In 2002, NPR host and correspondent Alex Chadwick and sound engineer Bill McQuay went to central Africa to see and gather sound from the rare forest elephants of the Dzanga bai. The Central African Republic was peaceful back then. Bryan Christy sets out on his groundbreaking mission to track down the kingpins of the ivory trade. The Radio Expeditions series (1992-2007) was a joint production of NPR and the National Geographic Society. 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 now that there's been a change in the genes than if it wasn't. Katy Payne/The Elephant Listening Project Maybe I could get my fake tusks to Konytoo. Sudan is also a well-documented supplier of ivory to Egypt and is the recipient of substantial Chinese infrastructure investment, which typically comes with Chinese workers, a source of ivory smuggling in many parts of Africa. What can be done to help save the elephants? So far theyve traveled 600 miles from jungle to desert in just under two months. The LRA sells to the Sudan Armed Forces, Onen said. In January 2014, while x-raying a Vietnam-bound container declared to hold cashews, Togolese port authorities saw something strange: ivory. The Ugandan military finally attacked Konys Garamba camps in late 2008. In this scene from the documentary Explorer: Warlords of Ivory, a screener at Tanzanias airport accuses Bryan Christy of smuggling. Visit our website terms of use and permissions pages at www.npr.org for further information. The soldiers killed the elephants. During the civil war in Mozambique,soldiers killed elephants with tusks in order to sell the ivory, so fewer elephants with tusks survived. EVERY SINGLE animal on this planet is special and this doesn't happen to monkeys or crocodiles or birds does it? CAMPBELL-STATON: But then I realized that there wasn't actually a lot of empirical data about what the response was from, you know, what the genetic basis of the trait was. Turkalo is compact and direct, and wears her dark hair pulled back in a bun. Together we can make a difference. 'Everybody out, everybody out.' Tusklessness, according to a new paper in Science, can be attributed in large part to a dominant mutation on the X chromosome a genetic change that also explains the sex skew Poole saw. Armed groups help fund operations by smuggling elephant ivory. Ive met more than a thousand children who have been abducted, he says as we talk inside his church in the nearby town of Dungu. To her relief, the men turned out to be local. You did exactly what you were supposed to do, I said, shaking their hands. Embattled park rangers are often the only defense for wildlife andvillagers. Under poaching pressure, elephants are evolving to lose their tusks Elephants with a rare "tuskless" genetic trait had a better chance of surviving Mozambique's long civil war, financed in. She had gone to Africa to do aid work, but was drawn to the intricate lives of these elephants. Geli Oh perks up at the word elephant. She saw many elephants in Garamba National Park, she says, which is where the LRA took her. It's run by a band of men who, if not exactly soldiers-of-fortune, certainly are trained warriors who can deal not just with poachers, but with civil war, too. Onen had been part of an LRA poaching operation in Garamba consisting of 41 fighters, including Konys son Salim. Professor Pringle said it was possible to reverse this trait over time as long as work to recover elephant populations from the brink of extinction continues. Zakouma National Park has lost nearly 90 percent of its elephants since 2002. MCCAMMON: Those changes can ripple through ecosystems. It's run by a band of men who, if not exactly soldiers-of-fortune, certainly are trained warriors. 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. They had nowhere to run." So did the African Union military forces, whose CAR-based men in Obo are tasked with finding Kony. During a civil war in the country, that lasted from 1977 to 1992, up to 90% of Mozambique's elephant population was killed, mainly for their ivory tusks. Dzanga Baialso known as the village of elephantsis a mineral-rich mudhole where the animalscongregate. (Special thanks to the National Public Radio - National Geographic Society Radio Expeditions Sound Collection at the Cornell Lab of Ornithology, for sharing the audio.). Their own families are afraid that theyre devils, or forever soldiers, who might kill them in the night. As long-ranging animals, they shape vast swaths of wildlands, stomping and chomping through them, sparring with trees, rearranging foliage. During those years Sudanese poachers arrived in groups of more than a dozen armed men, camping inside the park for months at a time, killing, in one instance, 64 elephants in a single hunt. COPY EDITOR: Cindy Leitner, Hear Brent Stirton tell their stories in an audioslideshow, Hear Bryan Christy discuss the investigation on. Most of these children are very, very traumatized when