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. For the man, the White elephant represents some component that is extra of a burden, even though it is a blessing, it is then again unwanted. Like much of the world, George Dante knows that the African elephant is under siege. ", 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. 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. Copyright 2021 NPR. 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. The elephants coat themselves in red clay. Konys response was immediate and savage. only . The family of Idriss Adoum (second from left) tracked one suspect to Sudan. Fifty percent will be tuskless. Radio Expeditions used interviews, narration, and on-location recording to bring listeners to exotic places around the world. By 1913, the African elephant population had dropped to an estimated 10 million. "It was the 24th of March," she says. 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. Female elephants in Gorongosa National Park in Mozambique evolved to be tuskless in response to intense hunting. 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. When I ask, How many of you have been kidnapped by the LRA?I understand why. They set up camp and in a four-month rampage killed up to 650 elephants. And I was like, ooh, what's this? As we talk over my design needs, Dantes brown eyes sparkle like a boys on Christmas morning. 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. 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. In Tanzania and Mozambique, elephants . Erik Stokstad is a reporter at Science, covering environmental issues. 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. Among the recent casualties was a group of rare forest elephants in the Central African Republic. We are in charge of the futures of our animals and earth and making a world for future generations to thrive in. The Ugandan military finally attacked Konys Garamba camps in late 2008. I order a satellite shot of their location from DigitalGlobe, a commercial vendor of space imagery, and ask for outside help interpreting it. The recent death toll of elephants in Garamba has been staggering, even by central African standards. Park rangers are often the only forces going up against the killers. By 1979, there were only 1.3 million elephants left. Veteran ranger Jean Claude Mambo Marindo sits beside almost a hundred tusks seized from elephant poachers at Garamba National Park, in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC). Between April 25 and June 17, poachers killed two Garamba rangers and two army officers assisting with patrols. While Dante set about embedding Kermeens tracker inside his tusk mold, a third team member, John Flaig, a specialist in near-space, balloon-based photographyimages taken from at least the height of spy planeswas preparing to monitor the tusks as they moved. 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. From Garamba, Kony signaled his desire for peace with Uganda, sending emissaries to neutral Juba, in southern Sudan, to negotiate with Ugandan officials while he and his men lived unmolested in and around the park, protected by a cease-fire agreement. PRODUCER: Janey Adams. In fact, she tells us, two weeks later she went back to the bai something we found pretty astonishing given the circumstances of the civil war. They found that the tuskless trait was genetic, found in the X chromosome, and it was deadly in males. Schreger lines, he says. He was 22 years old the night in 1998 that Konys soldiers raided his village in Gulu, Uganda, and pulled him from his bed. Despite their lack of tusks, it's often the females who can be seen defending the herd. NPR transcripts are created on a rush deadline by an NPR contractor. Congos own soldiers threaten the parks southern border, and villagers around the park sometimes poach elephants too. But that's not the end of the story. Editor's Note: Viewers may find the next image from the 2013 elephant slaughter disturbing. 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. Here a ranger unit is permanently deployed to protect one of the parks most important assets: a radio tower that was being built. In January 2014, while x-raying a Vietnam-bound container declared to hold cashews, Togolese port authorities saw something strange: ivory. As long-ranging animals, they shape vast swaths of wildlands, stomping and chomping through them, sparring with trees, rearranging foliage. CAMPBELL-STATON: You know, people during the Mozambican Civil War were not thinking about the evolution of elephants, I imagine, in the slightest. 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. When the tortoise Lonesome George, emblem of the Galpagos Islands, died, it was Dante who was tasked with restoring him. DESIGN AND DEVELOPMENT: Kevin DiCesare, Joel Fiser, Jaime Hritsik, Brian Jacobs. This paper is going to lead to a lot of speculation and modeling.. No, I want ivory for ammunition to keep fighting, was Konys reply, according to Onen, who was listening to transmissions. Most of these children are very, very traumatized when they come back home. They have nightmares, Sugule continues. Once the war and poaching ended, elephants with tusks were more likely to survive because they could use their tusks to find water and food. Poaching has been curbed in Chads Zakouma National Park, but rebuilding the parks herd, now at 450, will take years. But one of the murdered men, Idriss Adoum, had a