidable pain, sufferiing and trauma.
Increasing demand
for elephant products
including ivory & meat
Continuing demand for
elephants as beasts of
burden (Asia), and as
sources of entertainment
(zoos, circuses, and safari
hunting, including trophy
hunting)
Existence of markets for
ivory products
Legal international trade
Poaching
Illegal trade
41
© IFAW/J Hrusa

© IFAW/J Hrusa
international ivory trade. In 2011, more than 23 tons
of ivory were reportedly seized. 45 By all appearances,
the situation continues to worsen in 2012. 46
IFAW’s Céline Sissler-Bienvenu describes some
of what she’s learned recently about poaching in
western Central Africa:
“
Poaching is often conducted by
organized professional gangs operating
with military-like precision. Their goal is
to “harvest” as much ivory as they can,
as quickly as possible. In order to do
that, they kill all the elephants in a herd,
using modern military weapons, the most
common being Kalashnikov AK-47 assault
rifles. If any elephants escape, some
poachers will stay in the vicinity and wait
for the survivors to return to mourn their
dead. Then they kill them as well. Such
poachers are often foreigners who are
not afraid to cross national borders. They
not only represent a serious threat to
elephants; they may also pose a threat to
national security.
”
The CITES’ Elephant Trade Information System
(ETIS) has identified “major unregulated domestic
ivory markets in both Africa and Asia” as “key
underlying factors” driving illegal trade. 47 It fails,
however, to acknowledge that the very existence
of any commercial markets (whether regulated
or unregulated, domestic or international)
underlies all poaching today. 48 Rather it concludes
that poverty 49 and poor governance in African
range states, and demand in China are the most
important influences on elephant poaching today.
In addition to removing individual animals from
the population, poaching also causes avoidable
pain, suffering and trauma in individual elephants,
i.e. serious animal welfare issues. For groups of
elephants, it results in long term trauma for the
survivors, 50 the erosion of elephant societies and
culture, and a further reduction in their numbers
that cannot be sustained.
ADDITIONAL HUMAN THREATS
The increasing human population also results in an
increase in waste products that further degrade
elephant habitat. Known generally as pollutants,
these wastes include the greenhouse gases that
are currently contributing to climate change,
particularly global warming. It is anticipated that
global warming will have a more profound effect on
Africa than on Asia, and by extension, on African
elephants more than on their Asian cousins. 51
Generally, and this is particularly true in the
case of Africa, global warming is already causing
changes in vegetation patterns and, hence,
changes in food availability for elephants. It also
appears to be affecting the availability of water.
Parts of Africa have recently been experiencing
unprecedented droughts, causing unimaginable grief
and suffering for human populations in affected
areas, e.g. the Horn of Africa, as well as for wildlife
populations, including elephants. Severe droughts
can dramatically affect elephant calf survival. 52 If
the frequency and intensity of droughts in Africa
continue to increase, they will contribute further to
the deterioration and loss of traditional elephant
habitat and, almost certainly, to a further reduction
in their viable range. Such consequences will once
again cause suffering and death for elephants,
other wildlife and humans, contribute to the further
breakdown of elephant societies and culture, and
result in even fewer elephants surviving in the wild.
IMPLICATIONS
The immediate threats associated with the existence
of unregulated domestic or national markets, 53 as
well as international markets for elephant products
– especially ivory 54 – are generally overlooked in
conservation discussions today. Nonetheless, it is
the very existence of those markets that makes
ivory widely available throughout much of the world.
Coupled with the increased demand mentioned
earlier, the lessons of history tell us that it is the
existence of such markets (whether legal or illegal)
that fuels increased poaching and illegal trade. 55
Combined, these factors will likely be sufficient to
eradicate elephants from parts of their remaining
range (particularly, Central Africa) if effective
protection measures are not implemented quickly.
Without mitigation, habitat degradation,
fragmentation and loss throughout the remaining
range of all three surviving elephant species will
eventually doom those animals who manage to
escape from poachers. Elephants are ill equipped
to survive the onslaught they currently face. 56
Such a desperate situation requires an immediate
response, both from range states and from the
international conservation community. The latter,
in particular, has been far too slow to react to the
on-going crisis in a meaningful way. As American
wildlife biologist and environmentalist, Aldo Leopold
remarked over 60 years ago: 57
“
Despite nearly a century of propaganda,
conservation still proceeds at a snail’s
pace. Progress consists largely of
letterhead pieties and convention oratory.
On the back forty we still slip two steps
backward for each forward stride.
”
Leopold’s words are certainly applicable to
elephant conservation today. We discuss some
of the important issues that continue to hinder
attempts to protect and conserve elephants in
the next chapter.
43
© IFAW/L Hua/China

© IFAW/T. Samson/Mangochi District, Malawi
5 ISSUES IN ELEPHANT
CONSERVATION
AND MANAGEMENT

© IFAW/T. Samson/Mangochi District, Malawi
“
Personal opinion, hearsay, anecdotes and individual interpretations of research findings all
too often dominate heated debates on elephant management”.
58
While there is general agreement that elephants
represent species of urgent concern to the
conservation community, there is considerable
controversy about what needs to be done if we
wish to mitigate the threats and protect and
conserve the remaining animals.
Such controversy is widespread in conservation
today and we are beginning to understand why. 59
A major reason is that debates about controversial
issues in wildlife conservation generally bear little
resemblance to the facts as they are known. 60 More
often than not, discussions focus on distracting
abstractions of reality, and on myths or fables, 61
promoted by various participants as they attempt
to advance their personal and institutional values,
opinions, objectives and agendas. It doesn’t
matter what the issue is, the facts are typically
misrepresented or ignored by most of those
involved. The climate change debate is a classic
example. Elephant conservation is no different. 62
In this chapter, we discuss a number of issues
that hinder progress in elephant conservation today.
THE DISCONNECT BETWEEN SCIENCE,
POLICY, AND MANAGEMENT
In modern conservation, there is an ever-
increasing disconnect between science, policy,
and management. Sometimes referred to as
the science-policy gap, 63 it is widespread, both
in conservation generally, 64 and in elephant
conservation in particular. 65
Virtually everyone involved in conservation
claims that their positions are supported by
the “best available science”. Such claims are
made by those who advocate for the commercial
consumptive use of wildlife and the natural world,
and by those who advocate for their protection. 66
They are made by politicians of virtually every
stripe, and by governments all around the
world. They are heard at meetings and inscribed
in documents of international conventions,
including the Convention on International Trade
in Endangered Species (CITES), the Convention
on Biodiversity (CBD), and the International
Convention for the Regulation of Whaling. Dr
Gro Harlem Brundtland, formerly the chair of
the World Commission on Environment and
Development, went so far as to say,
“… there is no other basis for sound
political decisions than the best
available scientific evidence. 67
”
While Brundtland’s statement might seem
to represent both the conventional wisdom and
common sense, there is little evidence that science
has very much to do with the development of public
47

© IFAW/D. Willetts/Tsavo National Park, Kenya
policy in conservation. Again, this observation
applies to elephants, and the decisions made
by managers about how to mitigate human
interactions with them, their habitats, and the
environment. 68 A recent study found that most
managers responsible for elephants in protected
areas in South Africa based their decisions, for
example, on “experience-based information” rather
than on scientific principles or evidence. 69
Even when scientific information is actually
used to inform conservation decisions, it is done
so in a highly selective and arbitrary fashion. In
the case of elephants, much discussion focuses
on incomplete and imprecise data on population
numbers and trends, ignoring that elephants
exist not only as populations but as unique
individuals and as components within complex
communities and ecosystems. Important research
from other sciences, including modern taxonomy
and systematics, ethology, animal psychology and
neurobiology, as well as from other learned fields,
such as history and ethics, is essentially ignored.
Elephant conservation would look remarkably
different today if policy and management decisions
were informed and guided by knowledge from
all learned fields of study. But, before we discuss
that issue, let us outline a few aspects of elephant
conservation that are based on selective use of
available information and on prevailing myths that
bear little resemblance to the reality on the ground.
THERE ARE “TOO MANY ELEPHANTS”
In conservation today, we frequently hear that
there are too many animals, whether they be
cormorants, deer or wolves in North America,
kangaroos in Australia, seals in Canada and
Scotland, whales in the world’s oceans or, indeed,
elephants. 70 This phenomenon, which ironically
often involves threatened or endangered species 71
is frequently discussed, even by people calling
themselves scientists, as “overpopulation”,
“overabundance”, even “hyperabundance”. 72
From the outset, let’s be clear. The idea of
overabundance is not a scientific concept. It is
a value judgment. Science can never tell us how
many animals there should be in one place at one
time because no such number exists. We all know
people for whom a single mouse in the kitchen
pantry represents a local “overabundance” of
mice. One mouse in the house is one mouse too
many!
When people, including scientists, talk about
overabundance, they are actually referring to the
maximum number of individuals of a species that
they are willing to tolerate in one place at one
time, what academics sometimes call “cultural
carrying capacity”. Cultural carrying capacity
depends entirely on human attitudes towards a
species, not on biological principles.
Where there are more elephants locally than
49

society is willing to tolerate, the situation is
usually characterized as “the elephant problem”
or discussed under the rubric of “Human elephant
conflict” (HEC).
The “elephant problem” originally referred to
the situation in southern and eastern Africa where
locally high densities of elephants were blamed
for destroying vegetation, and having detrimental
impacts on other species, in conservation areas
like national parks and protected areas. 73 High
elephant densities are principally caused by
human activities, including the construction
of fences, 74 the provisioning of artificial water
sources, the fragmentation of elephant habitats,
and conflicts with people over land use (a process
sometimes described as “movement restriction”). 75
All such activities restrict elephant movements
and counter natural mechanisms that would
otherwise limit elephant population growth.
In recent years, the discussion of too many
elephants has been expanded to include human-
elephant conflicts in both Africa and Asia. These
conflicts include damage to crops and gardens
and, on occasion, result in the deaths of both
humans and elephants. 76
In order to mitigate the consequences of locally
high densities of elephants, we have choices.
We can treat the symptoms – high elephant
densities – through lethal culling or translocation
programs, or the use of birth control, none of
which offer a satisfactory and long-lasting solution
to the problems. 77 Alternatively, we can choose
to understand better the causes of locally high
elephant densities and take appropriate steps to
find more permanent solutions. 78
Improving the situation for both elephants and
people is admittedly a complex undertaking but
there are signs of progress. In southern Africa,
there is growing evidence that the “elephant
problem” can be mitigated by removing fences and
artificial watering holes, and allowing elephants
access to movement corridors throughout a
region, independent of national borders. 79 Such
actions allow elephants to roam more naturally,
thereby reducing local densities, and permitting
natural processes to limit their numbers 80 and,
hence, their real or perceived impacts on the
environment and biodiversity.
In eastern Africa, where land tenure of
elephant range is in the hands of private
ownership – small or large scale individual
owners, or communal ownership (referred to
as group ranches or cooperative associations)
– the solution lies in encouraging land-owners
to accept co-existence by developing means to
mitigate adverse impacts on human security and
livelihoods.
In Kenya, private land-owners have over the
past ten years dedicated one million hectares of
their land to wildlife conservancies, most of which
are critical elephant corridors and/or dispersal
areas. This is an approach that Kenyan authorities
are encouraging with land-owners having
recognized the success of Asian countries which –
despite high human population densities – have a
policy of maintaining elephant corridors that link
critical habitat areas.
In addition to reducing elephant densities
locally, an understanding of the elephants’ critical
habitat also suggests, more broadly, that HEC would
be reduced, for example, if human settlements
were not built in the middle of traditional elephant
corridors, and if agricultural activities were
restricted in critical elephant habitats.
Improving the situation for both elephants
and people is a complex undertaking. While
acknowledging the social, political and economic
realities, it is clear that science has much to
contribute to the discussion, if only we would
incorporate evidence-based scientific advice into
policy and management decisions, rather than
clinging to failed approaches (e.g. culling) and
experience 81 to guide our actions. 82
51
© IFAW/D. Willetts/Tsavo National Park, Kenya

