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. a. percentage of elephants killed . I know which house theyre in: Using Google Earth, I see its light-blue roof on my screen. Father Sugule introduces me to three young girls, recent LRA kidnapping victims, who are sitting on a wooden bench in his church. Why are you collecting ivory? Otti demanded of Kony. Visit our website terms of use and permissions pages at www.npr.org for further information. The biggest is why a dominant gene associated with deadly effects for males would persist in the population during periods without poaching. Mozambiques civil war from 1977 to 1992 had a grim outcome for elephants: During that time, some 90% were killed for the ivory in their tusks, which were sold to finance the war. Nov. 6, 1954. Our next story begins in a place many of us are familiar with - up awake, watching a YouTube video at 3 in the morning. After Sudanese poachers killed his ranger father, Adoum refused diya, a traditional community payment. So why elephants? November 6, 1954, Page 3 Buy Reprints. PHOTO EDITOR: Kathy Moran. CAMPBELL-STATON: You know, people during the Mozambican Civil War were not thinking about the evolution of elephants, I imagine, in the slightest. Track the GPS unit in an interactive map. Seleka rebels had a stock of about 300 ivory tusks that they sold, which enabled them to get the supplies that helped them overthrow President Franois Boziz in CAR, Ongwen told African Union forces, according to his debriefing. Bryan Christy sets out on his groundbreaking mission to track down the kingpins of the ivory trade. We would follow them using Google Earth. With an average of 16 years in the bush with the LRA, the men bring a wealth of experience to the hunt for Kony and his fighters. "But I'm certain I knew a few of the elephants they killed," she says including some that the NPR team had recorded. CORNISH: That's Fanie Pelletier, a wildlife biologist in Canada who wasn't involved in the work. We were expecting to find an amazing new world of sound to record, and the experience lived up to its reputation the insects, the tropical downpours, and of course the cacophony of the elephants themselves. The Rhodesian armed forces lacked the manpower to effectively protect its 1,300-kilometre (800 mi) border with Mozambique against entering ZANLA insurgents. "I can never get too emotionally attached to things there," she says of central Africa, "because otherwise you set yourself up for a lot of disappointment. All rights reserved. Researchers took blood samples from elephants in order to sequence their genomes. Researchers at the bai learned to identify individual elephants by the shape and characteristics of their ears. Issa claimed he was merely a lookout, not a poacher. Hed grown up not far from Garamba at a time when it was possible to fly over the park and see 5,000 elephants in a single gathering. On our patrol we dont encounter any poachers or rebel groups. Civil war drove these elephants to lose their tusksthrough evolution. 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. Now its under siege for its ivory, mainly by rogue soldiers from national armies and by the terrorist group the Lords Resistance Army (LRA). When I ask, How many of you have been kidnapped by the LRA?I understand why. Between April 25 and June 17, poachers killed two Garamba rangers and two army . Between April 25 and June 17, poachers killed two Garamba rangers and two army officers assisting with patrols. It's run by a band of men who, if not exactly soldiers-of-fortune, certainly are trained warriors. 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. In ten years hes never made a mistake, he says: The tusks are real. A few days later the tusks proceed to Songo, the Sudanese market town where Onen said Konys men trade ivory. When humans hunt, they can cause their quarry to evolve by targeting individuals with particular traits, like big fish or sheep with hefty horns. In 1994 Kony left Uganda and took his murderous gang on the road. Elephant slaughter increased in the 1950s, where it is estimated that 250 elephants were killed per day. 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. Ive met more than a thousand children who have been abducted, he says as we talk inside his church in the nearby town of Dungu. My interpretation, says Jean Marc Froment, then director of the park, is that the Ugandan military is conducting operations inside Garamba and at the same time taking some ivory. But, he adds, the poachers could be SPLA, which uses the same type of helicopter seen over the park. In this scene from the documentary Explorer: Warlords of Ivory, Bryan Christy presents world-renowned taxidermist George Dante with a new challenge: creating a completely convincing fake elephant tusk. In 1978, the elephant was listed as threatened under the United States' Endangered Species Act. All rights reserved. Michael K. Nichols/National Geographic/Getty Images. A young elephant splashes in a stream that runs through the bai. "During the war, Gorongosa was essentially the geographic center of the conflict," Long said via email. That evening, they floated by a village. All of central Africa is a hand grenade, its pin pulled by a history of resource exploitation from abroad, dictatorships, and poverty. Mozambique's elephants declined from an estimated 20,000 to 10,300 during the same period. "I don't know which ones they killed," she replies. So if a tuskless mom had babies CAMPBELL-STATON: She has