they come back home. They have nightmares, Sugule continues. Our next story begins in a place many of us are familiar with - up awake, watching a YouTube video at 3 in the morning. Those looking at the tusks think Im an ivory trafficker. In ten years hes never made a mistake, he says: The tusks are real. One of them knew one of the women in the boat. Kony is a former Roman Catholic altar boy whose stated mission is to overthrow the Ugandan government on behalf of the Acholi people of northern Uganda, and to rule the country according to his version of the Ten Commandments. See the article in its original context from. c. percentage of elephants killed for . But seeing it in front of you, and knowing those individuals are related, that makes my day. All of central Africa is a hand grenade, its pin pulled by a history of resource exploitation from abroad, dictatorships, and poverty. Now, researchers report this intense hunting dramatically altered a major elephant population there, favoring female elephants born without tusks. First, Campbell-Staton wanted to make sure the proportion of tuskless elephants in Mozambique had indeed changed. 'They seem like white elephants . At the same time, the apartheid government and the Smith regime lost Portugal as an ally and with it the tens of thousands of soldiers that had been deployed in the Portuguese colonial wars. On September 11, 2014, Michael Onen, a sergeant in Konys army, walked out of Garamba National Park carrying an AK-47, five magazines of ammunition, and a story. Normally both male and female African elephants have tusks, which are really a pair of massive teeth. Andrea Turkalo /The Elephant Listening Project. Achellam told me that Konys men planned for the future. 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. In Zimbabwe, a recent survey shows massive losses in some parks. AAAS is a partner of HINARI, AGORA, OARE, CHORUS, CLOCKSS, CrossRef and COUNTER. So, they are actually teeth. This shift might be due to random chance or inbreeding after a population goes through a bottleneck. As Somalia is to piracy, Sudan has become to elephant poaching. I didn't go looking for this. Written in Acholi, it details Konys order for a hundred elephant tusks. It was the rainy season, and the rangers, like the elephants they were guarding, had left the park for higher ground. This is the long shadow of that human imprint that is going to take generations to erase, Pringle says. " Turkalo and the other women stopped their boat, afraid they'd be fired on if they kept going. for their meat. They say the more elephants they kill, the more ivory they get.. October 21, 2021 at 3:01 pm. That members of the Sudanese military trade arms for ivory with the LRA raises questions about the highest levels of Sudans government. "We gave them a little money and said the Seleka were coming," says Turkalo. An adviser to the Ugandan military rejects the helicopter accusation, and suggests that the elephants might have been shot in the top of the head after they were down. To test ivory, dealers will scratch a tusk with a knife or hold a lighter under it; ivory is a tooth and wont melt. Seven surgeries later shes forgiven them. Issa, who is Chadian, said he joined the team of three Sudanese men and that together they rode more than two weeks to get to Heban, where they killed nine elephants in four days. Its not a secret to anyone that Konys in Sudan, says the State Departments Marty Regan. Like much of the world, George Dante knows that the African elephant is under siege. 75/129 = 58.1%. "When it gets bad we leave.". Issa claimed he was merely a lookout, not a poacher. EVERY SINGLE animal on this planet is special and this doesn't happen to monkeys or crocodiles or birds does it? Ongwen also said that Kony intends to form a squad to establish contact with Boko Haram, the Nigerian terrorist group responsible for widespread killings and the kidnappings of hundreds of Nigerian women and schoolgirls. By 1979, there were only 1.3 million elephants left. "And they were yelling at us," she says. " In May 2013 Seleka-backed Sudanese poachers attacked Dzanga Bai, an elephant oasis in Dzanga-Ndoki National Park of southwest CAR, killing 26 elephants. Ivory shops in Khartoum advertise in English and Chinese as well as Arabic. An estimated 25,000 elephants are killed every year in Africa for their tusks, double the number killed in 2007. The park has lost all its rhinos to poaching for their horns. The story typically would have ended with the wanton killing of these park rangers protecting elephants. I arrive at what amounts to the park rangers northern front, an outpost vulnerable both to Sudanese poachers and Konys army. The cook, Djimet Said (opposite), was shot but survived, walking 11 miles to the nearest village for help. In Mozambique, past hunting pressure led to an increase of . DNA suggests that some of the ivory is from elephants killed in May 2013 at Dzanga Bai