© IFAW/D. Willetts/Tsavo West National Park, Kenya
THE QUESTION OF CULLING
In situations where humans decide that there
are more elephants in the local environment
than individual people or society-at-large desire
or are willing to tolerate, we typically hear calls
for culling programs to reduce the number of
animals. This issue is sufficiently widespread that
it deserves further comment.
Culling programs involve either the killing
of individual animals (lethal culling) or their
translocation to other places (non-lethal culling).
Irrespective of the species involved, culling
programs are almost universally initiated without
specific conservation goals; without adequate
scientific assessment; and without any serious
consideration of any alternatives to culling that
might actually achieve the presumed objectives,
both for the target animals and other ecosystem
components, including human society. Almost
invariably, culling programs are initiated without
adequate monitoring schemes that would be
required to evaluate the results of a cull. For
these and other reasons, culling programs rarely
if ever resolve the underlying problems and may,
in fact, make things worse in the longer term.
Not surprisingly, they remain highly controversial
undertakings, both within the conservation
community and society-at-large.
Culling is one issue that science can actually
help to clarify. At a 1981 meeting that examined
the problem of locally abundant mammalian
populations, the beginnings of a protocol for the
scientific assessment of culling proposals began
to emerge. 83 A decade later, the United Nations
Environment Programme’s Marine Mammals Action
Plan actually developed an elaborate protocol
for the scientific assessment of proposals to cull
marine mammals. Now, more than 30 years after
that 1981 meeting, wildlife culls the world over are
still being implemented without adequate scientific
assessment. 84 This example alone reveals the
hypocrisy of governments and agencies that claim
to base their conservation decisions – including
decisions to cull – on the “best available science”.
ECONOMICS, CONSERVATION, AND THE
REAL WORLD
Over the past 30 years or more, economics
– or more precisely, a branch of economic
theory known as “neoclassical economics” 85
– has become the dominant paradigm in the
field of environmental conservation. 86 We see
its influence, particularly, in discussions of
Sustainable Development and the “sustainable
use” of animals. In the latter case, the principles
of neoclassical economics provide the foundation
for the so-called “use-it-or-lose-it” philosophy
of the self-described – but misnamed –“wise
use” movement that argues that animals like
elephants must “pay their own way” in order to
be conserved. The naïve argument that legalized
trade will reduce poaching and promote the
conservation of elephants (not to mention rhinos
and other endangered species) reflects the flawed
principles of neoclassical economics and a denial
of the lessons of history. 87
One major issue with the economic approach
to conservation is that it has been ineffective
at solving environmental problems. 88 This
should not be surprising, given that neoclassical
economics is founded on a number of myths that
simply do not reflect reality. These myths include
the erroneous assumption that market solutions
provide the key to environmental and species
conservation, that ever increasing economic
growth is possible in a finite world and that
environmental commodities (including species)
are interchangeable, 89 having no other value than
their exchange value in the marketplace.
Within the neoclassical economics’ paradigm,
the environment and individual species, including
elephants, are viewed as part of the economic
system 90 or, as some have said, as a “subsidiary of
the economy”. 91 The current preoccupation with
evaluating “ecosystem services” is just the latest
attempt to treat the environment and everything
in it as if money was the common currency of the
biosphere. The fact remains that many ecosystem
components (including the untold millions of
species that remain undescribed by science)
have no economic value whereas others are
undoubtedly “priceless”. 92
Any conservation paradigm that places
economy above the environment or, putatively,
even on the same level (as with sustainable
development), and treats ecosystem components
(everything from fish stocks to elephants) as
interchangeable commodities in the economic
system (the principle of substitutability) has
clearly lost touch with the real world in which
we live. 93 Experience and reason tell us that the
environment, i.e. the biosphere, is paramount. To
pretend otherwise is anthropocentric hubris and
folly. Without a functioning environment, both
society and the economy collapse.
ELEPHANT CONSERVATION,
DEVELOPMENT, AND POVERTY
ALLEVIATION
These days, when the conservation of biodiversity
is discussed within the conservation community,
it is usually paired with something else, whether
it be development, jobs, livelihoods, or poverty
alleviation or eradication. This phenomenon is
the culmination of a 30-year battle within the
conservation community that has done little to
halt the loss of biodiversity, create jobs, improve
livelihoods or alleviate poverty. 94
Sustainable development, for example, has
now been around for more than 30 years. It has
long been criticized for its obvious deficiencies.
Even more tellingly, it has failed to achieve its
objectives, 95 including poverty alleviation. 96
What is truly remarkable is that despite its
failures, it remains the continuing focus of
international conferences and congresses,
including the much heralded UN Conference
on Sustainable Development (Rio+20) in Rio
de Janeiro, Brazil, in June 2012. Nor have such
failures prevented neoclassical economics – the
foundation upon which sustainable development
is based – from remaining the dominant
paradigm in conservation today. 97
Meanwhile, on the ground,
“Unsustainable global economic
growth is breaching ecological limits,
increasing social inequality and resultant
instability, and intensifying the eventual
magnitude of climate change”.
98
If humans really want to protect and conserve
the environment, and individual threatened
species such as elephants, we need to change our
approach to conservation. In short, we need a new
conservation paradigm, one that puts the biosphere
and its component species first and foremost. 99
To gain some perspective on present-day global
priorities, consider the following brief summary of
current issues and follow the money:
• We are currently in a conservation crisis.
Extinction rates are some 100-1,000
times pre-human levels. Species losses
are projected to increase sharply in the
future. Scientists say we’re in the midst
of the sixth mass extinction. The world
community spends 8-12 billion dollars per
year addressing biodiversity loss. 100
• It is currently estimated that 1.372 billion
people are living in poverty (defined as
living on $1.25 per day or less). The world
community spends $126 billion dollars per
year on poverty alleviation. 101
• In 2008, we had a global economic crisis.
Financial institutions collapsed. The
International Monetary Fund warned
that the world financial system was on
the ”brink of systemic meltdown”. That
year, the U.S. government injected 770
billion dollars into the US economy. Other
countries soon followed suit. In April 2009,
the G20 countries committed to inject 1
trillion dollars into the global economy “to
curb the financial crisis”.
From these figures alone, it would seem that
conservationists have enough to do advocating for
53

© IFAW/N. Greenwood/Mangochi District, Malawi
conservation, first and foremost, without diluting
their efforts by getting involved in other issues,
about which they have no particular knowledge
or expertise. And besides, there is no shortage of
advocates for economic development and poverty
alleviation. 102
This point was made over 20 years ago, at the
opening session of the 18 th assembly of IUCN – The
World Conservation Union 103 in Perth, Australia. It
was there that His Royal Highness, Prince Phillip –
at the time President of the World Wide Fund for
Nature (WWF) – remarked that:
“the issue of preventing the steady
decline in biological diversity is quite big
and complicated enough without getting
involved in matters beyond the professional
knowledge and expertise of the conservation
movement.
”
He went on to say:
“The need for someone to stand up
and champion nature, and speak for the
Earth with wisdom and insight is urgent.
”
If that “need” was urgent in 1990, it is even
more so today. Conflating conservation with
sustainable development, job creation, livelihoods
and poverty alleviation has become a huge
distraction for global conservation. It has done
little to conserve and better protect ecosystems or
their component parts. And it has largely failed to
create more jobs or alleviate poverty, especially in
the “developing” world. 104
The time has come to get conservation back
on track. The protection and preservation of
wild plants and animals, and the ecosystems
they inhabit, must once again be the foremost
consideration of conservationists everywhere.
CITES & THE INTERNATIONAL IVORY
TRADE 105
Renewed concerns about the status of elephant
populations in parts of Africa and Asia have re-
energized the debate over whether international
trade bans, implemented under CITES, have the
desired effect. 106 That debate is largely another
distraction, however, because it ignores the
ultimate problem: the very existence of any legal
markets for elephant ivory, whether international
or national.
If the goal of conservation today is to protect
elephants from the threats posed by commercial
exploitation and illegal hunting (poaching) for
ivory, and to promote the recovery of depleted
populations, then the only possible solution is to
remove elephant ivory not only from international
trade, but entirely from the global marketplace. 107
If ivory had no commercial value, there would
be little incentive for anyone to kill elephants
for their tusks and one of the major threats to
their survival would eventually disappear. In the
absence of effective legislation banning all trade
and sale of elephant ivory, coupled with effective
enforcement and compliance, the poaching of
elephants for their ivory will assuredly continue.
It is now more than 20 years since African
elephants 108 joined Asian elephants on Appendix
I of CITES, effectively banning (on paper, at least)
the international trade in all elephant products,
including ivory. Since then, however, there have
been a number of deceptively named “one-off”
sales of African elephant ivory from populations
subsequently downlisted to Appendix II, the first
of which occurred in 1999. 109 Following the most
recent round of auctions of stockpiled ivory in
2008, there is now a restricted 9-year moratorium
on international ivory sales. 110
The moratorium has not, however, dampened
enthusiasm in some quarters for further legal
ivory sales. Two proposals to downlist additional
African elephant populations from Appendix I to
Appendix II of CITES, and associated requests for
further “one-off” sales, were considered at the
2010 CITES Conference of the Parties (CoP15)
in Doha, Qatar. While these proposals failed to
receive the necessary two-thirds majority to be
adopted, the two proposals were nonetheless
supported by a majority of Parties casting votes.
More downlisting proposals and further requests
for additional “one-off” sales are anticipated at
the next CITES meeting in 2013.
Meanwhile, as we have already seen, the
poaching of African elephants throughout parts of
their range is on the rise and once again depleted
elephant populations are in further decline. 111
The conclusion offered by some proponents
of the ivory trade is that the current situation
provides further evidence that trade bans do not
protect elephants. Such conclusions ring hollow
because elephant ivory never has been removed
from the marketplace. There is actually no basis
for even testing the hypothesis that a total ban
on trade and sale of ivory would virtually end
the poaching of elephants. Perhaps the only real
surprise is that the original CITES ban in 1989
appeared to reduce poaching, at least for a while. 112
Why is poaching and illicit ivory trading
apparently on the increase again? 113 One
suggestion arises from the fact that the current
55
© FAW/Mangochi District, Malawi

© IFAW/E. Wamba/Tsavo East and West Parks, Kenya
moratorium on the ivory trade is time-limited.
There is, therefore, the expectation that additional
elephant populations will be downlisted in the
not-too-distant future. This expectation maintains
the prospect of renewed markets and international
trade in the future. These factors, plus the
continued existence of legal domestic markets for
elephant ivory, provide the necessary incentives
for commodity speculators 114 and organized crime
syndicates 115 to continue poaching, even if some
of the ivory must be stockpiled for a while in
anticipation of a future payoff.
Another possibility is that those involved in
the illegal ivory trade understand their need to
demonstrate that putative trade bans do not work.
This possibility provides an additional incentive
to ensure that poaching continues, or even
escalates as it now appears to be doing, despite
the existence of the current CITES moratorium on
international ivory sales.
Of course, there remain other economic
reasons for over-exploiting large, valuable, but
slowly reproducing organisms like elephants, as
well as great whales and old growth forests. It
actually makes more economic sense to deplete
such “resources” as quickly as possible and
to invest the profits elsewhere than it does to
“harvest” (a conservation euphemism) them in
a biologically sustainable manner. 116 Money in
investment portfolios has the potential to grow
much faster than animals in the wild. Viewed
in this light, there is no economic incentive for
ivory traders to conserve stocks in the wild. And
there will always be sufficient local inhabitants
willing to risk life and limb to put food on the
table by selling poached elephant tusks to
unscrupulous middlemen.
One of CITES’ current preoccupations
involves the development of a “Decision-making
Mechanism”. 117 It doesn’t take any reading between
the lines to realize that the “decision” in question
does not involve the key question of whether or
not to allow more ivory to enter into international
trade. Rather, it involves a discussion of when and
how to permit more ivory to enter trade. It is clear
that CITES continues to work on ways to facilitate
trade in threatened and endangered species,
rather than returning to its original mandate of
protecting species from the threats posed by
international trade. 118
Those who promote any continued trade in
elephant ivory are denying the long established
lesson of history 119 that:
“Species that people use as
commodities are inherently at risk of
population reduction or elimination”.
120
Failure to close all commercial markets to
elephant products virtually guarantees that the
poaching of elephants and the illegal trade in ivory
will continue. Such a step goes far beyond the
remit of CITES, which is only concerned with legal
international trade. It would require the political
will and cooperation of all nations where markets
for ivory – both legal and illegal – continue to exist.
Nonetheless, the tangential and unproductive
debate over the pros and cons of international
trade bans within CITES will undoubtedly continue,
further jeopardizing the status of elephant
populations in many parts of Africa and Asia.
57

6 THE NATURE OF
ELEPHANTS AND
THEIR ECOLOGY:
AN INTERDISCIPLINARY
PERSPECTIVE121
© IFAW/E. Wamba/Amboseli National Park, Kenya

© IFAW/J He/Xishuangbanna, China
Earlier, we noted that elephant conservation
currently is based on an incomplete and
arbitrary selection of the available information
on the interrelationships between animals and
their environments. The biased selection of
the information that has been used to inform
decisions in conservation management is a
reflection of historical and, still prevailing, human
attitudes, values, objectives and experience, and
in no way represents the accumulated wisdom of
science and other ways of knowing.
Here, we briefly summarize what is broadly
known from a variety of disciplines about the
nature of animals – in particular, elephants – and
their relationships with humans and the biosphere.
This summary paints a very different picture
of elephants than the one that has dominated
our discussions in the previous chapters. It
illustrates the discrepancy between the totality
of our current knowledge and what is actually
used to shape elephant conservation policies and
management actions.
EVOLUTIONARY BIOLOGY – HUMANS
ARE ANIMALS TOO
Beginning with Darwin’s On the Origin of Species,
first published in 1859, and a later, more detailed
treatise, The Expression of the Emotions in Man
and Animals, published in 1872, we have come to
understand that all living organisms – humans and
elephants included – share a common ancestry. 122
We are all interrelated. Humans are animals.
We are a part of nature, not separate from it, and
certainly not above it. This conclusion is readily
apparent from studies of ontogeny, 123 comparative
anatomy, physiology and biochemistry, molecular
genetics, and trans-species psychology. 124
It is the very understanding of the continuity
among animals that motivates the widespread
convention of using so called “animal models”
in such fields as the medical sciences and
psychology, among others. Nonhuman animals
are used in lieu of humans when developing
and practicing new surgical techniques, or
when studying disease processes afflicting the
human body and mind. Likewise, pharmaceutical
companies test their products on nonhuman
animals – our kin – before they risk them on
humans – our species.
Nonhuman animals are used instead of humans
in experimentation and research not only because
they are physiologically and psychologically like
us, but also because they are arbitrarily classified
as being different from humans taxonomically.
In many parts of the world, it is not considered
unethical or illegal to do things to them that are
forbidden on humans. This profound contradiction
between what is known and accepted scientifically
and what is practiced ethically glaringly
underscores the selective use of science in our
dealings with other animals. 125
61