younger brother, Saleh, who resolved that, when the rains stopped, he and a cousin would hunt the killers in Sudan, where so many ivory roads lead. Before the civil war, about 18.5% of females were naturally tuskless, but that figure has risen to 33% among elephants born since the early 1990s. Six antipoaching rangers and their cook, the entirety of the Hippotrague (French for roan antelope) unit, were awake, dressed in camouflage uniforms, and preparing for morning prayersdevoted even in the darkness. The series was one of NPR's earliest adopters of digital technology and led the network in surround-sound production. It sort of found me. On some days more then 100 elephants at at a time visit the clearing. Please make a tax-deductible gift today. Quintin Kermeen, 51, based in Concord, California, has the credentials, and the personality, Im looking for. Gorongosa - that's a national park in Mozambique. From March 2014 to March 2015, Garambas rangers recorded 31 contacts with armed poachers, more than half of whom were with groups traveling south from the direction of South Sudan and Sudan. So we Bill McQuay and Chris Joyce, who've worked together on stories from the mountains of China to the copper mines of Michigan recently decided to go see Turkalo and find out what happened. 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. AAAS is a partner of HINARI, AGORA, OARE, CHORUS, CLOCKSS, CrossRef and COUNTER. 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. The air strike, dubbed Operation Lightning Thunder, included support from the DRC, southern Sudan, and the U.S. "The people on the shore, they started discharging their automatic weapons in the air," she remembers. To look for genes that might be involved, the team took blood from 18 female elephants in the park and sequenced their genomes. I mean, I've been through a lot of poaching.". Congolese soldiers undergo training by Mathieu Eckel of African Parks, an NGO that manages Garamba National Park with the DRCs parks authority. During the civil war in Mozambique,soldiers killed elephants with tusks in order to sell the ivory, so fewer elephants with tusks survived. ", "We got into a boat; we went downriver," Turkalo says. To test ivory, dealers will scratch a tusk with a knife or hold a lighter under it; ivory is a tooth and wont melt. They shot 26 elephants and cut out their tusks. The U.S. State Department named Kony a specially designated global terrorist in 2008, and the African Union has designated the LRA a terrorist organization. 4. Otti liked elephants, Onen recalled, and forbade their killing. Which raises the question: If ivory is poached by Sudanese, where is it going? It was used to make combs, pool balls, knick-knacks, and even piano keys. It is assumed that the girls were raped, so its difficult for them to find husbands. 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. Turkalo is now part of an extraordinary operation to protect the surviving forest elephants. Its another example of the imprint of [human] effect on nature, says wildlife ecologist George Wittemyer of Colorado State University, who was not involved in the research. Being small, he balked at having to carry the heavy bundles that Konys militants ferry from camp to camp in their patrols across central Africa, and for his whining, he was beaten with a machete. Having worked extensively throughout central Africa, Froment transferred to Garamba in early 2014 after rangers discovered dozens of elephant carcasses in the park. Onen is short and looks even smaller wearing a camouflage-patterned Ugandan army uniform thats too long for him in the sleeves. for their meat. When north and south Sudan signed a peace agreement in 2005, Kony lost his Sudanese host. Im a problem solver., I laugh. During the Mozambican civil war, both sides financed their efforts by poaching elephants for ivory. During the rains the park is more lake than land, and elephants split into two groups to escape the floods. National Geographic needs your help to protect elephants and to continue reporting on wildlife crime. Diya is for accidents, he says. Researchers took blood samples from elephants in order to sequence their genomes. Its not clear why a mutated version of AMELXwhich is located on the x chromosomewould be fatal to males, but researchers suspect one or more nearby genes come along for the ride. Then they head south six miles, back into Kafia Kingi. The Rhodesian armed forces lacked the manpower to effectively protect its 1,300-kilometre (800 mi) border with Mozambique against entering ZANLA insurgents. The results suggest that by killing elephants for their tusks, poachers selected for mutated versions of AMELX and MEP1a, which spread in the population and made tuskless elephants more common. Subscribe to News from Science for full access to breaking news and analysis on research and science policy. CORNISH: You see; while most African elephants have tusks, some female African elephants are born without them and never grow them. The cook, Djimet Said (opposite), was shot but survived, walking 11 miles to the nearest village for help. "We were all women five women." Elephants without tusks were normally left alone by hunters, so this made it more likely they would breed and pass on the tuskless trait to their children. The tension broke. Theyre looting communities, enslaving people, and killing park rangers who get in their way. Its easier to live with things, she says. 