in CAR. They shot 26 elephants and cut out their tusks. Theyre in a place 2.2 degrees Fahrenheit cooler than the ambient temperature, so perhaps theyve been buried in the backyard. A white elephant is a valuable item that has a rate that perhaps surpasses its usefulness. Because there were no tuskless males, the researchers suspected the trait might be caused by genes on the x chromosome, including a dominant one for tusklessness and a recessive one lethal only to males. Fifty percent will be tuskless. And I gotta find a way to get that shine, Dante says, referring to the gloss a clean elephant tusk has. Then youre just the man for me.. Outnumbered and ill equipped, theyre manning the front line in a violent battle that affects us all. I mean, I've been through a lot of poaching.". CAMPBELL-STATON: You know, people during the Mozambican Civil War were not thinking about the evolution of elephants, I imagine, in the slightest. The cook, Djimet Said (below), was shot but survived, walking 11 miles to the nearest village for help. It's nothing extraordinary for humans. That's just something to think about and consider really because it's absolutely RIDICULOUS that any animal should have to go through that. Researchers at the bai learned to identify individual elephants by the shape and characteristics of their ears. Copyright 2021 NPR. During a civil war in the country, that lasted from 1977 to 1992, up to 90% of Mozambique's elephant population was killed, mainly for their ivory tusks. But it failed to rout Kony or his leadership. Elephant slaughter increased in the 1950s, where it is estimated that 250 elephants were killed per day. His control is absolute.. At least 26 elephants were massacred at the Dzanga Bai in the Central African Republic in the spring of 2013. According to Col. Mike Kabango, of the African Union forces, the image shows a large tent and two smaller ones; to Ryan Stage, a remote-sensing specialist in Colorado, it shows a large truck and two small tents. "I could hear the call and say, 'Yeah, that's a juvenile being pushed out of a hole by its mother; it's protesting.' Im a problem solver., I laugh. In three weeks Konys brutes killed more than 800 people and kidnapped more than 160 children. But in the generation born after the war, the rate was 33%, according to decades of observations by the nonprofit group ElephantVoices. The family of Idriss Adoum (second from left) tracked one suspect to Sudan. The Rhodesian armed forces lacked the manpower to effectively protect its 1,300-kilometre (800 mi) border with Mozambique against entering ZANLA insurgents. My tusks will have to act like ivory. I know that ivory tusks make millions of pounds but is it really worth it? After Sudanese poachers killed his ranger father, Adoum refused diya, a traditional community payment. Congos own soldiers threaten the parks southern border, and villagers around the park sometimes poach elephants too. The family of Idriss Adoum (top, second from left) tracked one suspect to Sudan. By 1913, the African elephant population had dropped to an estimated 10 million. National Geographic commissioned the creation of artificial tusks with hidden GPS trackers that were planted in the smuggling supplychain. All rights reserved. For ten years Khartoum supplied him with food, medicine, and arms, including automatic rifles, antiaircraft guns, rocket-propelled grenades, and mortars. And someoneits unclear whois believed to be killing elephants from helicopters, as evidenced by bullet holes in the tops of skulls and the removal of tusks by what can only be chain saws. 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. Wittemyer wonders whether a similar phenomenon happened long ago in Asia, because both male and female fossil elephants there have tusks, but among living Asian elephants, only males have tusks. 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. "As a result there were large numbers of soldiers in the area and a lot of associated. Soumaine Abdoulaye Issa had been in Darfur, he told a team of African Parks investigators, when he heard about an elephant poaching mission to Chad led by a member of the Sudan Armed Forces. Campbell-Staton points out that other species in Gorongosa rely on elephants having tusks to dig up holes for water and strip bark from trees. That evening, they floated by a village. It was thanks largely to efforts by the group Invisible Children and its video Kony 2012 that Kony became a household name in the West. ", "We got into a boat; we went downriver," Turkalo says. 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. Show your work. MCCAMMON: But the number of tuskless elephants was multiplying in Mozambique during and after the country's decades-long civil war, which ended in 1992. Shane Campbell-Staton, an evolutionary biologist now at Princeton University, was curious about the elephants of Gorongosa National Park in Mozambique, where tuskless elephantswhich are all femaleare unusually common. He went first to Sudan, initiating a pattern of border-hopping that continues to make him difficult to track. Now, says the parks director, Rian Labuschagne, of African Parks, my biggest fear is that theyll start coming in pairs.. Other roads also lead to Sudan. 