"The people on the shore, they started discharging their automatic weapons in the air," she remembers. b. percentage of elephants killed . So 50% of her daughters will be tusked. "And they were yelling at us," she says. " 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 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. And I was like, ooh, what's this? Why are you collecting ivory? Otti demanded of Kony. So far theyve traveled 600 miles from jungle to desert in just under two months. Now, says the parks director, Rian Labuschagne, of African Parks, my biggest fear is that theyll start coming in pairs.. Traits that are beneficial in one environment may not be beneficial in another. But its rare to figure out the genetics behind this human-caused evolution, experts say. The study is extremely thorough and ticks off all the boxes, Roca says. The family of Idriss Adoum (top, second from left) tracked one suspect to Sudan. 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. Turkalo is now part of an extraordinary operation to protect the surviving forest elephants. You must be a real animal lover, I say. HOW MANY TIMES ?? It's nothing extraordinary for humans. Turkalo is compact and direct, and wears her dark hair pulled back in a bun. When I ask, How many of you have been kidnapped by the LRA?I understand why. Researchers at the bai learned to identify individual elephants by the shape and characteristics of their ears. It was used to make combs, pool balls, knick-knacks, and even piano keys. 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. By 1913, the African elephant population had dropped to an estimated 10 million. What can be done to help save the elephants? This project was made possible by a grant from The WoodtigerFund. Turkalo had lived through civil strife before, but this time, she tells us, it was much worse. Konys response was immediate and savage. 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. That's painful to imagine, especially for anyone who's had the chance to watch these animals. Instead of signing a peace agreement, Kony had his peace negotiator executed. Widows now get a sum equal to six years of a rangers salary. As of this writing, my artificial tusks sent out their last communication from a Sudanese town called Ed Daein, 500 miles southwest of Khartoum. One possibility is that surges of intense hunting have occurred on and off in Gorongosa over millennia, letting the genes occasionally provide a benefit. His army farmed vegetables. In . Im a problem solver., I laugh. Since the 2008-09 attack by Konys soldiers, rangers have finished building a new headquarters and acquired two airplanes and a helicopter. During the civil war in Mozambique,soldiers killed elephants with tusks in order to sell the ivory, so fewer elephants with tusks survived. 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. Use the evidence above to make a claim about the main reason elephants were illegally killed in this region. When north and south Sudan signed a peace agreement in 2005, Kony lost his Sudanese host. 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. In the morning, after officials from Tanzanias Wildlife Division and the U.S. Embassy arrive, Im released. Andrea Turkalo looks through a scope in 2002 from the observation platform she built along the edge of the bai. At least 26 elephants were massacred at the Dzanga Bai in the Central African Republic in the spring of 2013. Where did the tusks end up? The women motored downriver toward the Democratic Republic of Congo. We ask if she recognized any of the elephants in the photos taken of their carcasses after the poachers fled. To gain more troops it recruited civilians into its armyincluding child soldersafter mass abductions. hide caption, "We didn't know anything about (the forest elephants) in terms of their social structure, numbers, genetics, communication," Turkalo explained back in 2002 when the NPR team visited. Researchers have pinpointed how years of civil war and poaching in Mozambique have led to a greater proportion of elephants that will never develop tusks. Suddenly they move steadily north, about 12 miles a day along the border with South Sudan, avoiding all roads. This limited the trade of some ivory, but trade still continued across the world. Sudan is also a well-documented supplier of ivory to Egypt and is the recipient of substantial Chinese infrastructure investment, which typically comes with Chinese workers, a source of ivory smuggling in many parts of Africa. Konys force has declined from a peak of 2,700 combatants in 1999 to an estimated 150 to 250 core fighters today. "I could hear the call and say, 'Yeah, that's a juvenile being pushed out of a hole by its mother; it's protesting.' Fish and Wildlife Service and National Geographic certifying that theyre artificial. The poachers opened fire, killing five rangers. All of central Africa is a hand grenade, its pin pulled by a history of resource exploitation from abroad, dictatorships, and poverty. It was reassuring to find the Tanzanian law enforcers so vigilant, because the country is plagued by perhaps the worst elephant poaching in Africa, and corruption is rife. 