The African Elephant Database is a spatial database used to store, manage, analyze and disseminate information on the distribution and abundance of elephant populations on the African continent, in order to provide a current and accurate picture of the status African elephants. Elephants are the largest living land mammals, and their potential impact on their habitats raises important management issues both for protected areas and unprotected land. This Status Report is rich in data and information on numbers, distribution and current issues, and provides continent-wide information that is vital for conservation. It will help wildlife management authorities to harmonize their policy and management decisions across regions, as well as the continent, to reduce conflict and relax the pressure on habitats.

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African elephant status report 2007 : an update from the African elephant database

Over the last years there has been a massive increase in rhinoceros poaching incidents, with more than two individuals killed per day in South Africa in the first months of 2013. Immediate actions are needed to preserve current populations and the agents involved in their protection are demanding new technologies to increase their efficiency in the field. We assessed the use of remotely piloted aircraft systems (RPAS) to monitor for poaching activities. We performed 20 flights with 3 types of cameras: visual photo, HD video and thermal video, to test the ability of the systems to detect (a) rhinoceros, (b) people acting as poachers and (c) to do fence surveillance. The study area consisted of several large game farms in KwaZulu-Natal province, South Africa. The targets were better detected at the lowest altitudes, but to operate the plane safely and in a discreet way, altitudes between 100 and 180 m were the most convenient. Open areas facilitated target detection, while forest habitats complicated it. Detectability using visual cameras was higher at morning and midday, but the thermal camera provided the best images in the morning and at night. Considering not only the technical capabilities of the systems but also the poacherś modus operandi and the current control methods, we propose RPAS usage as a tool for surveillance of sensitive areas, for supporting field anti-poaching operations, as a deterrent tool for poachers and as a complementary method for rhinoceros ecology research. Here, we demonstrate that low cost RPAS can be useful for rhinoceros stakeholders for field control procedures. There are, however, important practical limitations that should be considered for their successful and realistic integration in the anti-poaching battle.

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Remotely piloted aircraft systems as a rhinoceros anti-poaching tool in Africa

Resurgence of illicit trade in African elephant ivory is placing the elephant at renewed risk. Regulation of this trade could be vastly improved by the ability to verify the geographic origin of tusks. We address this need by developing a combined genetic and statistical method to determine the origin of poached ivory. Our statistical approach exploits a smoothing method to estimate geographic-specific allele frequencies over the entire African elephants' range for 16 microsatellite loci, using 315 tissue and 84 scat samples from forest (Loxodonta africana cyclotis) and savannah (Loxodonta africana africana) elephants at 28 locations. These geographic-specific allele frequency estimates are used to infer the geographic origin of DNA samples, such as could be obtained from tusks of unknown origin. We demonstrate that our method alleviates several problems associated with standard assignment methods in this context, and the absolute accuracy of our method is high. Continent-wide, 50% of samples were located within 500 km, and 80% within 932 km of their actual place of origin. Accuracy varied by region (median accuracies: West Africa, 135 km; Central Savannah, 286 km; Central Forest, 411 km; South, 535 km; and East, 697 km). In some cases, allele frequencies vary considerably over small geographic regions, making much finer discriminations possible and suggesting that resolution could be further improved by collection of samples from locations not represented in our study.

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Assigning African elephant DNA to geographic region of origin: Applications to the ivory trade

The illegal ivory trade recently intensified to the highest levels ever reported. Policing this trafficking has been hampered by the inability to reliably determine geographic origin of contraband ivory. Ivory can be smuggled across multiple international borders and along numerous trade routes, making poaching hotspots and potential trade routes difficult to identify. This fluidity also makes it difficult to refute a country's denial of poaching problems. We extend an innovative DNA assignment method to determine the geographic origin(s) of large elephant ivory seizures. A Voronoi tessellation method is used that utilizes genetic similarities across tusks to simultaneously infer the origin of multiple samples that could have one or more common origin(s). We show that this joint analysis performs better than sample-by-sample methods in assigning sample clusters of known origin. The joint method is then used to infer the geographic origin of the largest ivory seizure since the 1989 ivory trade ban. Wildlife authorities initially suspected that this ivory came from multiple locations across forest and savanna Africa. However, we show that the ivory was entirely from savanna elephants, most probably originating from a narrow east-to-west band of southern Africa, centered on Zambia. These findings enabled law enforcement to focus their investigation to a smaller area and fewer trade routes and led to changes within the Zambian government to improve antipoaching efforts. Such outcomes demonstrate the potential of genetic analyses to help combat the expanding wildlife trade by identifying origin(s) of large seizures of contraband ivory. Broader applications to wildlife trade are discussed.

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Using DNA to track the origin of the largest ivory seizure since the 1989 trade ban

The researcher in this paper sought to identify the basic components that are integral part of any researchmethods while conducting a qualitative research. The researcher developed a qualitative research methodschapter while conducting research on a phenomenon of abusive supervision. This paper will help the researchstudents to analyse a phenomenon such as abusive supervision in context of its ontology, epistemology,theoretical perspective, methodology and methods. Furthermore, target population, sampling technique, datacollection methods and the role of a researcher in this whole research process, and another essential part of aqualitative research, ethics which play a crucial role while conducting and gathering a qualitative data, have alsobeen discussed in detail.

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Qualitative Research Method - Phenomenology

The ivory markets of Africa

The Ivory Markets of East Asia

Zanzibar: Tradition and revolution

Ghanaians have a long history in ivory, both for export and for carving. From the 1970s to the early 1990s, however, most of Ghana’s elephant were killed either by local farmers in retribution for human-elephant conflict or by poachers for the ivory trade. Ghanaian ivory craftsmen used the tusks primarily to make jewellery and figurines over this time. These curios were mostly sold in Accra, the capital, but due to lack of market surveys, very little data are available.

In July 2010 I surveyed the retail outlets selling ivory in Accra and counted only 10 items on display in an art gallery and 85 items brought to me in five of 186 souvenir shops and stalls I visited. The reason there were so few items was that the Ghana Police Service and Wildlife Division of the Forestry Commission had carried out a raid in November 2008 in the main curio market confiscating several hundred kilos of ivory items, fining and imprisoning the dealers. Since then the vendors in Accra have feared to sell ivory.

Elephant poaching declined at the start of the 21st century thanks to improved law enforcement. In 2004 a new system was introduced that involves performance and adaptive management through the monitoring of patrol effort and observations by the field-staff in the Wildlife Division. The combined effect of performance and adaptive management was that the number of effective days spent in the field by an average Wildlife Guard doubled, which dramatically lowered the number of elephants killed illegally. In addition, governance improved, Ghanaians developed greater respect for the law and there was less corruption, which reduced elephant poaching and the sale of ivory objects.

This paper concludes that Ghanaian examples of greater patrol staff performance through improved monitoring—and of successfully raiding outlets selling illegal ivory—are a sound approach to reducing elephant poaching. While improving anti-poaching exercises is more difficult in some African range States, the Ghanaian example of shop raids is easier to implement and has also worked in countries such as Cameroon and Ethiopia. Other countries in Africa, especially Cote d’Ivoire, Democratic Republic of Congo, Nigeria and Senegal, need to follow the example of Ghana in carrying out official raids on ivory in retail outlets.

Esmond Martin

Papers

The ivory markets of Africa

The Ivory Markets of East Asia

Zanzibar: Tradition and revolution

Effective law enforcement in Ghana reduces elephant poaching and illegal ivory trade

The South and South East Asian ivory markets