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

Autor: Mrigesh Kshatriya, Colin M. Beale, Carsten F. Dormann, Severin Hauenstein, Julian Blanc
Jazyk: angličtina
Rok vydání: 2019
Předmět:
Zdroj: Nature Communications, Vol 10, Iss 1, Pp 1-9 (2019)
Nature Communications
ISSN: 2041-1723
DOI: 10.1038/s41467-019-09993-2
Popis: 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
Ivory poaching has decreased since 2011, and understanding why may help to further prevent losses to elephant populations. Here the authors show correlations between poaching rates and poverty and corruption-related indices, and proxies of ivory demand.
Databáze: OpenAIRE