Mozambiques civil war from 1977 to 1992 had a grim outcome for elephants: During that time, some 90% were killed for the ivory in their tusks, which were sold to finance the war. Ugandan soldiers with the African Unions Regional Task Force hunt for LRA leader Joseph Kony in the Central African Republic (CAR), pulling themselves along ropes to cross rivers. RENAMO also had imposed a system it called Gamdira whereby villagers were required to produce food, transport goods and ammunition, and village women were forced to be sex slaves. Editor's Note: Viewers may find the next image from the 2013 elephant slaughter disturbing. The Elephant Listening Project We meet in a busy coffee shop full of students from nearby Brown University. That's so terrible! You can hear the original field recordings and interviews from Radio Expedition's 2002 elephant story, and see photos and night-vision video from the elephant bai, on the archive's website. By Jake Buehler. But she knew she had to leave; she's a researcher for a non-governmental wildlife organization, not some kind of soldier-of-fortune. In Zimbabwe, a recent survey shows massive losses in some parks. Eventually, more than four tons was found, Africas largest seizure since the global ivory trade ban took effect in 1990. AAAS is a partner of HINARI, AGORA, OARE, CHORUS, CLOCKSS, CrossRef and COUNTER. Rogue militias and army soldiers from the DRC, Sudan, and South Sudan are slaughtering elephants in the park. I want Dante to design an artificial elephant tusk that has the look and feel of confiscated tusks loaned to me by the U.S. At the time Sudans north and south were in a civil war, and Kony offered Sudans government, in Khartoum, a way to destabilize the south. Gathering speed, they continue north before abruptly turning east, in the direction of Khartoum. The rangers on Heban hill had little reason to be concerned for their safety. Three more are classified as of importance to watch: Angola, Cambodia, and Laos. 2023 American Association for the Advancement of Science. The Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora (CITES), a treaty organization that governs international trade in ivoryand its continuing banhas identified eight countries of primary concern when it comes to international ivory trafficking: China, Kenya, Malaysia, the Philippines, Thailand, Uganda, Tanzania, and Vietnam. The Radio Expeditions series (1992-2007) was a joint production of NPR and the National Geographic Society. MCCAMMON: Campbell-Staton and his team worked with local researchers who had tracked elephants for decades. But Onen got his way. Its not a secret to anyone that Konys in Sudan, says the State Departments Marty Regan. Ivory poachers are killing some 22,000 African elephants a year. Or possibly even shown up in illegal ivorys biggest consuming country:China. Elephants coming to the bai get essential minerals from the muddy water. From the moment of his capture, Onen says, he was a complainer. " Turkalo and the other women stopped their boat, afraid they'd be fired on if they kept going. The poachers opened fire, killing five rangers. A booming Chinese middle class with an insatiable taste for ivory, crippling poverty in Africa, weak and corrupt law enforcement, and more ways than ever to kill an elephant have created a perfect storm. This paper is going to lead to a lot of speculation and modeling.. Was it genetically inherited at all? No one has. Researchers in Mozambique found a . They also had twice as many daughters as sons. When the tortoise Lonesome George, emblem of the Galpagos Islands, died, it was Dante who was tasked with restoring him. The Ugandan military finally attacked Konys Garamba camps in late 2008. Radio Expeditions used interviews, narration, and on-location recording to bring listeners to exotic places around the world. Six years later, on October 25, 2014, Onen tells me, his poaching mission to Garamba was scheduled to deliver its ivory to Kony in Sudan. During the Mozambican civil war, both sides financed their efforts by poaching elephants for ivory. After visiting Garamba, I arrange with a confidential source to put my tusks into the black market near Mboki, a small village in CAR midway between Garamba and Sudan that has been the target of attacks by Konys army and where some people who have escaped from Kony have found safety. Researchers looked at why female elephants in Gorongosa national park in Mozambique were frequently born without tusks, and found that the animals were in effect genetically engineered by mass . Help News