BIOTIC COMPONENTS
ABIOTIC COMPONENTS
BIOSYSTEMS
ECOLOGY
Ecologists have long recognized that the living
world is organized along a continuum from
genes to cells to organs, and from organisms to
populations (and species) and communities (Figure
4, top line). Similarly, the biosphere as a whole
can be viewed as a hierarchy of nested systems,
from genetic systems and cellular systems at one
end of the spectrum, to population systems and
ecosystems at the other (Figure 4, bottom line). 126
Each level in the hierarchy has its own set of
identifying characteristics and, as one proceeds to
the next level, new properties emerge that were
not evident at the lower level. Individual animals,
the units of natural selection, experience birth, are
identified according to sex, grow older with time,
and experience differential reproductive success
and death. Sentient individuals, including humans
and elephants, experience pain and suffering.
Populations, on the other hand, have birth rates,
sex ratios, age structures, population growth rates
(which may be positive or negative) and death
rates. Stressed populations experience social and
cultural collapse. 127
Genes —
Genetic
Systems
Field ecologists know that individual elephant
populations intersect with other elephant
populations, forming extended groups that
ecologists term “metapopulations”. 128 Ecological
data indicate that elephants, like most nonhuman
animals and pre-contact indigenous humans, are
unaware of human-defined national boundaries.
Cells —
Organs —
Organisms — Populations — Communities
Matter Energy
— Cell — Organ — Organismic — Population — Ecosystems
Systems Systems Systems Systems
FIGURE 4 | Levels of biological organization. Ecology largely focuses on the right-hand side of the figure, from organisms
to ecosystems. 132
Elephant numbers are regulated by the availability
of suitable habitat, including food and water, and
the presence of other elephants. When we confine
elephants with fences, thereby limiting traditional
movement and dispersal patterns, and provide
them with artificial water sources, the normal
mechanisms that regulate populations 129 break
down, and elephant numbers sometimes reach
inordinately high densities. 130 Elephants only reach
such high densities with human intervention.
At the ecosystem level of biological
organization, elephants are viewed as keystone
species. 131 Change the size of an elephant
population and you change the nature of an
ecosystem. A reduction in the size of an elephant
population through culling or poaching results in a
cascade of events that ultimately leads to changes
in biodiversity throughout the entire ecosystem.
Ecological knowledge also refutes the
underlying assumptions of the dominant economic
paradigm in conservation today. It is not possible,
for example, to have infinite growth on a finite
planet. The economist’s idea of “substitutability” is
also nonsensical when applied to natural systems
and biodiversity, because you cannot substitute
one species for another. Extinction really is
forever. Ecology tells us that the environment is
not a subsidiary of the economy, but the other
way round. 133 Money, in fact, is not the common
currency of biological systems. 134
ANIMAL PSYCHOLOGY
Animal behaviour, ethology, psychology and
the neurosciences tell us even more about the
nature of elephants as individuals, populations,
and communities. Groups of elephants, like many
mammals, exhibit a distinct social structure.
Elephants live in matriarchal societies dominated
and led by adult females. And elephants, like
primates and some cetaceans (whales, dolphins, and
porpoises), are said to have an identifiable “culture”,
where “culture” is defined as a process involving the
social transmittance of new behaviours, both among
peers and between generations. 135
Further, “social brained” 136 elephants, like
humans, primates, and cetaceans, are among the
so-called “higher” mammals. Individuals have large,
highly developed brains and share common brain
structures and processes that govern cognition,
emotion, self-awareness, and consciousness. 137
Asian elephants are among the very few
animals known to recognize their own reflections
in a mirror. The mirror test, where an individual
clearly recognizes her/himself in the reflection,
is used by scientists to indicate self-awareness,
a trait that puts elephants into an exclusive club,
whose membership is currently limited to humans,
chimpanzees, bonobos, and dolphins. 138
When severely stressed, elephants (like humans,
other primates, wolves, orcas (killer whales), parrots,
and others) exhibit symptoms of Post Traumatic
Stress Disorder (PTSD) when exposed to violence
(such as witnessing culling events or poaching,
when family and other community members have
been violently killed), and to severe or chronic
deprivation. 139 PTSD transmits across generations,
socially, neurobiologically and biochemically, 140 and
accounts for the epidemic proportion of elephant
psychological and social breakdown gripping both
Asia and Africa. 141
CONSERVATION BIOLOGY
We sometimes forget that the biological charac-
teristics of individual species make them inher-
ently more or less susceptible to the activities of
humans. Elephants are one group of animals that,
because of their large size and related biology,
including their habitat requirements, and their
highly evolved tusks, which humans covet, are
particularly threatened by human activities.
In 1970, David Ehrenfeld used data from
what was then called the IUCN Red Data Book
to analyze qualitatively those characteristics
of animal species that can lower their survival
potential. 142 He then used his analysis to compile
a list of characteristics that might describe the
“hypothetical most endangered species”. His
analysis pointed out that not all species are at
equal risk of extinction, either because of their
inherited biological traits, or because of their
interactions with humans. Ehrenfeld described the
hypothetical most endangered species as follows: 143
“It turns out to be a large predator with
a narrow habitat tolerance, long gestation
period, and few young per litter. It is hunted
for a natural product and/or for sport, but is
not subject to efficient game management.
It has a restricted distribution, but travels
across international boundaries. It is intolerant
of man, reproduces in aggregates, and has
nonadaptive behavioral idiosyncracies.
”
He was quick to admit that there is “probably
no such animal” but he did point out that his
description, with one or two exceptions, came
very close to describing the polar bear (Ursus
maritimus), the iconic endangered species most
associated these days with global warming. He
might well, however, have considered elephants.
They too share many characteristics of Ehrenfeld’s
hypothetical most endangered species (Table 2).
Our concern for the threatened and
endangered status of elephants today is not
simply – as some would claim – because they
are iconic species or “charismatic megafauna”.
Rather it is because we recognize that many of
their biological traits have left them particularly
vulnerable to reduced survival in the presence
63

of an increasing, and increasingly exploitative,
human population.
The history of conservation also reminds us that
we are incapable of managing individual species,
the ecosystems in which they live, or the biosphere,
as much as we – and the “we” includes many
scientists, conservation managers, and politicians
– might like to think we can. 144 The only things we
might be capable of managing are human activities
and our impacts on the biosphere, 145 and we’re not
doing a very good job of that.
History also reminds us we have learned
through trial and error that, in the face of
uncertainty (including both scientific and
environmental uncertainty), we should always
err on the side of caution. As fundamental as the
Precautionary Approach (or the Precautionary
ENDANGERED ELEPHANTS
Principle) is to successful conservation, the concept
Individuals of large size YES, elephants are the largest surviving terrestrial mammal.
Predator NO, but they are sometimes considered as pests because they eat
vegetation, including crops, and on occasion kill humans. Such activities are
often perceived in the same light as predators who kill animals of interest to
humans – animals that humans like to hunt, and domestic animals owned by
humans – and, on occasion, also threaten human health and safety.
Narrow habitat tolerance (especially for
vanishing habitats)
YES, African elephants depend on savannahs or forests, both of which are
vanishing today.
Hunted for market or hunted for sport… YES. Poaching is rampant in parts of Africa and trophy hunters still go to
Africa to kill elephants for “sport”.
Where there is no effective game
management
YES, management authorities are unable to control poaching or illegal
trade, or prevent the construction of human settlements in preferred
elephant habitats.
Has a restricted distribution NO, not in the sense intended by Ehrenfeld.
Lives largely in international waters
or migrates across international
boundaries
YES, elephants move across international boundaries throughout Africa
and parts of Asia.
Intolerant of the presence of man YES, in the same sense that Ehrenfeld used grizzly bears as an example.
Species reproduction in one or two vast
aggregates
NO, but elephants do congregate on smaller scales, socially, for mating, and
raising young.
Long gestation period YES, elephants have the longest gestation time among terrestrial mammals,
ca 22 months.
One or two young per litter, and YES, one.
Maternal care YES, elephants have an extended period of nursing and maternal care
lasting several years.
Has behavioral idiosyncrasies that are
nonadaptive today
YES, e.g. elephants eat crops, damage gardens, and these days, may occupy
spaces desired by humans.
TABLE 2 | A comparison of the hypothetical most endangered species and elephants.
65
© IFAW/M. Booth/Kaziranga National Park, Assam, India

© IFAW/J Hrusa/Addo Elephant National Park, South Africa
has proven vulnerable to abuse, 146 even though it is
included in a number of international agreements,
including Agenda 21 from the 1992 Earth Summit in
Rio. It remains, however, of paramount importance
when attempting to protect and conserve
threatened species such as elephants, where
uncertainty, as we have seen, is pervasive.
BIOECONOMICS
Those who argue that wildlife must pay its own
way in order to be conserved are neglecting
the economic analyses that indicate attaching a
dollar value to a species does not guarantee its
survival and may actually promote its demise. 147
In fact, as noted earlier, for some large mammals
with relatively slow growth rates, it may be
economically more profitable to kill every animal
as quickly as possible and invest the profits in
growth industries, rather than wait for the species
to recover to the point where they could sustain
biologically an annual catch. 148
The uncertain and volatile global economy
since 2008 raises other concerns specifically
related to elephants. It now appears that some
individuals see ivory – sometimes termed “white
gold” – as a sound financial investment. As
demand for ivory continues to increase in the
wake of dwindling supplies, the price of ivory
continues to rise. Add in the currency exchange
benefits of buying ivory in US dollars and selling
it in increasingly more valuable Chinese Yuan,
makes the investment even more appealing. 149
If hoarding ivory as an investment and a hedge
against inflation becomes commonplace, it will
simply put more pressure on elephants and on
those who attempt to limit poaching and illegal
international trade.
PHYSICS
Physics tells us that there are laws of nature,
including importantly, the second law of
thermodynamics, 150 and that there is no such thing
as a “free lunch”. 151
There are even economists today who admit
that the core economic model of the last 100
years “violates a number of basic physical
laws” and is “inconsistent with a large body of
empirical evidence about actual human behavior”.
Such economists “call for a new framework for
economic theory and policy that is consistent with
observed human behavior…and directly confronts
the cumulative negative effects of the human
economy on the Earth’s life support systems”. 152
SOCIAL SCIENCES
Sociologists, anthropologists, and philosophers,
among others, tell us that humans value the
Earth and its inhabitants in a variety of ways
beyond the purely economic 153 and that, at some
point, values other than money may actually
determine human quality of life and happiness. 154
At least one country, Bhutan, has actually
abandoned the flawed and misleading metric of
Gross Domestic Product (GDP) or Gross National
Product, and replaced it with something it calls
Gross National Happiness. 155
While we’re back on the topic of economics,
experience and reason tell us that economic
activities, including job creation, poverty
alleviation, and sustainable development,
among other distractions, are human activities
that occur within the environment. 156 Without a
functioning environment, both society and the
economy collapse.
PHILOSOPHY
The recognition of the continuum that exists
between humans and other animals, including
elephants, in terms of their common evolutionary
legacy, shared genes, anatomy, physiology,
intelligence and social psychology, has led to the
argument that “there should be some continuum in
moral standards”, 157 a view that seems logical but
one that has yet to become generally accepted.
Philosophy and ethics also reinforce the view
mentioned earlier that living organisms and the
nonliving components of the biosphere have
values other than economic value. It is generally
accepted, for example, that individual organisms
and populations have intrinsic value, i.e. value
beyond their utility to humans. 158
WHERE TO FROM HERE?
This concludes our cursory survey of some
important things that a variety of disciplines
teach us about the nature of elephants and the
natural world. We use this information in the next
chapter to explore how a consideration of all our
knowledge and understanding would dramatically
change our approach to the conservation of
elephants now, and in the future.
67

7 A KNOWLEDGE-
BASED APPROACH
TO ELEPHANT
CONSERVATION160
“
…the conservation of
our Planet’s wildlife is a moral
obligation we all share
” .159
© IFAW/J Hrusa/Addo National Park, South Africa

© IFAW/T. Samson/Majete Wildlife Reserve, Malawi
Keeping in mind that most of the information
in the previous chapter can be found between
the covers of high school and undergraduate
university textbooks, let’s now return to
Brundtland’s statement that “…there is no other
basis for sound political decisions than the best
available scientific evidence”. 161 If we take that
statement to be true, it has much to say about
conservation generally, and elephant conservation
in particular. It says, for example, that we must
reject the myths 162 and fables that dominate
many discussions in modern conservation simply
because they do not reflect current knowledge and
understanding. 163 It also tells us that everything is
interrelated and interconnected. And it suggests
that we need to develop a conservation ethic and
an approach to conservation management that
is consistent with “the best available scientific
evidence”.
PUTTING MYTHS TO REST
First, we need to reject the myth that conservation
is currently based on the best available science
and replace it with a new conservation paradigm
that actually is.
To remain true to current knowledge and
understanding requires us to abandon the
anthropocentrism that dominates modern
conservation for a world view that recognizes
that humans are a part of nature and not beyond
it or above it. We also have to accept that it is
both naïve and arrogant to think we can manage
nature, because – as history demonstrates – we
simply can’t.
We would also reject the myth that the
environment and the animals that live within
it, including the elephants, are subsidiaries of
the economy. Rather the economy, society and
elephants exist within the environment. Without a
functioning environment, neither the economy, nor
society, nor elephants survive. Further, we must
accept that infinite growth (even if we now call it
“The Green Economy” and, in the oceans, “Blue
Growth”) is simply not possible in a finite world.
We would also have to accept that conservation
isn’t just about animal populations and
ecosystems. There is clearly no scientific basis for
excluding individual animals from the equation.
Elephants are not mere commodities that must
pay their way in order to merit conservation.
They are sentient beings with intrinsic value that
should be protected and conserved because they
are priceless, because extinction is forever, and
because it is the right – the ethical – thing to do.
EVERYTHING REALLY IS
INTERRELATED AND
INTERCONNECTED
Perhaps the most important take-home message
from the previous chapter is that all living
71

organisms are interrelated and everything is
connected to everything else. That message
is not only important as it pertains to ecology
and economics, but it has ethical implications
regarding human interactions with other animals,
including elephants and their environments. And it
has implications for conservation management, as
John Muir observed over a century ago. 164
“When we try to pick out anything
by itself, we find it hitched to everything
else in the Universe.
”
Armed with this rather old and elementary
information, let’s now turn to a simple question:
given our current knowledge from a variety of
disciplines, what would a knowledge-based approach
to elephant conservation actually look like? Let’s
begin with an appropriate, knowledge-based
conservation ethic and see where that might lead.
A KNOWLEDGE-BASED
CONSERVATION ETHIC
Aldo Leopold began to answer the question more
than 60 years ago. In his classic essay, Land
Ethic, published posthumously in 1949, he argued
that humans must adopt a more ecological and
ecocentric 165 approach to our dealings with the
rest of nature. What he seems to have meant
is that we must abandon our anthropocentric
worldview, where humans are the centre of the
universe and nature exists, and is to be used,
solely for our benefit. Instead, we must recognize
and accept the scientific evidence that we – both
as individuals and as a species – really are an
integral part of the biosphere – merely one “cog in
the wheel” of life. 166
Based on what we know today, we can go
farther than perhaps even Leopold dared to
venture and argue for a knowledge-based, Earth-
centred conservation model, 167 with all human
activities operating within and constrained by
the global environment. 168 In other words, we
would acknowledge that the economy, human
society, and elephants, all exist within the global
environment – the biosphere. We would accept
that the environment is not a subsidiary of the
economy as some economists would have it,
but rather the reverse. 169 Without a functioning
environment, the economy, human society, and
elephants cease to exist.
An Earth-centred conservation ethic reflects
the evolutionary and ecological relationships
noted in the previous chapter. It recognizes that
Planet Earth is finite; it cannot support continuous
growth, either of the human population 170 or
its economy. The latter realization supports
the argument that the economy (or commerce)
desperately “needs…a new way of seeing itself”. 171
Among the options currently on the table, the
idea of moving towards a steady-state economy 172
seems entirely consistent with living on a finite
planet. Within such a steady-state economy, the
idea of replacing the current exploitative industrial
economy with a “restorative ecological economy”
also seems eminently reasonable, given the
deteriorating state of the global environment. 173
An Earth-centred ethic would value – and not
just in monetary terms – both the parts and the
whole of the planet, including individual animals,
populations, species, and ecosystems, all of which
would be recognized as intrinsic ends 174 in and of
themselves, and not simply as instrumental means
to other ends. 175
IMPLICATIONS FOR ANIMAL WELFARE
The adoption of an Earth-centred conservation
ethic would, among other things, remove the
artificial separation of individual animals and
populations – which are simply collections of
individuals belonging to the same species – and
put animal welfare where it naturally belongs
– squarely in the middle of the conservation
agenda. There is simply no rational justification
for ignoring the welfare of individual animals,
as is conventionally done in much of modern
conservation. Individual animals are as worthy
of protection as populations and ecosystems.
And, when we evaluate the welfare of individual
animals, this must be done, not from the
traditional, anthropocentric perspective, but
“from the perspective of the individual animal”. 176
ALL ANIMALS ARE NOT
CREATED EQUAL
While the best available science reminds us that
all animals, including humans, are related, it also
reminds us that some animals are sufficiently
different from others to warrant special
consideration. For example, as noted earlier, some
animals, because of their biology, are more likely
than others to go extinct as a result of human
activities. Included among such animals are
elephants. Furthermore, the genetic relationships
among higher mammals, their large brains, their
sentience and sapience, and possession of an
identifiable culture, all raise important ethical
questions about human interactions, particularly
with some of our relatives, including elephants. 177
Years ago, the philosopher, Peter Singer,
went so far as to suggest that human rights be
extended to our nearest relatives, the great apes
– chimpanzees, bonobos, gorillas and orangutans.
That humans and chimpanzees, for example, share
some 98 per cent of their DNA should at least
provide pause for reflection. It would also seem to
be consistent with the available scientific evidence
that, in 2010, the European Union decided that it
could not longer justify scientific experimentation
on the great apes and proceeded to ban it.
Similar findings have led a number of scientists
and academics to advocate for a declaration
of rights for cetaceans (whales, dolphins and
porpoises). Their proposal was presented
and discussed at a meeting of the American
Association for the Advancement of Science
(AAAS) held in Vancouver, Canada, in 2012.
Later in 2012, a diverse group of
neuroscientists attending the Francis Crick
Memorial Conference on “Consciousness in
Human and non-Human Animals” at Churchill
College, Cambridge, proclaimed and signed
“The Cambridge Declaration on Consciousness”.
The declaration declared (in part),
“…the weight of evidence indicates
that humans are not unique in possessing
the neurological substrates that generate
consciousness. Non-human animals, including
all mammals and birds, and many other
creatures, including octopuses, also possess
these neurological substrates”.
178
Similar technical arguments have been used to
suggest that elephants in particular are deserving
of special treatment. 179 As writer Douglas Chadwick
put it – and this would apply to all the animals
mentioned above and, others as well – “If a
continuum exists between us and such beings in
terms of anatomy, physiology, social behaviour and
intelligence [to which we can now add ‘neurological
substrates’], it follows that there should be some
continuum of moral standards.” At a minimum, such
moral standards would most certainly not tolerate
the killing of elephants simply to obtain two tusks to
exchange for money. 180 Nor, for that matter, would we
confine elephants in zoos.
IF WE REALLY WANT TO
PROTECT AND PRESERVE
ELEPHANTS
It is becoming abundantly clear that if science
and knowledge, generally, were to underpin our
conservation policies – as Brundtland suggested
it “must” – our approach to elephant protection
and conservation would be radically different from
that currently being advocated and practiced by
the international conservation community today.
At a minimum, we would recognize the need
to protect critical habitats for elephants where
they continue to survive. In southern Africa, the
removal of fences and watering points in national
parks and protected areas, and the development
of a transnational, metapopulation approach to
elephant conservation appears to be both feasible
and promising. 181
73

