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. 2019 May 28;10(1):2242.
doi: 10.1038/s41467-019-09993-2.

African elephant poaching rates correlate with local poverty, national corruption and global ivory price

Severin Hauenstein  1   2 , Mrigesh Kshatriya  3 , Julian Blanc  3   4 , Carsten F Dormann  5 , Colin M Beale  6
Affiliations

African elephant poaching rates correlate with local poverty, national corruption and global ivory price

Severin Hauenstein et al. Nat Commun. .

Abstract

Poaching is contributing to rapid declines in elephant populations across Africa. Following high-profile changes in the political environment, the overall number of illegally killed elephants in Africa seems to be falling, but to evaluate potential conservation interventions we must understand the processes driving poaching rates at local and global scales. Here we show that annual poaching rates in 53 sites strongly correlate with proxies of ivory demand in the main Chinese markets, whereas between-country and between-site variation is strongly associated with indicators of corruption and poverty. Our analysis reveals a recent decline in annual poaching mortality rate from an estimated peak of over 10% in 2011 to <4% in 2017. Based on these findings, we suggest that continued investment in law enforcement could further reduce poaching, but is unlikely to succeed without action that simultaneously reduces ivory demand and tackles corruption and poverty.

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Conflict of interest statement

While conducting this research, M.K. and J.B. were employed by the MIKE programme. This does not alter our adherence to Nature Communications’ policies on sharing data and materials. The authors declare no competing interests.

Figures

Fig. 1
Fig. 1
Annual poaching trend by site. Map of MIKE sites in Africa, showing estimated elephant population sizes (from <10 in Niokolo-Koba National Park, NKK, to 45,254 in Selous-Mikumi Game Reserve and National Park, SEL) proportional to the size of the respective pie chart, estimated median proportion of illegally killed elephants (illegal = solid pie piece, legal = transparent colours), annual trend in estimated PIKE (green = decline [= ^ less poaching], grey = no decline) between 2012 and 2017 (for site names see Supplementary Results), and the known and possible range of African savannah elephants
Fig. 2
Fig. 2
Estimated annual poaching intensity—observed and estimated. a Annual estimates of per capita poaching rate across 53 MIKE monitoring sites. Displayed estimates are annual median poaching rates across all sites in each year, derived from 3000 MCMC samples. Grey lines display estimates from the model fitted to all data, with solid black line showing median estimates and dashed lines outlining 90% CI. Blue boxes represent estimates from the model (same structure) fitted to training data (2002–13) only, red colour highlights estimates for test data (2014–17). Boxplot centre lines represent median estimates, box bounds first and third quartiles, and whiskers 90% CIs. Crosses represent overall observed poaching rate across all sites and will be biased towards sites where more carcasses are found. b Median PIKE estimates for the testing period (2014–17) from 3000 MCMC samples of the model fitted to training data (2002–13) only, compared against the respective observed PIKE values. Darker grey indicates larger sample size. The black line and error envelope represent the mean estimates and the 95% confidence interval from a weighted regression fitted to these data, the dashed line represents identity. R2 ~ of weighted correlation is 0.48 (90% CI: 0.39–0.54)
Fig. 3
Fig. 3
Conditional relationships between key covariates and the estimated proportion of illegally killed elephants (PIKE). Site by year covariates (steel blue) a infant mortality rate and b annual precipitation, the country by year covariate (light blue) c corruption perception, the site level covariates (dark grey), d poverty density, e site area, and f law enforcement adequacy, and the annual (brick red) g large-scale ivory seizures, and h ivory price. Error envelopes represent 90% credibility intervals from 3000 MCMC samples, horizontal dashed lines illustrate the estimated intercept median. All effects plots are overlaid with response-scale partial residuals (points for site and country by year covariates and boxes for site and annual covariates). Boxplot centre lines represent median estimates, box bounds first and third quartiles, and whiskers 90% CIs. All plots are scaled the same to make effect sizes directly comparable
Fig. 4
Fig. 4
Region-specific annual estimates of per capita poaching rates. Displayed estimates are annual median poaching rates across the sites and years within a Central Africa, b Eastern Africa, c Western Africa and d Southern Africa, each derived from 3000 MCMC samples. Grey lines display estimates from the model fitted to all data, with solid black line showing median estimates and dashed lines outlining 90% CIs. Blue boxes represent estimates from the model (same structure) fitted to training data (2002–13) only, red colour highlights estimates for test data (2014–17). Boxplot centre lines represent median estimates, box bounds first and third quartiles, and whiskers 90% CIs. Crosses represent overall observed poaching rate across the sites within the respective region and will be biased towards sites where more carcasses are found. N^ represents the sum of the latest population size estimates over all sites within the respective region
Fig. 5
Fig. 5
Sensitivity of estimated poaching rates to different simulated conservation targets. Each box represents 3000 median MCMC samples from model predictions between 2006 and 2017, where each covariate in turn is set to the best value at any site, country or year, while the other covariates were set to their observed values. The white box displays poaching rate median estimates without simulated intervention. Boxplot centre lines represent median estimates, box bounds first and third quartiles, and whiskers 90% CIs. For predictions, precipitation was set to the average value across sites and years to reduce variation in natural mortality rates across sites and years. The colour scheme is the same as in Fig. 3
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