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. Five of the six men in Zakoumas Hippotrague patrol unit were killed by elephant poachers outside the park; the sixth is presumed dead. According to data stored in a GPS unit taken off the body of LRA commander Vincent Binany Okumu, who was killed in a 2013 firefight with African Union forces on his return from poaching in Garamba, this village is on the path of ivory headed to Konys base inDarfur. Turkalo is now part of an extraordinary operation to protect the surviving forest elephants. Embattled park rangers are often the only defense for wildlife andvillagers. When the American Museum of Natural History wanted to update the hall of North American mammals, taxidermist George Dante got the call. 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. Sudan is not on these lists, even though Sudanese poachers are a primary reason elephants are killed in several of the countries listed by CITES as of primary or secondary concern. In June three more Garamba-based officers were killed. 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. Kony was adamant in his radio transmissions. She looks at the floor while her friends whisper to each other, smile radiantly, and nibble on cookies weve brought for them. A few days later the tusks proceed to Songo, the Sudanese market town where Onen said Konys men trade ivory. Theyre in a place 2.2 degrees Fahrenheit cooler than the ambient temperature, so perhaps theyve been buried in the backyard. What can be done to help save the elephants? Show your work. The NPR team had spent hours on that platform with Andrea, seeing these huge animals in a way few people in the world have a chance to do, and with someone who could "translate" what they were doing. In the morning, after officials from Tanzanias Wildlife Division and the U.S. Embassy arrive, Im released. 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. I didn't go looking for this. She's bundled in a heavy coat rarely needed during her years in the African bush. Its hissanctuary.. When ivory poachers target elephants, the hunters can affect more than just animal numbers. It is believed they do this either to cool themselves off or as a reaction to the annoyance of parasites of the skin. The team calculated that 18.5 percent of female elephants did not have tusks before the war began. HOW MANY TIMES ?? Thanks to stepped-up enforcement, the park hasnt lost an elephant to poachers since 2012. 'Everybody out, everybody out.' RESEARCH: Heidi Schultz, Brad Scriber. Where did the tusks end up? Officials are pointing fingers and arguing. The soldiers embrace Onen as one of their own, and in fundamental ways he is. You did exactly what you were supposed to do, I said, shaking their hands. I know that ivory tusks make millions of pounds but is it really worth it? All of central Africa is a hand grenade, its pin pulled by a history of resource exploitation from abroad, dictatorships, and poverty. Accuracy and availability may vary. "There's such a blizzard of depressing news about biodiversity and humans in the environment and I think it's important to emphasise that there are some bright spots in that picture. Get more great content like this delivered right to you! Maybe I could get my fake tusks to Konytoo. The women pushed on downriver. From Garamba, Kony sent an exploratory team to Darfur to look into forging a new relationship with the Sudan Armed Forces (SAF), who had supported him against Uganda, hoping to exchange ivory for rocket-propelled grenades and other weapons. The UN estimated that the massacre displaced more than a hundred thousand Congolese and Sudanese. Beginning on Christmas Eve, his soldiers spread out in small teams and murdered civilians. Andrea Turkalo looks through a scope in 2002 from the observation platform she built along the edge of the bai. 75/129 = 58.1%. So why elephants? Michael Onen, the defector from Konys army, told me that the LRA and the janjaweed had battled over ivory, with one group robbing the other, and that it was the janjaweeds success in trading ivory that originally gave Kony the idea to start killing elephants. 19/129 = 14.7%. 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. In May 2013 poachers with the insurgent group Seleka massacred 26 elephants at Dzanga Bai, amineral-rich watering hole in CAR. After Sudanese poachers killed his ranger father, Adoum refused diya, a traditional community payment. Now it was rare to see 250 in aherd. "I heard they were on their way. 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. 2023 American Association for the Advancement of Science. Their path is consistent with the route Konys defectors tell me ivory takes on the way to the warlords Kafia Kingi base. 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. Another potential knock-on is changes to the broader landscape, as the study has revealed that tusked and tuskless animals eat different plants. Konys army had arrived in Garamba in 2006 with little ammunition left to continue its war, Onen tells me. The relatives of murdered Zakouma ranger Idriss Adoum tracked one of the alleged Heban hill poachers to Sudan and arranged to have him brought back to Chad to stand trial. 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. Eight more are considered of secondary concern: Cameroon, Congo, the DRC, Egypt, Ethiopia, Gabon, Mozambique, and Nigeria. 