from Science publish trustworthy, high-impact stories about research and the people who shape it. Despite Sudans role as a safe haven for groups known to traffic ivory, such as the LRA, janjaweed, and other poaching gangs, the country has drawn limited official attention as a poaching state. It needs to be durable and small enough to fit inside the cavities George Dante would make in the blocks of resin and lead that formed the tusks. FANIE PELLETIER: It's one of the most detailed example of how human activity can influence the genes of a population. This pushed the species to the brink of extinction. Ivory shops in Khartoum advertise in English and Chinese as well as Arabic. Kony even invited foreign press into his camp for interviews. Its rare that you get such a dramatic example, says co-author Robert Pringle, an ecologist at Princeton. As far as Onen knew, the poaching squad he abandoned was still making its way north from Garamba through CAR to Sudan. When he returns hours later, he has three chicken dinners and several bottles of beer, paid for by the police chief. "They recognize each other's voices," she told us in 2002, "just like women recognize their babies' cries. ", Turkalo says she walked up to the man in charge and saw he had an AK-47 assault rifle. I agree elephants are my favourite animals and it's unfair elephants don't cut of our noses or massively nearly ruin our species so why should we do the same to them. Halfway through our patrol, we come upon a clearing of burned grass beside the Kassi River, the site of a recent battle between Garamba rangers and SPLA poachers, in which, rangers tell me, they killed two poachers. When ivory poachers target elephants, the hunters can affect more than just animal numbers. You know, yet those actions - right? Quintin Kermeen, 51, based in Concord, California, has the credentials, and the personality, Im looking for. On the 15th day after they began to move, they cross into South Sudan and from there make their way into the Kafia Kingi enclave, a disputed territory in Darfur controlled bySudan. PELLETIER: The reason why that's important is because if you stop the killing right now, you know, the time it would take for the population to, you know, restore that traits would be much longer. To use comments you will need to have JavaScript enabled. The series was one of NPR's earliest adopters of digital technology and led the network in surround-sound production. He points a finger at me, and yells, You are a liar, bwana! (Bwana is Swahili for sir.). But in central Africa, as I learned firsthand, something more sinister is driving the killing: Militias and terrorist groups funded in part by ivory are poaching elephants, often outside their home countries, and even hiding inside national parks. See the article in its original context from. Female elephants in Gorongosa National Park in Mozambique evolved to be tuskless in response to intense hunting. That members of the Sudanese military trade arms for ivory with the LRA raises questions about the highest levels of Sudans government. The reason why the soldiers killed the elephants was to gain ammunition and arms from the money received after selling their ivory. Turkalo is back in the U.S. now, living near Providence, R.I. She had to flee Africa last year because of the civil war in the country that is home to the elephants she shared a life with. Do we really need to sell ivory tusks in the world just to make money? In a public square in Am Timan, shortly before his trial, he shouted, I know who betrayed me! When humans hunt, they can cause their quarry to evolve by targeting individuals with particular traits, like big fish or sheep with hefty horns. "I don't know which ones they killed," she replies. "So we heard this 'rat-a-tat-tat.' Click the arrow below to hear the amazing audio tale they brought home. In June the Tanzanian government announced that the country has lost 60 percent of its elephants in the past five years, down from 110,000 to fewer than 44,000. During the failed peace talks with Uganda, while Kony hid in Garamba from 2006 to 2008, Onen had been assigned to Konys lead peace negotiator, Vincent Otti. I wonder if Konys men are out there now. Our airport incident was one of many hiccups with the artificial tusks. With an average of 16 years in the bush with the LRA, the men bring a wealth of experience to the hunt for Kony and his fighters. Fish and Wildlife Service. It is assumed that the girls were raped, so its difficult for them to find husbands. National Geographic needs