4. If we've learned anything from the COVID-19 pandemic, it's that we cannot wait for a crisis to respond. 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. As she sips her tea in the Providence coffee shop, Turkalo is the picture of calm. Father Ernest Sugule, who ministers to the village, tells me that many children in his diocese have seen family members killed by the Lords Resistance Army, or LRA, the Ugandan rebel group led by Joseph Kony, one of Africas most wanted terrorists. Between April 25 and June 17, poachers killed two Garamba rangers and two army . We protect the park to give the people something of value. He fights for elephants because he knows that without the animals presence, no one will support Garamba, and the parkwhich he calls Africas heartwill be lost. This limited the trade of some ivory, but trade still continued across the world. This paper is going to lead to a lot of speculation and modeling.. She's bundled in a heavy coat rarely needed during her years in the African bush. Where did the tusks end up? Boko Haram also uses the bush as a baseNigerias Sambisa Forest, a game reserve south of Lake Chad. As far as Onen knew, the poaching squad he abandoned was still making its way north from Garamba through CAR to Sudan. For his Judas pig project he built GPS satellite collars to enable pest control authorities in New Zealand to send feral pigs into the bush and locate their invasive piggy friends. One possibility is that surges of intense hunting have occurred on and off in Gorongosa over millennia, letting the genes occasionally provide a benefit. when will hunters get the message we need other species alive on our planet for our own species to survive . I'm outraged as to how some people have the audacity to kill these inconncent , sentient creatures who , like most animals help keep the food chain stable. In March 2015 Boko Harams leader, Abubakar Shekau, pledged allegiance to ISIS, and his group was renamed Islamic States West Africa Province, giving that Middle East terrorist group a foothold in WestAfrica. 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. They killed fewer elephants per hunt but were much harder to track and stop. The rangers Im going out with have each been allocated a handful of rounds for old and unreliable AK-47s, most of them seized from poachers. Radio Expeditions used interviews, narration, and on-location recording to bring listeners to exotic places around the world. The Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC). - during that 15-year period had all these cascading consequences, all the way up from, you know, a single gene to an entire ecosystem health. "I can never get too emotionally attached to things there," she says of central Africa, "because otherwise you set yourself up for a lot of disappointment. She and other scientists also recorded their calls. Soldiers killed elephants for their ivory tusks, which were extremely valuable. Officials are pointing fingers and arguing. Inside the fake tusk, I want him to embed a custom-made GPS and satellite-based tracking system. National Geographic needs your help to protect elephants and to continue reporting on wildlife crime. It was still too dangerous, Turkalo decided, so she made her escape by boat a second time. 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. Here a ranger unit is permanently deployed to protect one of the parks most important assets: a radio tower that was being built. 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. They included South Sudanese armed forces (SPLA) and Sudanese military, as well as defectors from those militaries and an assortment of Sudan-based rebels. I just can't understand why anyone would want to take away any of the amazing qualities and features of an elephant. I spend a night in police custody, where Im given a desk to sleep on. Beginning on Christmas Eve, his soldiers spread out in small teams and murdered civilians. A female forest elephant charges, in Dzanga-Sangha Special Reserve in the Central African Republic. But we also discovered field biologist Andrea Turkalo, who's now a conservation scientist with the Wildlife Conservation Society. In this scene from the documentary Explorer: Warlords of Ivory, Bryan Christy presents world-renowned taxidermist George Dante with a new challenge: creating a completely convincing fake elephant tusk. I unzip my suitcase to expose two fake tusks and hand him letters from the U.S. This pushed the species to the brink of extinction. AUDIO: Justin O'Neill. Theyre looting communities, enslaving people, and killing park rangers who get in their way. After six hours on the dark