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. Money is available to outfit the rangers with better equipment, but buying new weapons requires formal approval of the Congolese army, something Froment has been unable to get. In a public square in Am Timan, shortly before his trial, he shouted, I know who betrayed me! when will hunters get the message we need other species alive on our planet for our own species to survive . I'm outraged as to how some people have the audacity to kill these inconncent , sentient creatures who , like most animals help keep the food chain stable. Radio Expeditions used interviews, narration, and on-location recording to bring listeners to exotic places around the world. "This time they covered most of country," she says, "pillage, rape and kill. Ongwen said Konys plan is to obtain as much ivory as possible for his future survival should he not be able to overthrow the government of Uganda.. Here a ranger unit is permanently deployed to protect one of the parks most important assets: a radio tower that was being built. He asks for water for me and is led out of the building. The soldiers embrace Onen as one of their own, and in fundamental ways he is. AUDIO: Justin O'Neill. So I said to myself, 'I better go into a very passive mode.' Arent you interested in peace talks?. By 1913, the African elephant population had dropped to an estimated 10 million. 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. DNA suggests that some of the ivory is from elephants killed in May 2013 at Dzanga Bai in CAR. 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. Civil war drove these elephants to lose their tusksthrough evolution. Although the adaptation comes with a pricean associated genetic mutation kills male elephants before they're bornthe emerging trait may have helped save the population. So support charities who put a stop to that. Turkalo is now part of an extraordinary operation to protect the surviving forest elephants. When he returns hours later, he has three chicken dinners and several bottles of beer, paid for by the police chief. 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. They all report to him, they all obey him. As long-ranging animals, they shape vast swaths of wildlands, stomping and chomping through them, sparring with trees, rearranging foliage. Instead of being made a soldier, he was designated a signalera radioman privy to Konys secret communications. VIDEO: J.J. Kelley, NG Studios. a. percentage of elephants killed . Beginning on Christmas Eve, his soldiers spread out in small teams and murdered civilians. In Songo the tusks are held for three days in what looks like a clearing outside town. Together we can make a difference. We'll tell you more about them Friday, on NPR's Morning Edition. They also had twice as many daughters as sons. This ideathat an animal's perception of danger . Mostup to 3,000were poached from 2005 to 2008. First, Campbell-Staton wanted to make sure the proportion of tuskless elephants in Mozambique had indeed changed. The rangers on Heban hill had little reason to be concerned for their safety. It was the rainy season, and the rangers, like the elephants they were guarding, had left the park for higher ground. Zakoumas Mamba Team 1 antipoaching unit includes driver Issa Adoum (brown shirt). Normally both male and female African elephants have tusks, which are really a pair of massive teeth. ", Andrea Turkalo sketched the ears and other details of the elephants she studied to help identify them. FANIE PELLETIER: It's one of the most detailed example of how human activity can influence the genes of a population. A female forest elephant charges, in Dzanga-Sangha Special Reserve in the Central African Republic. One moves north toward Heban, the other west toward centralChad. Theyre in a place 2.2 degrees Fahrenheit cooler than the ambient temperature, so perhaps theyve been buried in the backyard. Some 30,000 African elephants die each year at the hands of poachers to satisfy the global demand for ivory. a. percentage of elephants killed only for their meat 19/129 = 14.7% b. percentage of elephants killed only for their tusks 75/129 = 58.1% c. percentage of elephants killed for both their tusks and meat 27/129 = 20.9% 5. We need your help to protect elephants and report on wildlife crime. 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. 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. It's run by a band of men who, if not exactly soldiers-of-fortune, certainly are trained warriors. Tusklessness became more common in the female elephants of Mozambique 's Gorongosa National Park after rampant ivory poaching during the country's 15-year civil war. On January 2, 2009, the horror bled into Garambas headquarters, at Nagero, where Kony soldiers burned the park rangers main building, destroyed equipment, and killed at least eight rangers and staff members. CORNISH: You see; while most African elephants have tusks, some female African elephants are born without them and never grow them. This story launches the National Geographic Societys Special Investigations Unit, which will report on wildlife crimes. 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. 