your help to protect elephants and to continue reporting on wildlife crime. Elephants gather in the Dzanga bai, a forest clearing the size of several football fields. A few days later the tusks proceed to Songo, the Sudanese market town where Onen said Konys men trade ivory. He designed a GPS tracker that the U.S. Geological Survey embedded in live Burmese pythons to monitor the invasive snakes in the Florida Everglades. CORNISH: The upshot, which they published this week in the journal Science, is that females without tusks are pretty likely to have tuskless babies, which is why the trait was becoming so prevalent. Using Kermeens technology, he could adjust how many times a day they tried to communicate with a satellite via the Internet. It consists of a battery capable of lasting more than a year, a GPS receiver, an Iridium satellite transceiver, and a temperature sensor. ", World Elephant Day: Ten facts about amazing elephants, Elephants and the ivory trade: The crisis in Africa, Safer Internet Day: Top tips for when you're online, Rescue services helping as big quake hits Turkey and Syria, We speak to Junior Bake Off champion about winning the show. Kiev's troops have big Nazi problem - ex-US soldier who escaped Ukraine; DESTRUCTION OF OUR CULTURE HAS SUCCEEDED; Most Ukrainian Soldiers On Bakhmut Front-Line Killed 'Within 4 Hours' URGENT: mRNAs jabs may have caused tens of millions of serious new health problems worldwide, a huge peer-reviewed study shows Margaret Acino was 23, pregnant, working in the fields near Gulu, Uganda, when an LRA commander called for a razor and ordered his boy soldiers to slice off her lips, ears, and nose. But Dante, who is one of the worlds most respected taxidermists, has never done what Im asking him to do. Issa claimed he was merely a lookout, not a poacher. Traits that are beneficial in one environment may not be beneficial in another. This is a photocopy of the diary of the LRAs Lt. Col. Vincent Binany Okumu, who, defectors say, was in charge of ivory hunting in Garamba National Park. My interpretation, says Jean Marc Froment, then director of the park, is that the Ugandan military is conducting operations inside Garamba and at the same time taking some ivory. But, he adds, the poachers could be SPLA, which uses the same type of helicopter seen over the park. Turkalo is compact and direct, and wears her dark hair pulled back in a bun. RESEARCH: Heidi Schultz, Brad Scriber. At the sound of a twig cracking or the detection of an unexpected scent on the wind, a ranger in front of me, Agoyo Mbikoyo, signals caution, and I drop with the team into a collective crouch and wait silently. Without the stress of poaching, the elephants started breeding again, and more than 40 calves have been born. "We were all women five women." After months of tinkering, Kermeens final bespoke ivory-tracking device arrives in the mail. By 1913, the African elephant population had dropped to an estimated 10 million. Tusklessness became more common in the female elephants of Mozambique 's Gorongosa National Park after rampant ivory poaching during the country's 15-year civil war. It's run by a band of men who, if not exactly soldiers-of-fortune, certainly are trained warriors. This story launches the National Geographic Societys Special Investigations Unit, which will report on wildlife crimes. By 1913, the African elephant population had dropped to an estimated 10 million. The relationship is close: SAF warns Kony if theres trouble, Onen says. It was to become her home, and her life's work. Since the 2008-09 attack by Konys soldiers, rangers have finished building a new headquarters and acquired two airplanes and a helicopter. This ideathat an animal's perception of danger . These LRA defectorsall abducted as children and pressed into servicenow fight for the Ugandan military. After Lucienne Lanziwas husband died in an LRA attack on Garamba, she got a modest stipend. The tension broke. Inside the fake tusk, I want him to embed a custom-made GPS and satellite-based tracking system. I order a satellite shot of their location from DigitalGlobe, a commercial vendor of space imagery, and ask for outside help interpreting it. They found that the tuskless trait was genetic, found in the X chromosome, and it was deadly in males. Elephant slaughter increased in the 1950s, where it is estimated that 250 elephants were killed per day. On January 2, 2009, the horror bled into Garambas headquarters, at Nagero, where Kony soldiers burned the park rangers main building, destroyed equipment, and killed at