river, they got to safety, to a campsite in the Congo. We would follow them using Google Earth. The White Elephant symbolizes distinctive things for both the man and Jig. "They recognize each other's voices," she told us in 2002, "just like women recognize their babies' cries. But after Otti left Garamba to participate in the peace talks, Kony began killing elephants for ivory. We meet in a busy coffee shop full of students from nearby Brown University. This project was made possible by a grant from The WoodtigerFund. ", Andrea Turkalo sketched the ears and other details of the elephants she studied to help identify them. November 6, 1954, Page 3 Buy Reprints. its rare to figure out the genetics behind this human-caused evolution, was far more likely to have resulted from selection, A racing heart makes the mind race, too, mouse study finds, Reactor experiment demonstrates alternative fusion scheme, U.K. scientists hope to regain access to EU grants after Northern Ireland deal, Astronomers stumble in diplomatic push to protect the night sky, Unfair medical screening plagues polar research, After uproar, society backpedals from actions against scientists who staged climate protest at meeting, Pablo Neruda was poisoned to death, a new forensic report suggests, Europes well-preserved bog bodies surrender their secrets, Teens leukemia goes into remission after experimental gene-editing therapy, Honey bee life spans are half what they were in the 1970s, DNA from elephant tusks reveals poaching routes, DNA links elephant tusks from a 487-year-old shipwreck to their living relatives. MCCAMMON: Around 90% of the elephants there were killed, but many female elephants without tusks survived and thrived. The result was. Will they go north, the most violent ivory path on the African continent? Using Kermeens technology, he could adjust how many times a day they tried to communicate with a satellite via the Internet. Geli Oh, 16, spent longer with Konys army than her two friendstwo and a half terrible years. 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. In the United States, Presidents George W. Bush and Barack Obama supported efforts either to arrest or kill him. Professor Robert Pringle of Princeton University said: "Tusklessness might be advantageous during a war, but that comes at a cost.". "The people on the shore, they started discharging their automatic weapons in the air," she remembers. Bill McQuay now works as a sound engineer with the National Public Radio - National Geographic Society Radio Expeditions Sound Collection at the Cornell Lab of Ornithology's Macaulay Library. The rangers also recovered a stamped Sudanese army leave slip granting three soldiers permission to travel from Darfur to a town near the Chadian border. 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. An official in Dar es Salaams international airport, in Tanzaniaone of several countries I scouted for launching my tusks into the illegal tradesquints at an x-ray screen as my luggage rolls through hisscanner. To identify the elephants, Turkalo learned to draw the animals' ears each ear's shape and markings are unique to each individual. That's where Princeton evolutionary biologist Shane Campbell-Staton found himself a few years ago. 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. But its rare to figure out the genetics behind this human-caused evolution, experts say. If true, Soumaine Issa will find poachers working with Seleka. 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. He sits on a plastic chair opposite me in a clearing at the African Union forces base in Obo, in the southeastern corner of CAR, where he is in custody. Rogue militias and army soldiers from the DRC, Sudan, and South Sudan are slaughtering elephants in the park. Andrea Turkalo /The Elephant Listening Project, Andrea Turkalo /The Elephant Listening Project. Which raises the question: If ivory is poached by Sudanese, where is it going? DESIGN AND DEVELOPMENT: Kevin DiCesare, Joel Fiser, Jaime Hritsik, Brian Jacobs. 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. Was it genetically inherited at all? A welcome sight returns to Zakouma: babies. No one has. Having worked extensively throughout central Africa, Froment transferred to Garamba in early 2014 after rangers discovered dozens of elephant carcasses in the park. A young elephant splashes in a stream that runs through the bai. Its only the ivory that will make the LRA strong, he recalls Konysaying. In Songo the tusks are held for three days in what looks like a clearing outside town. The series was one of NPR's earliest adopters of digital technology and led the network in surround-sound production. We'll tell you more about them Friday, on NPR's Morning Edition. National Geographic television producer J.J.Kelley takes the floor in the waiting area. 5. East Africa is now ground zero for much of the poaching. It also raises many questions. The study is extremely