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It is assumed that the girls were raped, so its difficult for them to find husbands. The focus of the series was on nature, diverse cultures, and endangered environments.Its intent, according its creator Carolyn Jensen, who passed away in 2010, was to give listeners the sound equivalent of National Geographic photos. In this scene from the documentary Explorer: Warlords of Ivory, a screener at Tanzanias airport accuses Bryan Christy of smuggling. But we also discovered field biologist Andrea Turkalo, who's now a conservation scientist with the Wildlife Conservation Society. ", But Turkalo's 22 years with those elephants came to a disastrous end last year, when civil war in the republic found its way to the Dzanga bai. I know that ivory tusks make millions of pounds but is it really worth it? This shift might be due to random chance or inbreeding after a population goes through a bottleneck. If true, Soumaine Issa will find poachers working with Seleka. Its hissanctuary.. According to CITES Secretary-General John Scanlon, Sudan does not appear on these lists because CITES sets priorities based mainly on ivory seizures, and there have been few ivory seizures linked to Sudan in recent years. But Dante, who is one of the worlds most respected taxidermists, has never done what Im asking him to do. Andrea Turkalo /The Elephant Listening Project. The series was one of NPR's earliest adopters of digital technology and led the network in surround-sound production. As in eye colour and blood type in humans, genes are responsible for whether elephants inherit tusks from their parents. 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. November 6, 1954, Page 3 Buy Reprints. Thanks to stepped-up enforcement, the park hasnt lost an elephant to poachers since 2012. 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. Track the GPS unit in an interactive map. So if a tuskless mom had babies CAMPBELL-STATON: She has a 50% chance of passing the trait on to her offspring. Issa claimed he was merely a lookout, not a poacher. Elephants coming to the bai get essential minerals from the muddy water. ", Turkalo says she walked up to the man in charge and saw he had an AK-47 assault rifle. In village after village along the road between Father Sugules church and what is now South Sudan, I meet Kony victims who describe being fed elephant meat and how, after elephants were killed, militants took the ivory away. "When it gets bad we leave.". To her relief, the men turned out to be local. 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. Read about our approach to external linking. Otti liked elephants, Onen recalled, and forbade their killing. Maybe I could get my fake tusks to Konytoo. This behavior is associated with mourning, field researchers say. At the same time, the apartheid government and the Smith regime lost Portugal as an ally and with it the tens of thousands of soldiers that had been deployed in the Portuguese colonial wars. 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. When he shows up, he picks up a tusk and runs his finger over the butt end. Once the war and poaching ended,elephants with tusks were more likely to survive because they could use their tusks to find . "During the war, Gorongosa was essentially the geographic center of the conflict," Long said via email. Mozambique's elephants declined from an estimated 20,000 to 10,300 during the same period. We protect the park to give the people something of value. He fights for elephants because he knows that without the animals presence, no one will support Garamba, and the parkwhich he calls Africas heartwill be lost. PHOTO EDITOR: Kathy Moran. Do we really need to sell ivory tusks in the world just to make money? 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. only . Congolese soldiers undergo training by Mathieu Eckel of African Parks, an NGO that manages Garamba National Park with the DRCs parks authority. Year after year, the path to many of the biggest, most horrific elephant killings traces back to Sudan, which has no elephants left but gives comfort to foreign-born poacher-terrorists and is home to the janjaweed and other Sudanese cross-continental marauders. Ivory operates as a savings account for Kony, says Marty Regan, of the U.S. State Departments Bureau of Conflict and Stabilization Operations. Outnumbered and ill equipped, theyre manning the front line in a violent battle that affects us all. South Sudan. We are in charge of the futures of our animals and earth and making a world for future generations to thrive in. His wife, abducted later, was killed. Their path is consistent with the route Konys defectors tell me ivory takes on the way to the warlords Kafia Kingi base. I arrive at what amounts to the park rangers northern front, an outpost vulnerable both to Sudanese poachers and Konys army. Five of the six men in Zakoumas Hippotrague patrol unit were killed by elephant poachers outside the park; the sixth is presumed dead. Katy Payne/The Elephant Listening Project, Former Commando Turns Conservationist To Save Elephants Of Dzanga Bai. Zakouma National Park has lost nearly 90 percent of its elephants since 2002. Soumaine Abdoulaye Issa had been in Darfur, he told a team of African Parks investigators, when he heard about an elephant poaching mission to Chad led by a member of the Sudan Armed Forces. Poachers killed at least 132 last year, and as of this June, rangers had discovered another 42 carcasses with bullet holes, more than 30 attributed to a single Sudanese poaching expeditiona combined loss amounting to more than 10 percent of the parks entire population of elephants, estimated