a 50% chance of passing the trait on to her offspring. The dogs are Belgian Malinois shepherds, famed for their use in military operations, especially in tough conditions like the dense central African bush. By 1913, the African elephant population had dropped to an estimated 10 million. Next, researchers wanted to pin down the mechanism of inheritance for tusklessness. Most of these children are very, very traumatized when they come back home. They have nightmares, Sugule continues. We are in charge of the futures of our animals and earth and making a world for future generations to thrive in. Locals, including poor villagers and unpaid park rangers, are killing elephants for casha risk theyre willing to take because even if theyre caught, the penalties are often negligible. Andrea Turkalo /The Elephant Listening Project. During the summer Konys soldiers had killed 25 elephants in Garamba, and they were on their way back to Kony carrying the ivory. But Dante, who is one of the worlds most respected taxidermists, has never done what Im asking him to do. 4. Zakoumas Mamba Team 1 antipoaching unit includes driver Issa Adoum (brown shirt). Read about our approach to external linking. Earlier this year Kony suffered the defection of his commander of operations, Dominic Ongwen, who told African Union forces that Konys desire for ivory was reinforced by Seleka. Wittemyer wonders whether a similar phenomenon happened long ago in Asia, because both male and female fossil elephants there have tusks, but among living Asian elephants, only males have tusks. The men of the Hippotrague unit assumed that after the previous teams raid, the poachers had all fled home. Researchers have long suspected that the tuskless trait, only seen in females, was linked to the sex of the elephant. Andrea Turkalo looks through a scope in 2002 from the observation platform she built along the edge of the bai. 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. Turkalo clearly would rather be back in Africa than in a coffee house in Rhode Island. Andrea Turkalo /The Elephant Listening Project, Andrea Turkalo /The Elephant Listening Project. They were relieving a ranger team that had raided a Sudanese poachers camp three weeks before and seized more than a thousand rounds of ammunition; mobile phones holding photographs of bloated, dead elephants; a satellite phone with a solar panel charger; two elephant tusks; a pair of camouflage pants; and a uniform with the insignia of Abu TiraSudans notorious Central Reserve Police, alleged to have committed mass killings, assaults, and rapes in Darfur. But Turkalo decided not to leave the region right away. We meet over Skype. They killed fewer elephants per hunt but were much harder to track and stop. TEXT EDITOR: Oliver Payne. Meanwhile, according to Onen, Konys men hid ivory by burying it in the ground or submerging it in rivers. No one has. The family of Idriss Adoum (second from left) tracked one suspect to Sudan. The team calculated that 18.5 percent of female elephants did not have tusks before the war began. 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. Get more great content like this delivered right to you! We meet in a busy coffee shop full of students from nearby Brown University. He asks for water for me and is led out of the building. After six hours on the dark river, they got to safety, to a campsite in the Congo. UNIDENTIFIED PERSON: Large-tusked elephants in Gorongosa were killed for their ivory, which was sold to buy arms and ammunition. Soldiers Kill Wild Elephant. But its rare to figure out the genetics behind this human-caused evolution, experts say. Meanwhile, as leaders in Europe, the Middle East, and the U.S. strategize about how to stop the ever expanding network of international terrorist organizations, somewhere in Africa a park ranger stands his post, holding an AK-47 and a handful of bullets, manning the front line for all of us. Ivory operates as a savings account for Kony, says Marty Regan, of the U.S. State Departments Bureau of Conflict and Stabilization Operations. 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. Killings of civilians have likewise dropped, from 1,252 in 2009 to 13 in 2014, but abductions are rising again, and it takes the arrival of only a few of the armed militants to send fear ricocheting through communities. One of them knew one of the women in the boat. When theyre abducted, theyre very young, and theyre forced to do horrible things. The authoritative record of NPRs programming is the audio record. Researchers looked at why female elephants in Gorongosa national park in Mozambique were frequently born without tusks, and found that the animals were in effect genetically engineered by mass . ", Turkalo says she walked up to the man in charge and saw he had an AK-47 assault rifle. We ask if she recognized any of the elephants in the photos taken of their carcasses after the poachers fled. for their tusks. Learn more about the Explorer series. Elephant tusks are elongated incisors. A small proportion of females . It consists of a battery capable of lasting more than a year, a GPS receiver, an Iridium satellite transceiver, and a temperature sensor. To follow my artificial tusks from the jungle to their final destination, I need a tracking device capable of transmitting exact locations without dead zones. He went first to Sudan, initiating a pattern of border-hopping that continues to make him difficult to track. 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