least eight rangers and staff members. But ammunition is in perilously short supplynot even enough for basic trainingand the rangers largest weapon, a belt-fed machine gun, tends to jam every third round or so. Although the adaptation comes with a pricean associated genetic mutation kills male elephants before they're bornthe emerging trait may have helped save the population. They shot 26 elephants and cut out their tusks. Meanwhile, flouting the cease-fire, his men crossed into CAR, where they kidnapped hundreds of children and made sex slaves of women they brought back to the park. Kermeen started in the radio-tracking business when he was 15 and has since built electronic trackers and collars for wildlife from Andean bears to California condors to Tasmanian devils. Will artificial tusks planted in a central African country head eastor westtoward a coast with reliable transportation to Asian markets? No, I want ivory for ammunition to keep fighting, was Konys reply, according to Onen, who was listening to transmissions. The Central African Republic was peaceful back then. Sudanese and Chadian poachers were likewise implicated in the 2013 butchering of nearly 90 elephantsincluding 33 pregnant females as well as newborn calvesnear Tikem, Chad, not far from Bouba Ndjidah. What can be done to help save the elephants? He said they bury sealed buckets of water along parched travel routes and bury ivory for safekeeping as well. Later, when Labuschagne examined the trajectory of bullets at the scene, he concluded that the poachers had been trained in how to set up a cross fire, which, combined with evidence found at the scene, pointed to President Omar al-Bashirs Sudan Armed Forces. Or will they go nowhere, discovered before theyre moved and turned in by an honest person? Will they go north, the most violent ivory path on the African continent? To me, it seems reasonable to think that the radiomans defection might have slowed the progress of the 25 elephants tusks headed to Kony. Onen is short and looks even smaller wearing a camouflage-patterned Ugandan army uniform thats too long for him in the sleeves. Elephant ivory is a key source of funding for armed groups in central Africa . They can get what they want today, he said, and keep it there for two, three, or even more than five years.. In Songo the tusks are held for three days in what looks like a clearing outside town. It is believed they do this either to cool themselves off or as a reaction to the annoyance of parasites of the skin. Ive flown from Garamba park headquarters to a dirt airstrip deep inside the park to join an antipoaching patrol. 'They seem like white elephants . Elephant slaughter increased in the 1950s, where it is estimated that 250 elephants were killed per day. So why elephants? Around us stroll Ugandan army soldiers, who make up the entire African Union contingent based in Obo and are committed to finding and killing Kony. As of this writing, my artificial tusks sent out their last communication from a Sudanese town called Ed Daein, 500 miles southwest of Khartoum. 5. Read about our approach to external linking. So far theyve traveled 600 miles from jungle to desert in just under two months. . Otti was furious, Onen says. Sudan. In 1978, the elephant was listed as threatened under the United States' Endangered Species Act. Killings of civilians have likewise dropped, from 1,252 in 2009 to 13 in 2014, but abductions are rising again, and it takes the arrival of only a few of the armed militants to send fear ricocheting through communities. I unzip my suitcase to expose two fake tusks and hand him letters from the U.S. Now it was rare to see 250 in aherd. He said: "We actually expect that this syndrome will decrease in frequency in our study population, provided that the conservation picture continues to stay as positive as it has been recently. "During the war, Gorongosa was essentially the geographic center of the conflict," Long said via email. Kafia Kingi is so widely recognized as a Kony hideout that in April 2013 a coalition of groups, including Invisible Children, the Enough Project, and the Resolve, issued a report called Hidden in Plain Sight: Sudans Harboring of the LRA in the Kafia Kingi Enclave, 2009-2013. LRA defectors I spoke with consistently placed the warlord in the Kafia Kingi area too. Turkalo's pretty famous in the world of elephant research, as one of the first to study forest elephants. We plunge eight hours through elephant grass so tall and thick its possible to get lost just 20 feet from the man in front