© IFAW/D. Willetts/Tsavo East National Park, Kenya
In Kenya, where there has been a dramatic
decrease in elephant habitat over the past
Century, the Kenya Wildlife Service’s 2012
strategy aims to increase current elephant
range by at least 30% by 2020. The strategy
involves identifying and prioritizing areas for
extending elephant distribution and obtaining
landowners support and participation in the
identified areas. Fences will remain necessary to
separate elephants from human activities such
as intensive agriculture, and to deter further
human encroachment – including poaching – into
elephant habitats, including the highland forest
regions of Mt Kenya, and the Aberdares and Mau
Forest areas. Nonetheless, Kenyan authorities
and conservationists also recognize the need
for connectivity to allow ecological processes
to regulate elephant population densities.
Accordingly, they have designed corridors between
Aberdares and Mt Kenya, and one end of Mt Kenya
that adjoins conservancies may be left unfenced
to facilitate elephant movements. It remains for
conservation biologists to investigate the long-
term viability of such “fenced metapopulations”,
connected by narrow corridors, in a manner
similar to the ongoing research in southern Africa.
In order to combat the continued killing of
elephants by poachers, society would unilaterally
close all markets for elephant products, and ban
all international trade in elephant products. 182
When such suggestions are made in elephant
conservation circles, they are often met
with skepticism or downright rejection. Yet,
closing markets and imposing trade bans are
commonplace when dealing with a number of
other species. The U.S. government, for example,
banned trade in marine mammal products in
1972. The European Union banned the trade in
whitecoated harp seal (Pagophilus groenlandicus)
pups and bluebacked hooded seal (Cystophora
cristata) pups in 1983; they made that ban
indefinite in 1989. The International Whaling
Commission has had a moratorium on commercial
whaling since 1986/87. In 2010, the EU banned
trade in all seal products and, a year later, Russia,
Belarus and Kazakhstan banned trade in harp seal
products. Given these precedents, and considering
current circumstances, an ivory-trade ban doesn’t
seem all that radical. Yet, ironically, not one of
the above jurisdictions has imposed a permanent
ban on the elephant ivory trade. Which begs the
question: Why?
Of course, even if ivory markets were banned
everywhere tomorrow, poaching and illegal trade
would undoubtedly continue, at least in the short
term. Once markets have become established they
are extremely difficult to close down, 183 but that
should not deter efforts to reduce poaching levels
as quickly as possible.
The international community must support and
enhance the efforts of some national governments,
the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and Interpol, 184
among others, to gain an upper hand on poachers
and, more importantly, on the international wildlife
crime syndicates that drive poaching and illegal
international trade today. To do that will require
much tougher legislation, both nationally and
internationally, with severe penalties imposed on
anyone and everyone found in violation of the law.
It will also require a crack down on the corrupt
governments, government officials, and foreign
nationals who currently help to facilitate illegal
activities. It will require enhanced enforcement,
both in range states where elephants are killed and
in the international community where illegal trade
continues to flourish.
And last, but certainly not least, the global
conservation community would have to embark on
massive public education programs to reduce the
burgeoning demand for ivory.
DEALING WITH UNCERTAINTY
Just about everything associated with elephants is
uncertain, not just their future. As we have noted,
we are uncertain about how many species currently
survive. We really don’t know much about their
current distribution in large parts of their presumed
range. We don’t know how many elephants remain
alive today – the most recent data are at least five
years old and, even back then, only about half
of their presumed range in Africa was actually
surveyed. We know that many elephants are
poached each year but we don’t know how many.
After ten years of monitoring (2002-2011), MIKE
can only account for fewer than 9000 poached
elephants in all of Africa. 185 Of course, MIKE only
monitors sites that account for about 16 per cent of
elephant range in Africa, and its data are uncertain
because they are often collected by governments
and their employees, and not by independent
observers or scientists. 186
Similarly, we know that elephant tusks and
carved ivory are frequently seized in illegal
international trade, but we don’t have any idea
what these artifacts represent, including the
number of dead elephants involved. The artifacts
could come from poached animals or from animals
that died of natural causes. If they originated
illegally from various ivory stockpiles, 187 they could
represent poached animals, animals that died
during culling operations, or of natural causes.
In no case can we be sure when the elephants
actually died. This year? Last year? Or sometime
in the more distant past.
It appears that the demand for elephant ivory,
especially in China, has risen and continues to rise
since that country and Japan received 108 tonnes
of ivory through the most recent “one-off” sale
authorized by CITES in 2008. But the extent of
the current demand and its potential for growth
remains unknown and, likely, unknowable.
In addition to the scientific uncertainty
associated with the available data, elephants,
particularly in Africa, have to contend with the
uncertainties associated with civil unrest and
military conflicts. They also have to contend with
the new environmental uncertainties associated
with global warming.
If ever there were a compelling case for
implementing a precautionary approach to protect
and conserve a unique and threatened group of
animals, it would surely include elephants.
LAST WORDS
By now, it should be abundantly clear that it is
only through moral judgment and political choice
that we can take the steps necessary to safeguard
the future, 188 and that includes the future of the
environment, the economy, and human society.
Likewise, it is only through moral judgment
and political choice that we can take the steps
necessary to safeguard the future of elephants.
75

8 ACTIONS FOR
INDIVIDUALS AND
ORGANIZATIONS
© IFAW/D. Willetts/Tsavo East National Park, Kenya

© IFAW/C.Cullen/Amboseli National Park, Kenya
The desperate and worsening plight of many elephant populations requires immediate and
drastic actions to protect threatened populations from further depletion. 189
Following is a list of measures that concerned individuals and conservation organizations
might consider promoting IF they really want to protect the remaining elephant populations from
further depletion, both in individual countries, and across their remaining fragmented range.
1. Encourage all nations worldwide to ban legal, national and international trade in both
live and dead elephants, their parts and derivatives (including ivory).
2. Encourage all nations to ban the practice of capturing wild elephants for domestication
and/or captivity.
3. Work to close all legal and illegal domestic ivory markets wherever they currently exist,
through legislation, and enhanced enforcement to encourage compliance.
4. Advocate in favour of banning all sales of ivory and elephant products, including
antiques and pre-ban items, in retail outlets and on the Internet.
5. Encourage all elephant range states to destroy any and all government stockpiles of
elephant ivory to put them forever beyond reach of the marketplace.
6. Encourage governments and intergovernmental organizations to compensate and
otherwise reward elephant range states that destroy their ivory stockpiles and put them
beyond reach of the marketplace.
7. Encourage and support enhanced enforcement of laws banning trade in elephant ivory,
with substantial penalties for those found to be engaged in poaching and illegal trade.
8. Encourage all nations to make it a serious criminal offense to offer elephant products
for sale.
9. Develop and implement political campaigns to encourage legislators globally to remove
elephant products from the marketplace and from international trade.
10. Support the development of public education programs to reduce consumer demand for
ivory and other elephant products.
11. Support the creation of alternative employment opportunities for those disenfranchised
by the closure of markets in elephant products.
12. Lobby national governments, and the EU, to support and promote the above actions.
13. Create awareness of the direct and indirect impacts of increased human populations,
manifested in demands for more land conversion for human settlements, agriculture,
abstraction of water, etc., which in the immediate term fragment, degrade and reduce
critical wildlife habitats, and in the longer term diminish the Earth’s finite resources.
14. Support the development and protection of elephant habitat and corridors, providing
adequate support for any individuals and communities disrupted or relocated in the
process.
15. Support enhanced conservation action and involvement in halting the insularization of
protected areas; only support development objectives outside protected areas that are
compatible with conservation goals.
16. Encourage international funding agencies to support education programs, enhanced
enforcement, habitat protection, and scientific research designed to promote the
continued existence of elephants in the wild.
79

9 CHANGING THE
FACE OF ELEPHANT
CONSERVATION:
A ROLE FOR
INTERGOVERNMENTAL
ORGANIZATIONS
© IFAW/S. Barbaruah

© IFAW/Amboseli National Park, Kenya
Any proposal to reinvent our approach to
conservation and, in the present context, our
approach to the conservation of a single group of
animals such as elephants, requires leadership. 190
Individual people and non-governmental
organizations can only do so much. If the
traditional conservation community chooses to
reinvent itself, then members of IUCN – the World
Conservation Union, both its NGO and government
members, as well as its Specialist Groups; CITES
and the individual Parties to CITES; and the United
Nations Environment Programme (UNEP), among
others, all have opportunities to play an important
role in shaping a new, truly knowledge-based
approach to conservation – including elephant
conservation – for the 21 st Century.
IUCN, backed by its Asian Elephant Specialist
Group and its African Elephant Specialist
Group could begin – following the lead already
established by the Convention on Migratory
Species (CMS) – by recognizing that there are at
least two distinct species of elephant in Africa.
Once that step has been taken, they could
then take the lead in developing appropriate
conservation action plans to increase protection
for these species, individually and collectively.
CITES could return to its original mandate of
protecting vulnerable species from the threats
posed by international trade, rather than working
to facilitate legal international trade in elephant
ivory. 191 Any discussions and decisions about
the ivory trade must properly consider the links
between legal and illegal trade and assess the
feasibility of a new approach that treats elephants
as biological entities rather than political entities
defined by artificial national boundaries. 192 It
would stop any further discussions of downlisting
proposals for elephants, and any additional
“one-off” sales of elephant ivory, and ban the
international ivory trade immediately. Asian
elephants and those African elephant populations
currently on Appendix I have such protection,
at least on paper. International trade in ivory
from elephant populations listed on Appendix II
must also be banned because of the “look-alike”
problem, and because any legal trade provides
cover for poaching and illegal trade in ivory from
Appendix I populations. There is simply no way for
customs officials and merchants to identify ivory
in trade as coming from any particular population
or species, or to separate, unequivocally, legally
traded ivory from illegal ivory.
In their individual capacities, the Parties to
CITES – especially jurisdictions such as China, the
European Union, Japan, and the United States,
could take the lead and set the example by closing
down national markets in elephant ivory, and
tightening up national laws and enforcement to
cut down on illegal trade.
Given the rise in the illegal killing of elephants
and illicit trade in elephant ivory, governments
could use their influence to provide the necessary
support and technical capacity to work with
source, transit and end-user countries to combat
elephant poaching and illegal trade. 193 Unregulated
and uncontrolled domestic ivory markets should
be dismantled wherever they exist.
Governments must commit to and enact
legislative and enforcement reforms to curtail
internal ivory markets. Wildlife crime needs to
be treated with the same seriousness and level
of attention that we give to other transnational
organized crime, such as the drug and weapons
trade, and human trafficking, given the critical
links to national security and governance issues in
many countries. 194
UNEP, for its part, could play a leadership
role in putting knowledge-based conservation
of the environment and all its constituent parts,
including elephants, first and foremost on its
agenda. It could also stop promoting the false
promises of sustainable development, and the
“sustainable use” of wildlife, which these days
has become a euphemism for the commercial use
of wildlife. 195
One can see similar and complementary
opportunities for other intergovernmental
organizations and international conventions
including, especially, the Convention on
Biodiversity. 196
Of course, many in the mainstream
conservation community, especially those who
put economics first, and skeptics masquerading
as “realists” or “pragmatists”, will reject
such suggestions as unrealistic, idealistic and
naïve. Nonetheless, the problem remains that
conservation today is not achieving its objectives
and hasn’t for a very long time. 197
If we really want to conserve elephants and
offer them the protection they so clearly need
and deserve, we have to try new approaches. The
alternative, doing the same things over and over
again and expecting different results, is – to put it
bluntly – the very definition of insanity. 198
83
© IFAW/S. Barbaruah/Kaziranga National Park, Assam, India

