The trouble with Elephants is two-fold. First, they carry very expensive pieces of ivory around with them that are valued as trophies and ornamental carvings. Second, they invade peoples crops making it even more difficult for villagers to feed their families through the dry season. Both of these add up to the elephants in the region being very nervous and even sometimes aggressive in their interactions with people.

Three days ago, two of he Niassa Lion Project (NLP) staff went out to gear about a report of two elephants killed about 2-3 weeks ago near the village and they found carcasses with the tusks hacked off. Two days ago, there was a report of poachers in the next concession who killed 2 elephants.  Fortunately, an anti poaching unit was able to get to the scene thanks to a small aircraft in the area that spotted the actives and chased off the poachers while they were trying to bundle up the ivory. Unfortunately, no poachers were caught and two elephants were dead, but at least all the ivory was recovered.

This is playing out constantly across Africa and it is putting serious strains on elephant populations.  Persecuted elephants create dangerous situations where it is difficult to protect both the village people and the elephants. NLP will be looking at new models to approach human-wildlife conflict involving both elephants and lions in the future.

Update: We received a message that on June 15th that 3 elephant were shot in the night behind the NLP camp but by the time they were able to get out to the field with scouts, the poachers and ivory were gone. Nobody lives here except the ~10 NLP staff. The closest village – Mbamba Village – is an hour plus walk away and due to their fear of lions and elephants at night, it makes it all the more likely that these poaching syndicates are now reaching into areas from distant villages in the reserve.

 The photo below was not from a poached elephant but from a ~1 year old predated on by lions. The belief these days is the more adults that are being killed, leads to more orpahned elephants which are being taken by predators rather than being protected by the herd. The value of this ivory in the local village is very small – maybe $30USD but once into a larger city its value is around $400 and then internationally that price can double. These tusks were deposited with the National reserve which maintains a vault to keep confiscated and found ivory.

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