of youdown grass ravines, up hills exposed to the enemy, across a murky, waist-deep pond. Thousands of elephants die each year so that their tusks can be carved into religious objects. Seven surgeries later shes forgiven them. "I heard they were on their way. Tusk inheritance patterns in the ElephantVoices database backed up that assumption. Tongo Tongo shot two elephants one day, she says. Which raises the question: If ivory is poached by Sudanese, where is it going? Civil war drove these elephants to lose their tusksthrough evolution. In village after village along the road between Father Sugules church and what is now South Sudan, I meet Kony victims who describe being fed elephant meat and how, after elephants were killed, militants took the ivory away. Track the GPS unit in an interactive map. Theyre in a place 2.2 degrees Fahrenheit cooler than the ambient temperature, so perhaps theyve been buried in the backyard. The cook, Djimet Said (opposite), was shot but survived, walking 11 miles to the nearest village for help. A study in Gorongosa revealed that while male elephants did have tusks but almost 50% of female elephants above the age of 20 did not. National Geographic commissioned the creation of artificial tusks with hidden GPS trackers that were planted in the smuggling supplychain. Researchers took blood samples from elephants in order to sequence their genomes. Researchers have long suspected that the tuskless trait, only seen in females, was linked to the sex of the elephant. for their tusks. Andrea Turkalo/The Elephant Listening Project, Andrea Turkalo /The Elephant Listening Project. Now, says the parks director, Rian Labuschagne, of African Parks, my biggest fear is that theyll start coming in pairs.. Sugule is the founder of a group that provides assistance to victims of Konys army. 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A white elephant is a valuable item that has a rate that perhaps surpasses its usefulness. Onen had been part of an LRA poaching operation in Garamba consisting of 41 fighters, including Konys son Salim. Can fake tusks with hidden GPS trackers thwartthem? Beginning on Christmas Eve, his soldiers spread out in small teams and murdered civilians. Garamba National Park, in the northeast corner of the DRC and on the border with South Sudan, is a UNESCO World Heritage site, internationally famous for its elephants and its boundless ocean of green. Get more great content like this delivered right to you! This shift might be due to random chance or inbreeding after a population goes through a bottleneck. Now, scientists say that drove some elephants to evolve tusklessness. An estimated 25,000 elephants are killed every year in Africa for their tusks, double the number killed in 2007. CORNISH: You see; while most African elephants have tusks, some female African elephants are born without them and never grow them. Today, poaching has stopped in Gorongosa, and the elephant population is recovering. Konys men jump back and forth across borders, hiding in countries where governance is weak. We are in charge of the futures of our animals and earth and making a world for future generations to thrive in. It's nothing extraordinary for humans. CAMPBELL-STATON: I saw that video in November, and by June I was in a helicopter over Mozambique. Its easier to live with things, she says. Geli Oh, 16, spent longer with Konys army than her two friendstwo and a half terrible years. As in eye colour and blood type in humans, genes are responsible for whether elephants inherit tusks from their parents. ". "As a result there were large numbers of soldiers in the area and a lot of associated. They shift a few miles. Dont yet have access? COPY EDITOR: Cindy Leitner, Hear Brent Stirton tell their stories in an audioslideshow, Hear Bryan Christy discuss the investigation on. She looks at the floor while her friends whisper to each other, smile radiantly, and nibble on cookies weve brought for them. First, Campbell-Staton wanted to make sure the proportion of tuskless elephants in Mozambique had indeed changed. It was reassuring to find the Tanzanian law enforcers so vigilant, because the country is plagued by perhaps the worst elephant poaching in Africa, and corruption is rife. Those looking at the tusks think Im an ivory trafficker. I will escape from your jail, and I will kill him. He did escape, and a rumor in Zakouma is that he fled south to CAR. UNIDENTIFIED PERSON: Some elephant populations seem to be missing their tusks. 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