© IFAW/D. Willetts/Amboseli National Park, Kenya
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
The idea for this little book came from IFAW
colleagues working on elephants and the ivory
trade. They contributed to the original outline,
most of which still survives as the Table of
Contents.
A number of colleagues reviewed and
provided comments on earlier drafts, either of
individual chapters, or the entire manuscript.
They include: Kelvin Alie, Jason Bell, Gay
Bradshaw and Steve Njumbi, all of whom also
made individual contributions to one or more
chapters. Other reviewers of one or more
chapters include: Jan Hannah, Grace Gabriel,
Barry Kent Mackay, Vassili Papastavrou, Céline
Sissler-Bienvenu and Sue Wallace. Vivek
Menon provided a useful suggestion that was
incorporated into the text.
Kati Radziszewska located and downloaded
a number of the source documents in a
timely fashion. Sue Wallace prepared Figure
3 and proof-read various drafts of the entire
manuscript.
Opinions expressed in this document are
those of the contributors and may not reflect
precisely the current institutional positions
of IFAW or, necessarily, the views of individual
reviewers. Any remaining factual errors are the
responsibility of the editor.
CONTRIBUTORS
Kelvin Alie MSc, MA
Director, Wildlife Crime & Consumer
Awareness Programme
International Fund for Animal Welfare
Washington D.C., U.S.A.
kalie@ifaw.org
www.ifaw.org
Jason Bell BSc
Regional Director, Southern Africa
Director, Elephant Programme
International Fund for Animal Welfare
Cape Town, South Africa
jbell@ifaw.org
www.ifaw.org
Gay Bradshaw PhD, PhD
Executive Director
Kerulos Center
Jacksonville OR, U.S.A.
www.kerulos.org
David Lavigne PhD, Dr philos
Science Advisor
International Fund for Animal Welfare
Guelph, Ontario, Canada
dlavigne@ifaw.org
Steve Njumbi BSc, MPhil
Head of Programmes, East Africa
International Fund for Animal Welfare
Nairobi, Kenya
snjumbi@ifaw.org
APPENDIX 1 | CURRENT
UNDERSTANDING OF ELEPHANT
TAXONOMY 1
Class Mammalia
Order Proboscidea
Family Elephantidae
Tribe Elephantini
Tribe Loxodontini
Genus Elephas
Genus Loxodonta
Species maximus (Asian Elephant)
Subspecies indictus (Indian Elephant, Asian Mainland)
maximus (Sri Lankan Elephant)
sumatranus (Sumatran Elephant)
borneensis (Borneo Elephant)
Species africana (African Savanna Elephant)
cyclotis (African Forest Elephant)
1. Rohland, N. et. al. 2010; Shoshani, J. and P. Tassy. 2005. Advances in proboscidean taxonomy & classification, anatomy & physiology,
and ecology & behavior. Quaternary International 126-28:5-20; also see http://www.suite101.com/content/borneo-pygmy-elephanta242889#ixzz1OcnSEMjd.
For additional discussion, see http://www.iucnredlist.org/apps/redlist/details/7140/0.
85

APPENDIX 2 | NUMBERS OF AFRICAN ELEPHANTS AND
ELEPHANT NUMBERS RANGE % OF % OF
2 CONTINENTAL
DEFINITE PROBABLE POSSIBLE SPECULATIVE TOTAL AREA, KM
RANGE
WEST AFRICA
Benin 1,223 0 0 0 1,223 13,673 0.39 51
Burkina Faso 4,154 320 520 0 4 994 19,872 0.57 72
Cote d’Ivoire 188 152 119 506 965 33,985 0.97 72
Ghana 789 387 241 12 1,429 23,301 0.66 42
Guinea 135 79 79 57 350 1,524 0.04 78
Guinea Bissau 0 0 7 13 20 1,346 0.04 100
Liberia 0 0 0 1,676 1,676 15,977 0.46 80
Mali 357 0 141 156 654 31,878 0.91 100
Niger 85 0 17 0 102 2,683 0.08 100
Nigeria 348 0 105 375 828 22,968 0.65 37
Senegal 1 0 0 9 10 1,090 0.03 100
Sierra Leone 0 0 80 135 215 1,804 0.05 59
Togo 4 0 61 0 65 5,444 0.16 69
Subtotal 7,487 735 1,129 2,939 12,290 175,545 5.00 66
CENTRAL AFRICA
Cameroon 179 726 4,965 9,517 15,387 118,571 3.55 45
CAR 109 1,689 1,036 500 3,334 73,453 2.20 95
Chad 3,885 0 2,000 550 6,435 149,443 4.48 26
Congo 402 16,947 4,024 729 22,102 135,918 4.07 23
DRC 2,447 7,955 8,855 4,457 23,714 263,700 7.91 40
Equatorial Guinea 0 0 700 630 1,330 15,008 0.45 13
Gabon 1,523 23,457 27,911 17,746 70,637 218,985 6.56 94
Subtotal 10,383 48,936 43,098 34,129 136,546 975,079 29.00 52
1. Because of the statistical manipulations used to compile this table, the sub-totals and totals do not necessarily match the simple sum of
entries within any given category.
Source: Blanc, J.J., R.F.W. Barnes, G.C. Craig, H.T. Dublin, C.R. Thouless, I. Douglas-Hamilton, and J.A. Hart. 2007.
African Elephant Status Report 2007: An Update from the African Elephant Database.
Available at http://www.african-elephant.org/aed/aesr2007.html. These numbers were reprinted in 2011 in Status of elephant populations,
levels of illegal killing and the trade in ivory: A Report to the Standing Committee of CITES.
SC61 Doc. 44.2 (Rev. 1) Annex 1, p. 7. Available at http://www.cites.org/eng/com/sc/61/E61-44-02-A1.pdf.
RANGE BY COUNTRY AND REGION 1
RANGE
ASSESSED
ELEPHANT NUMBERS RANGE % OF % OF
DEFINITE PROBABLE POSSIBLE SPECULATIVE TOTAL AREA, KM 2 CONTINENTAL
RANGE
EASTERN AFRICA
Eritrea 96 0 8 0 104 5,293 0.16 100
Ethiopia 634 0 920 206 1,760 38,365 1.15 68
Kenya 23,353 1,316 4,946 2,021 31,636 107,113 3.21 82
Rwanda 34 0 37 46 117 1,014 0.03 100
Somalia 0 0 0 70 70 4,526 0.14 68
South Sudan 20 0 280 0 300 318,239 9.54 0
Tanzania 108,816 27,937 29,350 900 167,003 390,336 11.70 66
Uganda 2,337 1,985 1,937 300 6,559 15,148 0.45 74
Subtotal 137,485 29,043 35,124 3,543 205,195 880,063 26.00 45
SOUTHERN AFRICA
Angola 818 801 851 80 2,550 406,946 12.20 5
Botswana 133,829 20,829 20,629 0 175,287 100,265 3.01 99
Malawi 185 323 632 1,587 2,727 7,538 0.23 89
Mozambique 14,079 2,396 2,633 6,980 26,088 334,786 10.04 77
Namibia 12,531 3,276 3,296 0 19,103 146,921 4.40 55
South Africa 17,847 0 638 22 18,507 30,455 0.91 100
Swaziland 31 0 0 0 31 50 0.00 100
Zambia 16,562 5,948 5,908 813 29,231 201,247 6.03 61
Zimbabwe 84,416 7,033 7,367 291 99,107 76,931 2.31 99
Subtotal 297,718 23,186 24,734 9,753 355,391 1,305,140 39.00 53
TOTAL 472,269 82,704 84,334 100,748 698,671 6,671,623 100 51
RANGE
ASSESSED
87

APPENDIX 3 | THE PURPORTED
NUMBERS OF ASIAN ELEPHANTS
BY COUNTRY
The figures in the second column can be traced to Sukumar (2003) and are the ones used in the IUCN
Red List 1 . The figures in columns 3 & 4 are from Eleaid 2 . All of the data in this table appear to be at
least 7 years old and virtually all the sources cited warn about their veracity. For a critical review of the
numbers country by country see Blake & Hedges (2004, Table 2).
COUNTRY SUKUMAR (2003) ELEAID CAPTIVES
Bangladesh 150-250 196-227 c. 100
Bhutan 250–500 250-500 few
Cambodia 250-400 1 400-600 >500
China 200-250 200-250 few
India 26,390–30,770 23,900-32,900 c. 3,500
Indonesia 2,400–3,400 1,180-1,557 c. 350
Lao PDR (Laos) 500-1,000 781-1,202 1,100-1,350
Malaysia 2,100–3,100 2,351-3,066 few
Myanmar 4,000-5,000 4,000-5,300 >5,000
Nepal 100-125 100-170 c. 170
Sri Lanka 2,500-4,000 2,100-3,000 200-250
Thailand 2,500–3,200 3,000-3,700 3,500-4,000
Vietnam 70-150 76-94 c. 165
TOTAL 41,410-52,345 38,535-52,566 14,535-15,300 3
1. From Sukumar, R. 2003. The Living Elephants: Evolutionary Ecology, Behavior, and Conservation. Oxford University Press, Oxford, UK.
Reprinted in both Blake, S. and S. Hedges. 2004. Sinking the flagship: the case of forest elephants in Asia and Africa. Conservation
Biology 18:1192-1202; and in the IUCN Red List currently (i.e. 2011). These figures are also reprinted in Status of elephant populations,
levels of illegal killing and the trade in ivory: A Report to the Standing Committee of CITES. SC61 Doc. 44.2 (Rev. 1) Annex 1, p. 7. Available
at http://www.cites.org/eng/com/sc/61/E61-44-02-A1.pdf. Note: In the latter document the number given for Cambodia is 250-600, rather
than 250-400.
2. See http://www.eleaid.com/index.php?page=asianelephantdistribution. Eleaid indicates that these figures come from the IUCN/SSC Asian
Elephant Specialist Group in 2004, and notes that “the veracity of these figures is questionable.”
3. An additional 1,000 Asian elephants are found in zoos in non-range states around the world. See http://www.eleaid.com/index.php?page=
asianelephantdistribution.
89
© IFAW/R. Marsland/Samburu National Reserve, Kenya