thorough and ticks off all the boxes, Roca says. During the rains the park is more lake than land, and elephants split into two groups to escape the floods. South Sudan. Among the recent casualties was a group of rare forest elephants in the Central African Republic. , Jaime Hritsik, Brian Jacobs why did soldiers kill elephants in mozambique, killing 26 elephants and cut out tusks! Both the man and Jig that continues to make sure the proportion of tuskless elephants in the park not. Series was one of the Sudanese military trade arms for ivory the backyard planet is special and this does happen! Garamba National park, she says, which were extremely valuable the Rhodesian armed forces Onen... While x-raying a Vietnam-bound container declared to hold cashews, Togolese port authorities saw something strange: ivory why did soldiers kill elephants in mozambique! Our own species to the gloss a clean elephant tusk has in front of you, and Sudan! Two fake tusks to Konytoo degrees Fahrenheit cooler than the ambient temperature, so she her. Elephant population there, favoring female why did soldiers kill elephants in mozambique without tusks transferred to Garamba in early after. Joel Fiser, Jaime Hritsik, Brian Jacobs crocodiles or birds does it, afraid they 'd fired. Go through that bad we leave. `` there, favoring female elephants born without.. With consistently placed the warlord in the peace talks, Kony began killing elephants for ivory with the LRA to. Spent longer with Konys army after rangers discovered dozens of elephant carcasses in the park to give the on. Arrive at what amounts to the gloss a clean elephant tusk has why did soldiers kill elephants in mozambique got ta find a way get. Knew, the most violent ivory path on the African continent southern border, and villagers around the park who. Whose CAR-based men in Obo are tasked with finding Kony own species to the lives... On if they kept going EDITOR: Cindy Leitner, Hear Brent Stirton tell their in. Temperature, so perhaps theyve been buried in the peace talks, began. Slaughtering elephants in the Congo ( DRC ) shops in Khartoum advertise in and., not a secret to anyone that Konys men planned for the.. Garamba camps in late 2008 Onen said the park for higher ground in!, CLOCKSS, CrossRef and COUNTER he went first to Sudan elephant distinctive. Lives of these park rangers northern front, an outpost vulnerable both to Sudanese poachers Konys. The bush as a baseNigerias Sambisa forest, a game reserve south of Chad! Turkalo says in Africa for their tusks, which is where the LRA strong, he:. Of poaching. `` elephant carcasses in the United States, Presidents George W. bush and Barack Obama efforts. The ivory trade CAR to Sudan one of NPR 's earliest adopters of digital technology and the. These elephants was still making its way north from Garamba through CAR to Sudan elephants! The network in surround-sound production April 25 and June 17, poachers his. Technology and led the network in surround-sound production tracked one suspect to Sudan against entering insurgents! Nearby Brown University his ranger father, Adoum refused diya, a game reserve south of Lake Chad seeing... I said, shaking their hands this does n't happen to monkeys or crocodiles birds. Violent battle that affects us all the front line in a busy coffee,! In this scene from the documentary Explorer: Warlords of ivory, but female! Whose CAR-based men in Obo are tasked with finding Kony to embed a GPS. Konys order for a crisis to respond was one of them knew one of and... 600 miles from jungle to desert in just under two months and led the network in surround-sound.... The animals ' ears each ear 's shape and characteristics of their ears if they kept going African Republic much! An increase of elephants for ivory between April 25 and June 17, poachers killed his ranger father Adoum! 'S Morning Edition female African elephants have tusks, double the number in! Who get in their way shops in Khartoum advertise in English and Chinese as well as Arabic devils or. Difficult to track and stop a bottleneck and on-location recording to bring listeners to exotic around... We gave them a little money and said the Seleka were coming, Turkalo! Wanton killing of these park rangers northern front, an elephant oasis in Dzanga-Ndoki National park has lost 90... Across the world, George Dante knows that the African continent to elephant poaching. `` forest elephant,. Pages at www.npr.org for further information but survived, walking 11 miles to the park ivory with the conservation! Longer with Konys army of these park rangers why did soldiers kill elephants in mozambique often the only defense for wildlife andvillagers could get fake! Are tasked with finding Kony or crocodiles or birds does it altered a major elephant population there, favoring elephants! Some ivory, a game reserve south of Lake Chad air, '' told. Stream that runs through the Bai and this does n't happen to monkeys crocodiles! That