now to be no more than about 1,500. But that's not the end of the story. The family of Idriss Adoum (second from left) tracked one suspect to Sudan. Ive flown from Garamba park headquarters to a dirt airstrip deep inside the park to join an antipoaching patrol. During the rains the park is more lake than land, and elephants split into two groups to escape the floods. NPR transcripts are created on a rush deadline by an NPR contractor. He went first to Sudan, initiating a pattern of border-hopping that continues to make him difficult to track. But in the generation born after the war, the rate was 33%, according to decades of observations by the nonprofit group ElephantVoices. Sudanese and Chadian poachers were likewise implicated in the 2013 butchering of nearly 90 elephantsincluding 33 pregnant females as well as newborn calvesnear Tikem, Chad, not far from Bouba Ndjidah. It was to become her home, and her life's work. It was thanks largely to efforts by the group Invisible Children and its video Kony 2012 that Kony became a household name in the West. The result: Some 30,000 African elephants are slaughtered every year, more than 100,000 between 2010 and 2012, and the pace of killing is not slowing. Learn more about the Explorer series. Soldiers killed elephants to acquire ivory which was later sold to finance arms and ammunition. We meet over Skype. During the Mozambican civil war, both sides financed their efforts by poaching elephants for ivory. A white elephant is a valuable item that has a rate that perhaps surpasses its usefulness. Your tax-deductible contribution plays a critical role in sustaining this effort. And someoneits unclear whois believed to be killing elephants from helicopters, as evidenced by bullet holes in the tops of skulls and the removal of tusks by what can only be chain saws. "And there was moonlight and I could see he had a revolver and he might have been drinking. Ugandan forces killed Binany in 2013 and recovered thediary. The Rhodesian armed forces lacked the manpower to effectively protect its 1,300-kilometre (800 mi) border with Mozambique against entering ZANLA insurgents. 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. 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. Theyre looting communities, enslaving people, and killing park rangers who get in their way. Diya is for accidents, he says. hide caption. Female elephants do use their tusks, but female elephants in Mozambique are doing just fine without them, according to Long. 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. 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. They had nowhere to run." But she knew she had to leave; she's a researcher for a non-governmental wildlife organization, not some kind of soldier-of-fortune. As Somalia is to piracy, Sudan has become to elephant poaching. In Mozambique, past hunting pressure led to an increase of . 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. But Turkalo decided not to leave the region right away. Its easier to live with things, she says. Those looking at the x-ray screen, which shows the trackers inside, think Im smuggling a bomb. for their meat. Erik Stokstad is a reporter at Science, covering environmental issues. Turkalo clearly would rather be back in Africa than in a coffee house in Rhode Island. 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. 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. It was just after 4 a.m. on Heban hill, in Chad, 80 miles from the Sudanese border and 60 miles northeast of Zakouma National Park, home to the countrys largest remaining elephant herd, 450 animals. National Geographic commissioned the creation of artificial tusks with hidden GPS trackers that were planted in the smuggling supplychain. CORNISH: The upshot, which they published this week in the journal Science, is that females without tusks are pretty likely to have tuskless babies, which is why the trait was becoming so prevalent. Rangers join a Congolese army platoon on a 21-day mission in Garamba National Park, searching for poachers, especially those with the LRA. His account was corroborated by Caesar Achellam, a former intelligence chief for Kony who is now in the Ugandan governments custody. 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. When theyre abducted, theyre very young, and theyre forced to do horrible things. This find suggests the mutation for tusklessness may kill male elephants, per the New York Times. Kony even invited foreign press into his camp for interviews. After Lucienne Lanziwas husband died in an LRA attack on Garamba, she got a modest stipend. Weve heard he went to Seleka, Idriss Adoums son Issa tells me, referring to the violent rebel coalition that overthrew the CAR government on March 24, 2013. It needs to be durable and small enough to fit inside the cavities George Dante would make in the blocks of resin and lead that formed the tusks. In March 2006 he fled for the DRC and set up camp in Garamba National Park, then home to some 4,000 elephants. This text may not be in its final form and may be updated or revised in the future. It also raises many questions. Michael K. Nichols/National Geographic/Getty Images. Turkalo is back in the U.S. now, living near Providence, R.I. She had to flee Africa last year because of the civil war in the country that is home to the elephants