ENDNOTES
1. Gheerbrant, E. 2009. Paleocene emergence of elephant
relatives and the rapid radiation of African ungulates.
Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences
106:10707-10721. Available at www.pnas.org/cgi/DOI/10.1073/
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2. Shoshani, J. and P. Tassy. 2005. Advances in proboscidean
taxonomy & classification, anatomy & physiology, and ecology
& behavior. Quaternary International 126-128: 5-20. DOI:10.1016/
jquaint.2004.04.011. New taxa are being added continuously
as more fossils are unearthed, described and analysed. The
Paleobiology Database currently lists some 210 species of
proboscideans; see http://paleodb.org/cgi-bin/bridge.pl.
3. Macdonald, D. [ed.]. 2001. The New Encyclopedia of Mammals.
Oxford University Press, Oxford, UK.
4. See for e.g. Haviland, C. 2012. Sanctuary or ceremony for Sri
Lanks’s elephants? BBC News, South Asia. 13 June. Available at
www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-south-asia-17981322.
5. More than 30 years ago, it was suggested that we are likely
witnessing the dying days of this once successful, diverse, and
widely distributed mammalian order. See Vaughan, T.A. 1978.
Mammalogy. Saunders College, Philadelphia. p. 232. The plight
of modern elephants has only worsened since then.
6. Vreeland, F.K. 1916. Prohibition of the sale of game.
Conservation of Fish, Birds and Game. Committee of Fisheries,
Game, and Fur-bearing Animals. Commission of Conservation
Canada. Proceedings of a meeting of the Committee, November
1 and 2, 1915. The Methodist Book and Publishing House,
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7. Working Party on Marine Mammals. 1978. Mammals in the
seas. Vol. 1. Report of the FAO Advisory Committee on Marine
Resources Research. Food and Agriculture Organization of the
United Nations, Rome.
8. The most recent estimate of ~8.7 million species is provided
by Mora, C., D.P. Tittensor, S. Adl, A.G.B. Simpson, and B. Worm.
2011. How many species are there on Earth and in the Ocean?
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9. Eggert, L.S., C.A. Rasner and D.S. Woodruff. 2002. The
evolution and phylogeny of the African elephant inferred
from mitochondrial DNA sequence and nuclear microsatellite
markers. Proc. R. Soc. Lond. B. DOI 10.1098/rspb.2002.2070;
Niskanen, L. 2004. Report: Sixth meeting of the African
Elephant Specialist Group. Pachyderm 36:136-139; Roca, A.L.,
N. Georgiadis, J. Pecon-Slattery, and S. O’Brien. 2001. Genetic
evidence for two species of elephants in Africa. Science
293:1473-1477; Macdonald, D. [ed.]. 2001. The New Encyclopedia
of Mammals. Oxford University Press, Oxford, UK.
10. http://www.iucnredlist.org/
11. See http://www.iucnredlist.org/apps/redlist/details/12392/0
12. Rohland, N., D. Reich, S. Mallick, M. Meyer, R.E. Green, N.J.
Georgiadis, A.L. Roca, and M. Hofreiter. 2010. Geonomic DNA
sequences from mastodon and woolly mammoth reveal deep
speciation of forest and savannah elephants. PLoS Biology
8(12) 1-10. Also see Ishida, Y., Y. Demeke, P.J. van Coeverden de
Groot, N.J. Georgiadis, K.E.A. Leggett, V.E. Fox, and A.L. Roca.
2011. Distinguishing forest and savanna African elephants using
short nuclear DNA sequences. Journal of Heredity. DOI:10.1093/
jhered/esr073.
13. compiled from various sources; body size measurements from
Macdonald, D. (ed.). 2001. The New Enclyclopaedia of Mammals.
Oxford University Press, Oxford, UK.
14. Eggert, L.S., C.A. Rasner and D.S. Woodruff. 2002. Also see
IUCN Red List of Threatened Species, African elephant.
Available at http://www.iucnredlist.org/apps/redlist/
details/12392/0.
15. IUCN Red List of Threatened Species, Asian elephant. Available
at http://www.iucnredlist.org/apps/redlist/details/7140/0.
16. This quotation comes from a draft manuscript written by the late
Dr. David Sergeant in the mid-1970s. The key word for me was
“spurious”. Unfortunately when the paper was published, the
sentence had been edited to read, “The public likes the certainty
of numbers,” which tends to obscure, I think, Sergeant’s original,
intended meaning. The published reference is Sergeant, D.E. 1976.
History and present status of populations of harp and hooded
seals. BioIogical Conservation 10:95-118.
17. http://maps.iucnredlist.org/map.html?id=12392.
18. Updated from http://www.iucnredlist.org/apps/redlist/
details/12392/0.
19. Eggert, L.S., C.A. Rasner and D.S. Woodruff 2002; also see IUCN
Red List of Threatened Species, African elephant. Available at
http://www.iucnredlist.org/apps/redlist/details/12392/0.
20. Blanc, J.J., R.F.W. Barnes, G.C. Craig, H.T. Dublin, C.R. Thouless,
I. Douglas-Hamilton, and J.A. Hart. 2007. African Elephant
Status Report 2007: An Update from the African Elephant
Database. Available at http://www.african-elephant.org/aed/
aesr2007.html. These numbers were reprinted in 2011 in Status
of elephant populations, levels of illegal killing and the trade in
ivory: A Report to the Standing Committee of CITES. SC61 Doc.
44.2 (Rev. 1) Annex 1, p. 7. Available at http://www.cites.org/eng/
com/sc/61/E61-44-02-A1.pdf.
21. Ibid.
22. Appendix I of CITES lists species that are the most endangered
among CITES-listed animals and plants. They are threatened
with extinction. CITES prohibits international trade in
specimens of these species except when the purpose of
the import is not commercial, e.g. for scientific research. In
these exceptional cases, trade may take place provided it is
authorized by the granting of both an import and an export
permit (or re-export certificate). Article VII of CITES provides
for a number of exemptions to this general prohibition. See
http://www.cites.org/eng/app/index.php.
23. Appendix II of CITES lists species that are not necessarily now
threatened with extinction but may become so unless trade
is closely controlled. It includes so-called “look-alike species”,
i.e. species of which the specimens in trade look like those of
species listed for conservation reasons. International trade
in specimens of Appendix-II species may be authorized by
the granting of an export permit or re-export certificate. No
import permit is necessary for these species under CITES. An
import permit may be required, however, in some countries that
have taken stricter measures than CITES requires. Permits or
certificates should only be granted if the relevant authorities
are satisfied that certain conditions have been met, including,
first and foremost, that trade will not be detrimental to the
survival of the species in the wild. See http://www.cites.org/
eng/app/index.php.
24. Appendix II of CMS includes migratory species that have an
unfavourable conservation status or would benefit significantly
from international co-operation organised by tailored
agreements. See http://www.cms.int/documents/appendix/
cms_app1_2.htm.
25. Fernando P, Vidya TNC, Payne J, Stuewe M, Davison G, et al.
2003. DNA analysis Indicates that Asian elephants Are native
to Borneo and are therefore a high priority for conservation.
PLoS Biol 1(1): e6. DOI:10.1371/journal.pbio.0000006.
26. See http://www.iucnredlist.org/apps/redlist/details/7140/0.
27. Blake, S. and S. Hedges. 2004. Sinking the flagship: the case
of forest elephants in Asia and Africa. Conservation Biology
18:1192-1202.
28. Sukumar, R. 2003. The Living Elephants: Evolutionary Ecology,
Behavior, and Conservation. Oxford University Press, Oxford,
UK.
29. Most captive animals occur within range states of the Asian
elephant. Some 1,000 Asian elephants that are said to be found
in zoos in non-range states around the world. See http://www.
eleaid.com/index.php?page=asianelephantdistribution.
30. Much of the information included in this section comes from
the following sources: For African elephants, see http://
www.iucnredlist.org/apps/redlist/details/12392/0; for the
Asian elephant, see http://www.iucnredlist.org/apps/redlist/
details/7140/0. A recent summary, which includes much of the
same material, may be found in Anon. 2011. Status of elephant
populations, levels of illegal killing and the trade in ivory: A
report to the Standing Committee of CITES. CITES SC 61, Doc.
44.2 (Rev. 1) Annex 1; and in Anon. 2012. Elephant conservation,
illegal killing and ivory trade. CITES SC62 Doc 46.1, Where other
sources have been used, they are identified individually.
31. Geist, V. 1988. How markets in wildlife meat and parts, and the
sale of hunting privileges, jeopardize wildlife conservation.
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and paid hunting threaten conservation. Transactions of the
North American Wildlife and Natural Resources Conference,
54:172-178; Geist, V. 1994. Wildlife conservation as wealth.
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32. Groombridge, B. (ed.). 1992. Global Biodiversity: Status of the
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33. Discussed in Anon. 2010; also see Douglas-Hamilton, I. 2012.
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34. Fowler, C.W. and L. Hobbs. 2003. Is humanity sustainable?
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35. Anon. 2011. Africa’s impressive growth. Africa is now one
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36. For recent information on ecological footprints, see http://www.
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38. For a recent review of the African situation, see Pinter-
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39. Agence France Presse. 2011. Sri Lanka’s first elephant survey
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see Menon, V. 2002. Tusker: The Story of the Asian Elephant.
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42. See, for example, Gabriel et al. 2012.
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46. In March 2012, to cite but one example, more than 400
elephants were killed for their ivory in Cameroon’s Bouba
Ndjida National Park. See IFAW. 2012. Too late – military
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54. Lavigne 2010.
55. For discussion of this point, see Geist 1988; Lavigne et al. 1996;
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56. Ehrenfeld, D. 1970. Biological Conservation. Holt, Rinehart and
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57. Leopold, A. 1966. A Sand County Almanac with other essays on
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58. van Aarde, R.J. 2010. Elephants: Facts and Fables. International
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60. Lavigne, D.M. 2010a. Foreword. p. 7. In van Aarde, R.J. 2010.
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61. van Aarde 2010.
62. For a thorough discussion, see van Aarde 2010.
63. e.g. Bradshaw, G. A. and J. G. Borchers. 2000. Uncertainty as
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64. Lavigne, D.M., R. Kidman Cox, V. Menon, and M. Wamithi. 2006.
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Ecological Sustainability. International Fund for Animal Welfare,
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65. See, for example, van Aarde, R.J., T.P. Jackson and S.M.
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management in southern Africa. South African Journal of
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Science and elephant management decisions in South Africa.
Biological Conservation 144:876-885.
66. It is telling that “wildlife habitat” and “wildlife” are often
described in the conservation literature as ‘nature and natural
resources’. The designation of “wildlife” as “natural resources”,
rather than, for example, non-human animals, reveals the
anthropocentric bias that continues to dominate the field of
wildlife conservation.
67. Brundtland, G.H. 1997. The scientific underpinning of policy.
Science, 227 (5324):457.
68. Lavigne et al. 2006.
69. Young and van Aarde 2011.
70. Jewell, P. and S. Holt (eds). 1981. Problems in Management of
Locally Overabundant Wild Mammals. Academic Press, New
York.
71. Ibid.
72. For a useful discussion, see Caughley, G. 1981. Overpopulation.
pp 7-19. In P. Jewell & S. Holt (eds). Problems in Management
of Locally Overabundant Wild Mammals. Academic Press, New
York.
73. Glover J. 1963. The elephant problem at Tsavo. East African
Wildlife Journal 1:30-39. For a recent overview and discussion
of the issue in southern Africa, see van Aarde, R.J. and T.P.
Jackson. 2007. Megaparks for metapopulations: Addressing
the causes of locally high elephant numbers in southern
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biocon.2006.08.027.
74. Guldemond, R.A.R. and R.J. van Aarde. 2008 A meta-analysis of
the impact of African elephants on savanna vegetation. Journal
of Wildlife Management 72(4):892-899.
75. Kenya Wildlife Service. 2012. Conservation and management
strategy for the elephant in Kenya 2012-2021. Kenya Wildlife
Service, Nairobi, Kenya.
76. van Aarde and Jackson 2007; for additional discussion of this
complex issue, see Parker, G.E., F.V. Osborn, R.E Hoare, and L.S.
Niskanen. (eds). 2007. Human-Elephant Conflict Mitigation:
A training course for community-based approaches in Africa.
Participants Manual. Elephant Pepper Development Trust,
Livingston, Zambia and IUCN/SSC AfESG, Nairobi, Kenya.
Available at http://www.african-elephant.org/hec/hectools.
html. For an interesting discussion of another aspect of HEC,
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77. van Aarde et al. 2006; Young and van Aarde 2011.
78. Van Aarde and Jackson 2007.
79. Ibid.
80. Young, K.D. and van Aarde, R.J. 2010. Density as an explanatory
variable of movements and calf survival in savanna elephants
across southern Africa. Journal of Animal Ecology. DOI:
10.1111/j.1365-2656.2010.01667.x. Also see Loarie, S.R., R.J.
van Aarde and Stuart L. Pimm. 2009. Fences and artificial
water affect African Savannah elephant movement patterns.
Biological Conservation. DOI:10.1016/j.biocon.2009.08.008.
81. Young, K.D. and R.J. van Aarde 2011.
82. IFAW has, for example, worked in partnership with the
Conservation Ecology Research Unit (CERU), University of
Pretoria for more than a decade to further the understanding
of elephant dynamics in southern Africa. One of the goals is to
inform science-based and ethically responsible decision making
where policy and management are concerned.
83. Ibid.
84. South Africa has developed and published “National Norms and
Standards for the Management of Elephants in South Africa”.
Available at http://www.environment.gov.za/HotIssues/2006/
elephant/NSE%20Published%20(Master%20copy)%20(26-
02-07).doc. While this document describes the circumstances
under which culling can occur and the methods that may be
used, it has yet to produce an actual protocol for the scientific
evaluation of proposals to cull elephants.
85. Briefly, neoclassical economics posits that a “free-market” is
the best way to allocate scarce resources and promote their
conservation. It assumes, among other things (and quite
erroneously) that there are no biophysical limits to the growth
of market systems, that resources are either inexhaustible or
can be replaced by other resources (substitutability). Costs to
the environment, including pollution and resource depletion are
treated as “externalities” and are not acknowledged within the
economic system (see, for e.g. Nadeau, R. 2008. The economist
has no clothes: Unscientific assumptions in economic theory
are undermining efforts to solve environmental problems.
Scientific American, 25 March. Available at http://www.
scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=the-economist-has-noclothes).
The only value of interest to neoclassical economics
is money (see for example, Beder, S. 2011. Environmental
Economics and Ecological Economics: The contribution of
interdisciplinarity to understand, influence and effectiveness.
Environmental Conservation 38(2):140-150). A tree, for
example, has no value until it is cut down. An elephant has no
value until it is killed and its ivory is sold.
86. See Lavigne, D.M. 2011. Environmental conservation needs
a new, interdisciplinary paradigm: Comments arising from
Beder (2011). Invited Paper. 6th International Conference on
Environmental Future. Topic 17 ID progress in environmental
economics. 18-22 July 2011. Newcastle University, Newcastle,
UK. [copy available upon request from dlavigne@ifaw.org].
87. For further discussion, see Lavigne, D.M., C.J. Callaghan
and R.J. Smith. 1996. Sustainable utilization: the lessons of
history. pp 250-265. In V. J. Taylor and N. Dunstone (eds.). The