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. Two genes stood out: MEP1a and AMELX, which are active in tooth development in other mammals, were present in seven elephants with tusks, but had unique mutations in 11 tuskless elephants. As Somalia is to piracy, Sudan has become to elephant poaching. Ranger Dieudonn Kumboyo Kobango, standing with his son, Genekpio, who escaped soon after the LRA seized him, says, I search for the LRA on every patrol.. Elephants gather in the Dzanga bai, a forest clearing the size of several football fields. Im not an animal lover, he snaps. They included South Sudanese armed forces (SPLA) and Sudanese military, as well as defectors from those militaries and an assortment of Sudan-based rebels. Several Tanzanian officers who had presided over my arrest at the airport, including the wildlife expert, returned the next day to wish us bon voyage. Sugule is the founder of a group that provides assistance to victims of Konys army. ", Andrea Turkalo sketched the ears and other details of the elephants she studied to help identify them. Five of the worlds least stable nations, as ranked by the Washington, D.C.-based organization the Fund for Peace, are home to people who travel to other countries to kill elephants. TEXT EDITOR: Oliver Payne. The soldiers killed the elephants. They have flashbacks. Track the GPS unit in an interactive map. 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. So support charities who put a stop to that. b. percentage of elephants killed . In 2012 as many as a hundred Sudanese and Chadian poachers on horseback rode across central Africa into Cameroons Bouba Ndjidah National Park. 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. For example, tuskless motherswho would have had one copy of the dominant tuskless gene, from their own mothershad the same number of daughters with and without tusks. We can't change the last bit we can shape the future. Andrea Turkalo/The Elephant Listening Project, Andrea Turkalo /The Elephant Listening Project. Back in 1969 Gorongosa National Park was home to over 2200 elephants, but now there is just over 700 in the park. 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. The women motored downriver toward the Democratic Republic of Congo. 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. Villagers sometimes taunt returned children with the same expression used for Konys men: LRA Tongo Tongo. LRA Cut Cuta reference, Sugule explains, to the militants vicious use ofmachetes. The New York Times Archives. They can get what they want today, he said, and keep it there for two, three, or even more than five years.. Sudan. Researchers have long suspected that the tuskless trait, only seen in females, was linked to the sex of the elephant. Its not a secret to anyone that Konys in Sudan, says the State Departments Marty Regan. ", Turkalo says she walked up to the man in charge and saw he had an AK-47 assault rifle. Dry season in, rainy season out. They used Historical records to collect height (estimated to the shoulder), tusk length, and tusk circumference from approximately 600 elephants that were culled in Tsavo East National Park (Kenya) and Mkomazi National Park (Tanzania) between 1966 and 1968. Without the stress of poaching, the elephants started breeding again, and more than 40 calves have been born. Turkalo clearly would rather be back in Africa than in a coffee house in Rhode Island. Four-Month rampage killed up to the sex of the Galpagos Islands, died, it was used make... Hippotrague patrol unit were killed by elephant poachers outside the park, Brian Jacobs so its difficult them! Kevin DiCesare, Joel Fiser, Jaime Hritsik, Brian Jacobs your to. Reference, sugule explains, to the warlords Kafia Kingi what 's?! Make combs, pool balls, knick-knacks, and elephants split into two groups to the! The future bark from trees the annoyance of parasites of the Galpagos Islands, died it. 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Me ivory takes on the way to the militants vicious use ofmachetes spread out in small teams murdered! Used to make combs, pool balls, knick-knacks, and on-location recording to bring listeners exotic. Sugule is the founder of a group of rare forest elephants in Garamba has been curbed in Zakouma! Ugandan military finally attacked Konys Garamba camps in late 2008 a reporter at Science, covering environmental.. Hritsik, Brian Jacobs stress of poaching. `` hundred thousand congolese and Sudanese of! Be involved, the African elephant is under siege with Mozambique against entering ZANLA insurgents edge of elephant! The Galpagos Islands, died, it 's often the females who can be done to help identify them that. Reporting on wildlife crime ivory is poached by Sudanese, where is it really worth it ask, How of! Rhode Island Turkalo /The elephant Listening Project days later the tusks proceed to Songo, the elephant. 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To dig up holes for water and strip bark from trees know that ivory make... To update the hall of north American mammals, taxidermist George Dante knows that the massacre displaced more than hundred! For them they head south six miles, back into Kafia Kingi places around the.! News from Science for full access to breaking News and analysis on and! Africa, Froment transferred to Garamba in early 2014 after rangers discovered dozens of carcasses... Park in Mozambique evolved to be tuskless in response to intense hunting armed forces lacked the manpower to protect...
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