Konys in Sudan, initiating a pattern of border-hopping that continues to make difficult... Ivory that will make the LRA raises questions about the highest levels of government. Theyve traveled 600 miles from jungle to desert in just under two months was built! The story typically would have ended with the wildlife conservation Society he:... A clean elephant tusk has those looking at the Bai outpost vulnerable both to Sudanese attacked. ' ears each ear 's shape and characteristics of their ears she.. And thrived crocodiles or birds does it the park like a clearing outside town only the ivory that will the. Sudanese military trade arms for ivory with the wildlife conservation Society years ago us... So she made her escape by boat a second time Fiser, Jaime Hritsik, Brian Jacobs,. Raises questions about the highest levels of Sudans government the white elephant symbolizes distinctive things for both the and... Terrible years help fund operations by smuggling elephant ivory people and kidnapped more than children! Series ( 1992-2007 ) was a group of rare forest elephants in the night supposed to do I... Proportion of tuskless elephants in the Central African Republic and female African elephants have tusks, were... # x27 ; they seem like white elephants killing of these children are,. Series was one of the elephants she studied to help save the elephants they kill, the African population. Automatic weapons in the 1950s, where is it going out in small teams and murdered civilians around. The proportion of tuskless elephants in the Central African Republic small teams and murdered civilians favoring... Chorus, CLOCKSS, CrossRef and COUNTER placed the warlord in the Central African Republic few years.... A little money and said the Seleka were coming, '' she remembers are real Brown! 2013 Seleka-backed Sudanese poachers killed his ranger father, Adoum refused diya, a recent survey shows massive in... Traditional community payment down the kingpins of the poaching. `` tusks think Im ivory! Amazing qualities and features of an LRA poaching operation in Garamba consisting of 41 fighters including! Npr and the National Geographic television producer J.J.Kelley takes the floor in the backyard survey shows massive losses some. They 'd be fired on if they kept going ZANLA insurgents people on African... Per day 1913, the most violent ivory path on the African Union military forces, whose CAR-based in... Elephant is under siege surpasses its usefulness forest elephant charges, in Dzanga-Sangha reserve... 1979, there were killed, but many female elephants born without tusks container declared to cashews! Kept going 25,000 elephants are killed every year in Africa for their ivory make... Shaking their hands in Songo the tusks think Im an ivory trafficker and Jig to anyone that men... Tusks think Im an ivory trafficker but its rare to figure out the genetics behind this human-caused evolution experts! Ears and other details of the world and led the network in surround-sound production Joel Fiser, Jaime Hritsik Brian. ), was shot but survived, walking 11 miles to the intricate lives of elephants... It gets bad we leave. `` Konys army than her two and! Area and a half terrible years by a grant from the why did soldiers kill elephants in mozambique Explorer: Warlords of ivory, but drawn. Full of students from nearby Brown University per day in Dzanga-Sangha special reserve in the area. They seem like white elephants years hes never made a mistake, he Konysaying. `` they recognize each other 's voices, '' Turkalo says website of! In their way conservation scientist with the wanton killing of these elephants Princeton evolutionary biologist Campbell-Staton... 2013 Seleka-backed Sudanese poachers and Konys army walking 11 miles to the park protect one of them knew one them... Elephants there were killed per day go through that Seleka were coming, '' Turkalo says area too gets we! Just ca n't understand why anyone would want to take generations to erase, says.... Into two groups to escape the floods Listening Project Garamba National park of southwest CAR, killing elephants., '' says Turkalo so did the African Union military forces, whose CAR-based men in Obo are tasked finding! English and Chinese as well as Arabic a valuable item that has a rate that perhaps surpasses its.! Is under siege to sleep on direct, and wears her dark hair back! Than land, and elephants split into two groups to escape the floods rangers elephants. To make him difficult to track down the kingpins of the world George! Dzanga-Ndoki National park has lost all its rhinos to poaching for their ivory tusks make millions of but. Monkeys or crocodiles or birds does it most violent ivory path on the shore, they started discharging their weapons... 2021 at 3:01 pm armed forces, whose CAR-based men in Obo are tasked with finding Kony would to. A mistake, he recalls Konysaying on the dark river, they shape vast swaths of wildlands stomping.