Exploitation of Mammal Populations. Chapman & Hall, London.
Also see Lavigne et al. 2006.
88. Beder 2011.
89. In the case of species, interchanging one species for another
(the economic principle of substitutability) is of course
possible. We do it all the time in fisheries as we “fish down
the trophic web”. The loss of an individual species, therefore,
is of no lasting consequence to the economic system. It is a
problem, however, for those concerned with the maintenance of
biodiversity because, as they say, “Extinction is forever”.
90. Ibid.
91. Lavigne 2011; also see Daly, H. 1977. Steady-State Economics.
Island Press, Washington, D.C.
92. Lavigne 2011; also see Beder 2011.
93. e.g. see Dowie, M. 1995. Losing Ground. American
environmentalism at the close of the twentieth century. The
MIT Press, Cambridge, MA; Lavigne, D.M. 2002. Ecological
footprints, doublespeak, and the evolution of the Machiavellian
mind. pp. 63-91. In W. Chesworth, M.R. Moss, and V.G. Thomas
[eds]. Sustainable Development: Mandate or Mantra? The
Kenneth Hammond Lectures on Environment, Energy and
Resources. 2001 Series. Faculty of Environmental Sciences,
University of Guelph, Guelph, Canada; Lavigne et al. 2006;
Gowdy, J., C. Hall, K. Klitgaard, and L. Kralls. 2010. What every
conservation biologist should know about economic theory.
Conservation Biology 24: 1440-1447.
94. Leakey, R. and R. Lewin. 1996. The Sixth Extinction: Patterns
of Life and the Future of Humankind. Anchor Books, New York;
Eldredge, N. 2001. The Sixth Extinction. American Institute of
Biological Sciences. Available at http://www.actionbioscience.
org/newfrontiers/eldredge2.html; Ward, P. 2004. The father
of all mass extinctions. Conservation In Practice 5(3): 12-19.
Also see Oates, J.F. Conservation, development and poverty
alleviation: Time for a change in attitudes. pp. 277-284. In
D.M. Lavigne (ed.). Gaining Ground: In Pursuit of Ecological
Sustainability. International Fund for Animal Welfare, Guelph,
Canada, and University of Limerick, Limerick, Ireland.
95. Lavigne 2002; also see Lavigne et al. 2006.
96. Pearce, F. 2011. Conservation & Poverty. Conservation 12(1):32-
39.
97. Beder 2011
98. Anon. 2011. Towards a green and resilient economy for the
Caribbean. Available at http://www.greeneconomycoalition.org/
sites/greeneconomycoalition.org/files/GEC_Caribbean_0.pdf.
99. Lavigne et al. 2006.
100. D. Roe, D. Thomas, J. Smith, M. Walpole, and J. Elliott. 2011.
Biodiversity and poverty: ten frequently asked questions – ten
policy implications. IIED. gatekeeper 150: July 2011. Available at
http://pubs.iied.org/pdfs/14612IIED.pdf?
101. Ibid.
102. Of course, the ideal situation is where conservation goals
and other societal objectives can be achieved simultaneously.
One example, which in some places may be beneficial to
both non-human animals and people, is where commercial
consumptive use can be replaced by ecologically sustainable
ecotourism. There are also situations where carefully planned
human developments can actually facilitate and protect
conservation processes and help mitigate human impacts on
other species and ecological processes. In Burkina Faso, for
example, IFAW partners with a French NGO, Des éléphants &
des hommes [Elephants & Humans], on an educational project
entitled “My elephant neighbour”, Working with teachers, the
project especially targets 10-year old pupils and their parents
who live closest to elephant populations. Through increased
education, the goal is to promote the harmonious co-existence
of elephants and people now and in the future, for the benefit
of both the local communities and the elephants who live
nearby. Another example, this time from Malawi, involved
the mitigation of a human-elephant conflict in 2009. In that
instance, some 60 elephants, some already injured and all
under threat of death, were moved by IFAW in partnership with
the Malawi government to a wildlife reserve. Once settled in
their new home, the elephants were free of further persecution,
and the affected communities no longer had to fear for their
lives and livelihoods. IFAW is now involved in discussions with
the Microloan Foundation Malawi and the Malawi government’s
Department of National Parks and Wildlife (DNPW), seeking
creative ways to alleviate poverty in communities surrounding
Liwonde National Park, while reducing ecologically
unsustainable exploitation within the park, including the illegal
hunting of elephants and rhinos. In Kenya, IFAW is working in
collaboration with a number of partners, including the Maasai
community, to promote ecologically sustainable land use
policies that benefit both wildlife and people in the greater
Amboseli ecosystem.
103. Lavigne, D.M. 1991. Slipping into the marketplace. BBC Wildlife
February 1991 pp 128-129.
104. Lavigne 2011.
105. Much of this section is repeated from Lavigne, D.M. 2010b.
CITES alone cannot solve the elephant crisis. Gajah – The
Journal of the IUCN/SSC Asian Elephant Specialist Group,
32:74-79.
106. e.g. Anon. 2008. Call of the Wild. Is the prohibition of trade
saving wildlife, or endangering it? The Economist print edition.
6 March 2008; Lemieux, A.M. and R.V. Clarke. 2009. The
International ban on ivory sales and its effects on elephant
poaching in Africa. British Journal of Criminology 49:451-471;
Lovett, J.C. 2009. Elephants and the conservation dilemma.
African Journal of Ecology 47:129-130; Styles, D. 2008. Africa:
The ivory trade need not endanger the elephant. allAfrica.
com. 31 August 2008. Available at www.allafrica.com/stories/
printable/200809010552.html; also see Milliken et al. 2009.
107. This is actually one of three options suggested by Styles
(2008).
108. At the time, two species of elephants were recognized and
listed, the African elephant, Loxodonta africanus, and the Asian
elephant, Elephas maximus. Now twenty years later, at least
three and, possibly, more species, are recognized (Eggert et al
2002, Niskanen 2004, Roca et al. 2001). The existence of newly
recognized elephant species – all of which would seemingly
qualify as “look-alike species” under CITES, has conservation
implications that have yet to be formally acknowledged by
CITES. In the current text, the generic term “elephants” applies
equally to all recognized species.
109. Milliken, T, R.W. Burn, and L. Sangalakula. 2009. The Elephant
Trade Information System (ETIS) and the illicit trade in ivory.
Traffic East/Southern Africa. CITES CoP15 Doc. 44.1 Annex. 40
pp.
110. The moratorium applies only to the four countries whose
elephant populations are listed in Appendix II and who were
allowed to sell their ivory in 2008: Botswana, Namibia, South
Africa and Zimbabwe. See Wasser, S., J. Poole, P. Lee, K.
Lindsay, A. Dobson, J. Hart, I. Douglas-Hamilton, G. Wittemyer,
P. Granli, B. Morgan, J. Gunn, S. Albers, R. Beyers, P. Chiyo, H.
Croze, R. Estes, K. Gobush, P. Joram, A. Kikoti, J. Kingdom, L.
King, D. Macdonald, C. Moss, B. Mutayoba, S. Njumbi, P. Omondi,
and K. Nowak. 2010. Elephants, Ivory, and Trade. Science
327:1331-1332.
111. Styles, D. 2009. CITES-approved ivory sales and elephant
poaching. Pachyderm 45:150-153; Wasser, S.K., C. Mailand, R.
Booth, B. Mutayoba, E. Kisamo, B. Clark, and M. Stephens. 2007.
Using DNA to track the origin of the largest ivory seizure since
the 1989 trade ban. Proceedings of the National Academy of
Sciences (PNAS) 104:4228-4233. DOI:10.1073/pnas.0609714104;
Wasser, S.K., W.J. Clark, O. Drori, E.S. Kisamo, C. Mailand, B.
Mutayoba, and M. Stephens. 2008. Combating the illegal trade
in African elephant ivory with DNA forensics. Conservation
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Biology 22:1065-1071; Wasser, S.K., B. Clark and C. Laurie. 2009.
Forensic tools battle ivory poachers. Scientific American. 6
July. pp. 69-74; Wasser et al. 2010; also see Milliken et al. 2009.
112. e.g. Douglas-Hamilton, I. 2009. The current elephant poaching
trend. Pachyderm 45:154-157.
113. Milliken et al. 2009.
114. see Wasser et al. 2009
115. Wasser et al. 2008; Milliken et al. 2009.
116. Clark, C.W. 1973. The economics of overexploitation. Science
181:630-634; Clark, C.W. 1973b. Profit maximization and the
extinction of animal species. Journal of Political Economy 81:
950-961; Clark, C.W. 1989. Clear-cut economies. Should we
harvest everything now? The Sciences 29:16-19; Caughley, G.
1993. Elephants and economics. Conservation Biology 7:943-
945.
117. Martin, R.B., D.H.M. Cumming, G.C Craig, D. St.C. Gibson, and
D.A. Peake. 2012. Decision-making mechanisms and necessary
conditions for a future trade in African elephant ivory.
Consultancy for the CITES Secretariat (CITES Notification
No. 2011/046). Draft Report, 31 March 2012. For a critique
of this paper, see The Amboseli Trust for Elephants. 2012.
Comments on the Draft Report “Decision-making mechanisms
and necessary conditions for a future trade in elephant ivory.
Consultancy document for the CITES Secretariat (no 2011/046),
The Amboseli Trust for Elephants, Nairobi, Kenya. Available at
http://www.elephanttrust.org.
118. Lavigne et al. 2006; Reference to Lavigne et al. 2006; and The
Amboseli Trust for Elephants. 2012.
119. Geist, V. 1988; How markets in wildlife meat and parts, and the
sale of hunting privileges, jeopardizes wildlife conservation.
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120. Norse. E.A. 1993. Global Marine Biological Diversity. Island
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121. This section is based largely on unpublished collaborative
work by David Lavigne and Gay Bradshaw. Parts also come
from Lavigne, D.M. 2011. Environmental conservation needs
a new, interdisciplinary paradigm: Comments arising from
Beder (2011). Invited Paper. 6 th International Conference on
Environmental Future. Topic 17 ID progress in environmental
economics. 18-22 July 2011. Newcastle University, Newcastle,
UK. [copy available upon request from dlavigne@ifaw.org]
122. Darwin, C. 1859. On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural
Selection, 1 st . edition. John Murray, London; Darwin, C. 1872.
The Expression of Emotions in Man and Animals. 1 st edition,
John Murray, London.
123. Gould, S.J. 1977. Ontogeny and Phylogeny.: The Belknap Press
of Harvard University Press. Cambridge, MA.
124. Northoff G.P. 2008. The trans-species concept of self and the
subcortical midline system. Trends in Cognitive Sciences 7(12):
259–264.
125. Bradshaw, G.A. and B. L. Finlay. 2005. Natural symmetry.
Nature 435: 149; Bradshaw, G.A., and R M. Sapolsky. 2006.
Mirror, mirror. American Scientist, 94(6), 487-489. Available at
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126. Also see Allen, T. and V. Ahl. 1996. Hierarchy theory : a vision,
vocabulary, and epistemology. Columbia University Press,
New York, NY; O’Neill, R.V.O. 1986. A Hierarchical Concept of
Ecosystems. Princeton University Press. Princeton, NJ.
127. Bradshaw, G. Elephants on the Edge. What Animals Teach us
about Humanity. Yale University Press, New Haven, CT.
128. van Aarde, R.J. and T.P. Jackson. 2007. Megaparks
for metapopulations: Addressing the causes of locally
high elephant numbers in southern Africa. Biological
Conservation134:289-297. DOI:10.1016/j.biocon.2006.08.027.
129. Biologists call these “population regulating mechanisms”. Such
mechanisms may be density dependent or density independent.
130. Young, K.D. and R.J. van Aarde. 2010. Density as an explanatory
variable of movements and calf survival in savanna elephants
across southern Africa. Journal of Animal Ecology. DOI:
10.1111/j.1365-2656.2010.01667.x. Also see Loarie, S.R., R.J. van
Aarde and S.L. Pimm. 2009. Fences and artificial water affect
African Savannah elephant movement patterns. Biological
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131. A “keystone species” is generally defined as one that plays
a critical role in maintaining the structure of an ecological
community and whose impact on the community is greater than
would be expected based on its relative abundance or total
biomass.
132. This figure is redrawn from Odum, E.P. 1971. Fundamentals of
Ecology, Third Edition. W.B. Saunders Company, Philadelphia,
PA. p. 5, Figure 1-2.
133. Daly, H. 1977. Steady-State Economics. Island Press,
Washington, D.C.
134. Odum 1971.
135. See De Waal, F. 2001. The Ape and the Sushi Master: Cultural
Reflections by a Primatologist. Basic Books, New York, NY.
136. sensu Dunbar, R.I.M. 1998.The social brain hypothesis.
Evolutionary Anthropology 6(5):178-190.
137. Bradshaw, G.A., and R. M. Sapolsky. 2006. Mirror,
mirror. American Scientist, 94(6), 487-489. http://www.
americanscientist.org/issues/pub/mirror-mirror-1
138. Gallup, G.G. 1970. Chimpanzees: Self-recognition. Science
167:86-87. Also see Bradshaw 2009; Bradshaw, G.A. and A.N.
Schore. 2007. How elephants are opening doors: developmental
neuroethology, attachment, and social context. Ethology, 113:
426–436.
139. Bradshaw, G.A. 2009. Elephants on the edge: What animals
teach us about humanity. Yale University Press, New Haven, CT.
140. Gobush, K.S., B.M. Matayoba, and S.K. Wasser. 2008. Long-
Term Impacts of Poaching on Relatedness, Stress Physiology,
and Reproductive Output of Adult Female African Elephants.
Conservation Biology 22(6):1590-1599. DOI: 10.1111/j.1523-
1739.2008.01035.x.
141. Bradshaw 2009.
142. Ehrenfeld, D. 1970. Biological Conservation. Holt, Rinehart and
Winston, New York.
143. Ibid. p.130.
144. Holt, S.J. 1978. Opening Plenary Meeting. Mammals in the
Seas. Report of the FAO Advisory Committee on Marine
Resources Research. Working Party on Marine Mammals. FAO
Fisheries Series, No. 5, Vol. 1: 262-264; de la Mare, W.K. 2006.
What is wrong with our approaches to fisheries and wildlife
management – An engineering perspective. pp. 309-320. In
D.M. Lavigne (ed.). Gaining Ground: In Pursuit of Ecological
Sustainability. International Fund for Animal Welfare, Guelph,
Canada, and University of Limerick, Limerick, Ireland.
145. Holt 1978.
146. Lavigne et al. 1999.
147. Clark, C.W. 1973. The economics of overexploitation. Science
181:630-634; Clark, C.W. 1973b. Profit maximization and the
extinction of animal species. Journal of Political Economy 81:
950-961; Clark, C.W. 1989. Clear-cut economies. Should we
harvest everything now? The Sciences 29:16-19; Caughley, G.
1993. Elephants and economics. Conservation Biology 7:943-
945.
148. see Lavigne, D.M. 2002. Ecological footprints, doublespeak,
and the evolution of the Machiavellian mind. pp. 63-91. In W.
Chesworth, M.R. Moss, and V.G. Thomas [eds]. Sustainable
Development: Mandate or Mantra? The Kenneth Hammond
Lectures on Environment, Energy and Resources. 2001 Series.
Faculty of Environmental Sciences, University of Guelph,
Guelph, Canada; Lavigne, D.M., R. Kidman Cox, V. Menon, and
M. Wamithi. 2006. Reinventing wildlife conservation for the 21 st
century. pp. 379-406. In D.M. Lavigne (ed.). Gaining Ground:
In Pursuit of Ecological Sustainability. International Fund for
Animal Welfare, Guelph, Canada, and University of Limerick,
Limerick, Ireland. Also see Ehrenfeld, D. 1988. Why put a value
on biodiversity? pp 212-216. In E.O. Wilson (ed.).Biodiversity.
National Academy Press, Washington DC.
149. Gabriel, G.G., N. Hua, and J. Wang. 2012. Black Ivory on a Gray
Market Brief Survey of Ivory Markets in China. International
Fund for Animal Welfare, Beijing, China.
150. To quote Rees, W. 2006. Why conventional economic logic
won’t protect biodiversity. pp. 207-226. In D.M. Lavigne
(ed.). Gaining Ground: In Pursuit of Ecological Sustainability.
International Fund for Animal Welfare, Guelph, Canada, and
University of Limerick, Limerick, Ireland, p. 210: “In its simplest
form, the second law states that any spontaneous change in
an isolated system (one that can exchange neither energy nor
matter with its environment) produces an increase in entropy.
In simpler terms, this means that when a change occurs in
an isolated complex system it becomes less structured, more
disordered, and there is less potential for further activity”. In
short, isolated systems always tend toward a state of maximum
entropy, a state in which nothing further can happen.
151. Brooks, R.J. 2006. The free lunch: Myths that direct
conservation policy and the natural laws that constrain it. pp.
243-261, In D.M. Lavigne (ed.). Gaining Ground: In Pursuit of
Ecological Sustainability. International Fund for Animal Welfare,
Guelph, Canada, and University of Limerick, Limerick, Ireland.
152. Gowdy, J., C. Hall, K. Klitgaard, and L. Kralls. 2010. What every