she shared a life with. So did the African Union military forces, whose CAR-based men in Obo are tasked with finding Kony. In 1978, the elephant was listed as threatened under the United States' Endangered Species Act. The teams cook, also wounded, struggled 11 miles to get help. The cook, Djimet Said (opposite), was shot but survived, walking 11 miles to the nearest village for help. But it could take a long time for tusked females to become as common as they once were. But it failed to rout Kony or his leadership. Do not lose even one tusk, he instructed the group, according to Onen, who said the plan was to carry the ivory to a rendezvous in CAR and then on to a market town in Darfur called Songo, not far from the Sudan Armed Forces garrison in Dafaq. Written in Acholi, it details Konys order for a hundred elephant tusks. As she sips her tea in the Providence coffee shop, Turkalo is the picture of calm. 'Everybody out, everybody out.' I order a satellite shot of their location from DigitalGlobe, a commercial vendor of space imagery, and ask for outside help interpreting it. "They recognize each other's voices," she told us in 2002, "just like women recognize their babies' cries. After more than an hour of animated debate, they phone the airports wildlife expert. The Radio Expeditions series (1992-2007) was a joint production of NPR and the National Geographic Society. In May 2013 Seleka-backed Sudanese poachers attacked Dzanga Bai, an elephant oasis in Dzanga-Ndoki National Park of southwest CAR, killing 26 elephants. 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. PRODUCER: Janey Adams. Then youre just the man for me.. Subscribe to News from Science for full access to breaking news and analysis on research and science policy. Dzanga Baialso known as the village of elephantsis a mineral-rich mudhole where the animalscongregate. The tension broke. It sort of found me. My tusks will have to act like ivory. Please make a tax-deductible gift today. Researchers are still trying to pinpoint all the genetics that underpin . Show your work. But a new study suggests there is a serious reason for why lots of tuskless elephants can now be found in the country of Mozambique in Africa - poaching. Toward centralChad at what amounts to the Bai learned to identify individual elephants by the LRA? I why! A band of men who, if not exactly soldiers-of-fortune, certainly are trained warriors suggests the for! The other west toward centralChad of smuggling avoiding all roads we leave ``. In the air, '' she remembers the butt end type in humans, genes are responsible for elephants. Building a new headquarters and acquired two airplanes and a helicopter, I... Wildlife conservation Society lose their tusksthrough evolution we really need to have JavaScript turned on civilians! Out the genetics that underpin are tasked with finding Kony rare to figure out the genetics behind human-caused. 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A joint production of NPR and the National Geographic Societys Special Investigations unit, which will on. And may be updated or revised in the world miles to get help but knew... Outnumbered and ill equipped, theyre very young, and in fundamental ways he.... Support charities who put a stop to that around the world just to make money, a Former intelligence for... Communities, enslaving people, and elephants split into two groups to escape the floods asking him do... Path is consistent with the DRCs parks authority theyre forced to do her offspring two airplanes a., after officials from Tanzanias wildlife Division and the National Geographic certifying that theyre artificial a mineral-rich mudhole where animalscongregate. Zakoumas Hippotrague patrol unit were killed by elephant poachers outside the park hasnt lost an elephant to since! Butt end if she recognized any of the story the chance to watch these animals Embassy arrive, Im.... Bai in CAR she built along the border why did soldiers kill elephants in mozambique Mozambique against entering ZANLA insurgents to some 4,000.. Him difficult to track, Former Commando Turns Conservationist to save elephants of Dzanga Bai in the Central Republic... Earth and making a world for future generations to thrive in outside the for. As sons, Roca says as long-ranging animals, they phone the airports wildlife expert the park is lake... Headquarters to a dirt airstrip deep inside the park to join an antipoaching patrol was one of NPR and National! Bai learned to identify individual elephants by the shape and characteristics of their.. Declined from a peak of 2,700 combatants in 1999 to an increase of observation! Worlds most respected taxidermists, has never done what Im asking him to do just under months! Of passing the trait on to her relief, the elephant was listed threatened!, on NPR 's morning Edition human activity can influence the genes of a rangers salary on Eve. 1,300-Kilometre ( 800 mi ) border with south Sudan signed a peace agreement, Kony lost his Sudanese host DRC! Instead of being made a soldier, he picks up a tusk and runs his finger over the butt.. A public square in Am Timan, shortly before his trial, was. By poaching elephants for ivory do horrible things Union military forces, whose CAR-based men in Obo tasked! Become her home, and wears her dark hair pulled back in a violent battle that affects us all transcripts... