Despite a worldwideban on the sale of ivorytaken from elephant killed after 1989 , virtually all of the tusks being smuggle out of Africa are from animals kill less than three year ago , a fresh study in theProceedings of the National Academy of Sciencesreveals . This negate the assumption that illegal exports contain large amounts of ivory obtained before the ban was put in place , and indicates that poaching is still a major problem across the continent .
researcher looked at 231 tusks capture in 14 major payload busts between 2002 and 2014 , in nine African country . The sentence of death of each elephant was then calculated by looking at grade of an isotope call carbon-14 , which entered the environment as a result of nuclear weapon testing in the 1950s , and was have up by the works that the elephant afterward consume .
As it plough out , over 90 percent of these tusks came from animate being that had been alive less than three years before the shipments were apprehended , with only four belonging to elephant that had died more than five years before their ivory was seized .
In astatement , study conscientious objector - generator Kevin Uno explain that this finding “ shows that ivory is moving through the arrangement tight . Some of the elephant were wipe out just before their tusks were thrown in the shipping container . ”
By analyze the DNA in these specimens , the researchers were also able-bodied to ascertain their geographical origin , and found that the lag time betweenpoachingand shipping of ivory tends to be much shorter for East African elephant than those from West Africa . This , the authors say , is probably due to the fact that elephants on the East African savannah are much comfortable to wipe out and transport , since they are found in across-the-board open spaces . Those in the intemperately forested Tridom area in Cameroon , Gabon , and DRC , meanwhile , are much harder to get at .
As a result , roughly 35 percent of bone acquire from East African elephants was seized within a class of the brute being kill , compared to just 7 per centum of West African ivory .
Overall , the middling retardation time between poaching and seizure increased from less than a class in 2011 to three age in 2014 , which the investigator say is down to the fact that elephant are becoming progressively scarce across Africa , meaning it now takes smugglers longer to gather enough ivory for a lading .