conservation biologist should know about economic theory.
Conservation Biology 24: 1440-1447.
153. e.g. Rawlston, H. III. 1988. Environmental Ethics: Duties to
and Values in the Natural World. Temple University Press,
Philadelphia; Kellert, S.R. 1996. The Value of Life: Biological
Diversity and Human Society. Island Press, Covelo, California.
Also see Beder, S. 2011. Environmental Economics and
Ecological Economics: The contribution of interdisciplinarity
to undertanding, influence and effectiveness. Environmental
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154. Layard, R. 2003. Happiness: Has social science a clue? Lionel
Robbins Memorial Lectures 2002/3. Available at http://cep.lse.
ac.uk/events/lectures/layard/RL030303.pdf; Steele, G.R. 2006.
Richard Layard’s Happiness: Worn philosophy, weak psychology,
wrong method and just plain bad economics! The Political
Quarterly, 77:485-492. Available at http://www.lancs.ac.uk/
staff/ecagrs/Politcal%20Quarterly%20Layard%20Happiness.
pdf; Stevenson, B. and J. Wolfers 2008. Economic growth
and subjective well-being: Reassessing the Easterlin Paradox.
Brookings Papers on Economic Activity. Spring 2008: 1-102.
Available at http://bpp.wharton.upenn.edu/jwolfers/Papers/
EasterlinParadox.pdf.
155. Mydans, S. 2009. Thimphu Journal. Recalculating Happiness in
a Himalayan Kingdom. The New York Times, 6 May. Available
at http://www.nytimes.com/2009/05/07/world/asia/07bhutan.
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156. Rees 2006; Lavigne et al. 2006.
157. Chadwick, D.H. 1994. The Fate of the Elephant. Sierra Club
Books, San Francisco, CA.
158. For the purposes of the present discussion, we define “intrinsic
value” simply as “the inherent worth of something independent
of its value to anyone or anything else”. See Sterling, E. and
M. Laverty. 2004. Intrinsic Value. Available at http://cnx.rice.
edu/content/m12160/latest/. Also see Lavigne et al. 2006,
particularly p. 403, endnote 98. Also see Beder 2011, p. 8.
159. Hormats, R. 2012. The illegal wildlife trade: A survey of greed,
tragedy, and ignorance. The Blog. Huff Post Green Canada.
18 May 2012. Robert Hormats is Under Secretary of State for
Economic Growth, Energy, and the Environment in the U.S.
government.
160. This chapter draws on previous writings in Lavigne, D.M., R.
Kidman Cox, V. Menon, and M. Wamithi. 2006. Reinventing
wildlife conservation for the 21 st century. pp. 379-406. In
D.M. Lavigne (ed.). Gaining Ground: In Pursuit of Ecological
Sustainability. International Fund for Animal Welfare, Guelph,
Canada, and University of Limerick, Limerick, Ireland;
Lavigne, D.M. 2011. Environmental conservation needs a
new, interdisciplinary paradigm: Comments arising from
Beder (2011). Invited Paper. 6 th International Conference on
Environmental Future. Topic 17 ID progress in environmental
economics. 18-22 July 2011. Newcastle University, Newcastle,
UK. Available upon request from dlavigne@ifaw.org; and
unpublished collaborative work by David Lavigne and Gay
Bradshaw.
161. Brundtland, G. 1997. The scientific underpinning of policy.
Science 227(5324):457.
162. The word myth has at least two meanings: 1) a dominant world
view and 2) an idea that is incorrect and not supported by the
available information (see Lavigne 2011).
163. For further discussion of this point as it relates to elephant
conservation, see van Aarde, R.J. 2010. Elephants: Facts and
Fables. International Fund for Animal Welfare, Cape Town,
South Africa and University of Pretoria, Pretoria, South Africa.
164. Muir, J. 1911. My First Summer in the Sierra. Houghton Mifflin,
Boston. Reprinted by Sierra Club Books, 1988, p. 110.
165. Leopold, A. 1949. A Sand County Almanac, and Sketches here
and there. Oxford University Press, Inc., New York.
166. Ibid.
167. In the technical literature, an Earth-centred conservation ethic
is referred to as a Geocentric Conservation Ethic. For further
discussion, see Lavigne, D.M., R. Kidman Cox, V. Menon, and M.
Wamithi. 2006. Reinventing wildlife conservation for the 21 st
century. pp. 379-406. In D.M. Lavigne (ed.). Gaining Ground:
In Pursuit of Ecological Sustainability. International Fund for
Animal Welfare, Guelph, Canada, and University of Limerick,
Limerick, Ireland.
168. Rees, W. 2006. Why conventional economic logic won’t
protect biodiversity. pp. 207-226. In D.M. Lavigne (ed.). Gaining
Ground: In Pursuit of Ecological Sustainability. International
Fund for Animal Welfare, Guelph, Canada, and University
of Limerick, Limerick, Ireland; Rees, W.E. 2010. What’s
blocking sustainability? Human nature, cognition and denial.
Sustainability: Science, Practice, & Policy 6(2):1-13. Available at
http://ejournal.nbii.org
169. Daly, H. 1977. Steady-State Economics. Island Press,
Washington, D.C.
170. A refreshing Opinion piece in New Vision: Uganda’s Leading
Daily (Vol. 27, No. 138, 11 July 2012), commenting on a recent
conflict between a chimpanzee and a child (but it could just
as easily have been commenting on the plight of elephants),
put it this way: “…what is taking place is unsustainable. The
solution therefore lies in proper land use planning, family
planning, immigration control, conservation education and
strong incentives for people to engage in conservation”
[emphasis added].
171. Hawken, P. 2010. The Ecology of Commerce: A Declaration of
Sustainability. Revised Edition. Harper Business, New York.
172. Czech, B. 2006. The steady-state revolution as a prerequisite
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for wildlife conservation and ecological sustainability. pp.
335-344. In D.M. Lavigne (ed.). Gaining Ground: In Pursuit of
Ecological Sustainability. International Fund for Animal Welfare,
Guelph, Canada, and University of Limerick, Limerick, Ireland;
Rees, W.E. 2010. What’s blocking sustainability? Human nature,
cognition and denial. Sustainability: Science, Practice, & Policy
6(2):1-13. Available at http://ejournal.nbii.org.
173. Hawken 2010.
174. A number of jurisdictions and international conventions have
recognized that wildlife has intrinsic value. Recognition of the
intrinsic value of animals (or wildlife) is included, for example, in
the Preamble to the European Convention on the Conservation
of European Wildlife and Natural Habitats (the Bern Convention,
1979); and in Wildlife Minister’s Council of Canada. 1990. A
Wildlife Policy for Canada. Minister of Environment, Canadian
Wildlife Service, Ottawa. The Netherland’s 1992 Animal Health
and Welfare Act recognizes that animals were not created
just for the benefit of humans and that they have intrinsic
value; intrinsic value is also recognized in the Preamble
of the Convention on Biodiversity (1992), and in the Earth
Charter (2000) although, in the latter, the actual words do
not appear. Principle 1.1a reads, “Recognize that all beings are
interdependent and every form of life has value regardless of its
worth to human beings” (available at http://www.earthcharter.
org/files/charter/charter.pdf). Evidence that the idea has
penetrated the mainstream scientific literature may be found
in May, R.M. 2001. Foreward. pp xii-xvi. In J.D. Reynolds, G.M.
Mace, K.H. Redford, and J.G. Robinson (eds.). Conservation of
Exploited Species. Conservation Biology 6. Cambridge University
Press, Cambridge, UK. In this foreword, May (now Lord May)
acknowledges the idea that all life forms have “inherent rights”.
It must be added, however, that the recognition of “intrinsic
value” or “inherent rights” generally appears to have had
little impact to date on the way humans have conducted their
affairs. To this point, however, the acknowledgement of intrinsic
value has not progressed much beyond Leopold’s “convention
rhetoric” and “letterhead pieties”. While recognition of intrinsic
value is a step in the right direction, it will only become
meaningful if it becomes appropriately entrenched in legislation,
which is enforced to ensure compliance.
175. Lynn, W.S. 1998. Contested moralities: Animals and moral value
in the Dear/Symanski debate. Ethics, Place and Environment
1(2): 223-242.; Lavigne et al. 2006.
176. Following the example of the European Food Safety Authority.
See EFSA. 2007. Scientific Opinion of the Panel on Animal
Health and Welfare, on a request from the Commission on the
Animal Welfare aspects of the killing and skinning of seals. The
EFSA Journal 610:1-122.
177. Kumar, A. Menon. 2006. Ivory tower sustainability: An
examination of the ivory trade. pp 129-139. In D.M. Lavigne
(ed.). Gaining Ground: In Pursuit of Ecological Sustainability.
International Fund for Animal Welfare, Guelph, Canada, and the
University of Limerick, Limerick, Ireland.
178. The declaration is available at http://fcmconference.org/
img/CambridgeDeclarationOnConsciousness.pdf. For further
discussion, see http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/animalemotions/201208/scientists-finally-conclude-nonhumananimals-are-conscious-beings.
179. Varner, G. 2008. Personhood, memory and elephant
management. pp. 41-68. In C. Wemmer and C. Christen (eds.).
Elephants and Ethics: The Morality of Coexistence. Johns
Hopkins University Press, Baltimore, MD. Also see Kumar, A.
and V. Menon. 2006. Ivory tower sustainability: An examination
of the ivory trade. pp. 129-139. In D.M. Lavigne (ed.). Gaining
Ground: In Pursuit of Ecological Sustainability. International
Fund for Animal Welfare, Guelph, Canada, and University of
Limerick, Limerick, Ireland.
180. Kumar and Menon 2006.
181. e.g. van Aarde, R.J. and T.P. Jackson. 2007. Megaparks
for metapopulations: Addressing the causes of locally
high elephant numbers in southern Africa. Biological
Conservation134:289-297. DOI:10.1016/j.biocon.2006.08.027.
182. And this includes curtailing Internet trade in elephant products;
see for e.g. http://www.ifaw.org/united-states/resource-centre/
killing-keystrokes.
183. Geist, V. 1988. How markets in wildlife meat and parts, and
the sale of hunting privileges, jeopardizes conservation.
Conservation Biology 2(1): 1-12.
184. See Johnson, S. 2012. Interpol demands crackdown on ‘serious
and organised’ eco crime: Ivory poaching and illegal logging
needs tougher enforcement and intelligence input, says
Interpol director. The Guardian, 29 March. Available at http://
www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2012/mar/29/interpolenvironmental-crime-ivory-poaching?INTCMP=SRCH.
185. See http://www.cites.org/eng/com/SC/62/E62-46-01.pdf.
186. Shoumatoff, A. 2011. Agony and Ivory. Vanity Fair, August.
187. Those interested in promoting the illegal trade and sale of
ivory are no longer content with poaching elephants where
they continue to survive in the wild. Recently, there has been
a number of incidents where ivory stockpiles have “gone
missing”, presumably stolen. In June 2012, over three tons
of ivory were discovered “missing” from the Zambia Wildlife
Authority’s “strongroom”, and two government employees
were arrested in what is believed to be an “inside job”. A
month earlier, 26 ivory tusks were reportedly stolen from a
Department of Wildlife warehouse in Kasane, Botswana. In
February 2012, over a ton of ivory was stolen in Mozambique
(for a summary, see http://annamiticus.com/2012/06/27/
zambia-3-tons-ivory-stolen-2-game-scouts-arrested). Such
stolen stockpiles are inevitably destined to enter illegal
international trade and end up in ivory markets, particularly
in Asia. As long ago as 1989, Kenya went so far as to burn
its ivory stockpiles in an effort to persuade the world to halt
the ivory trade (see www.nytimes.com/1989/07/19/world/
kenya-in-gesture-burns-ivory-tusks.html?page). Three years
later, Zambia followed suit. In 2011, Kenya again burnt almost
5 tonnes of ivory, some 335 tusks and over 40,000 ivory
carvings, originating in Malawi and Tanzania and confiscated
in Singapore, in an attempt to send a message to poachers
and illegal traders in elephant ivory (see http://www.bbc.co.uk/
news/world/africa-14217147?print=true). This time, however,
Kenya did not destroy its own government stockpiles. In 2012,
Gabon followed suit, burning nearly 5,000 kg of elephant tusks
and ivory carvings (see http://blogs.scientificamerican.com/
extinction-countdown/2012/06/27/ivory-burn-gabon- sendsmessage-elephant-poachers/;
also see http://www.guardian.
co.uk/environment/2012/jun27/gabon-burn-ivory/print). In July
2012, it was reported that Zambia may once again burn its ivory
stockpiles (see http://www.davidshepherd.org/news/zambiamay-burn-ivory-stockpiles/).
The existence of ivory stockpiles
is just one more factor that continues to feed markets for ivory.
If we are really serious about curtailing poaching to protect
elephants, then we need to convince all range states to destroy
all their stockpiles, and close all markets. Putting stockpiles
forever beyond reach of the marketplace (regardless of their
source) is just one more step on the road to ending the trading
and selling of ivory, now and in the future.
188. Commoner, B. 1963. Science and Survival. The Viking Press,
New York; Brooks, R.J. 2006. The free lunch: Myths that direct
conservation policy and the natural laws that constrain it. pp.
243-261. In D.M. Lavigne (ed.). Gaining Ground: In Pursuit of
Ecological Sustainability. International Fund for Animal Welfare,
Guelph, Canada, and University of Limerick, Limerick, Ireland.
189. As U.S. Under Secretary of State for Economic Growth,
Energy, and the Environment, Robert Hormats, recently
wrote: “Neither governments nor individual citizens can afford
to stand idle while poachers and wildlife traffickers hunt
elephants…collective outrage at these horrendous crimes
is needed to spur action.” (See Hormats, R. 2012. The illegal
wildlife trade: A survey of greed, tragedy, and ignorance.
The Blog. Huff Post Green Canada. 18 May 2012.) Of course,
curtailing poaching and illegal trade is only part of the solution.
In the longer term, preservation of elephant habitat may be
even more vital.
190. For a discussion, see Lavigne, D.M., R. Kidman Cox, V. Menon,
and M. Wamithi. 2006. Reinventing wildlife conservation for the
21 st Century. pp. 379-425. In D.M. Lavigne (ed.). Gaining Ground:
In Pursuit of Ecological Sustainability. International Fund for
Animal Welfare, Guelph, Canada, and University of Limerick,
Limerick, Ireland. Also see Lavigne, D.M. 2004. Reinventing
wildlife conservation for the 21 st Century: A role for CITES.
International Fund for Animal Welfare. Hyannis, MA. Available
upon request from dlavigne@ifaw.org.
191. For a recent discussion, see Thorson, E. and C. Wold. 2010. Back
to basics: An analysis of the object and purpose of CITES and a
blueprint for implementation. International Environmental Law
Project. Lewis & Clark Law School. Portland OR. Available at
http://www.lclark.edu/live/files/4620.
192. See van Aarde and Ferriera. 2009. Elephant populations and
CITES trade resolutions. Environmnetal Conservation 36(1):
8-10.
193. See for e.g. Douglas-Hamilton, I. 2012. Ivory and insecurity: the
global implications of poaching in Africa. Written testimony
before United States Senate Committee on Foreign Relations.
24 May, Washington, DC.
194. Cardamone, T. 2012. Ivory and insecurity: the global
implications of poaching in Africa. Written testimony before
United States Senate Committee on Foreign Relations. 24 May,
Washington, DC.
195. See Lavigne et al. 2006; also see Lavigne, D.M. 2011.
Environmental conservation needs a new, interdisciplinary
paradigm: Comments arising from Beder (2011). Invited Paper.
6 th International Conference on Environmental Future. Topic
17 ID progress in environemental economics. 18-22 July 2011
Newcastle University, Newcastle, UK. [copy available upon
request from dlavigne@ifaw.org].
196. For some interesting discussion on CBD, see Faizi, S. 2004.
CBD: The unmaking of a treaty. Biodiversity 5(3):43-44; Faizi,
S. 2012. Rescue CBD from legal limbo. ECO 41(2). Available at
www.cbdalliance.org.
197. e.g. Lavigne et al. 2006; Beder, S. 2011. Environmental
Economics and Ecological Economics: The contribution of
interdisciplinarity to undertanding, influence and effectiveness.
Environmental Conservation 38(2):140-150.
198. The actual quote is: “Insanity is repeating the same mistakes
and expecting different results.” It is correctly attributed
to: Narcotics Anonymous, 1981. World Service Conference
of Narcotics Anonymous. Literature Sub-Committee. Basic
Text Approval Form. November 1981. p 11. Available at http://
amonymifoundation.org/uploads/NA_Approval_Form_Scan.pdf.

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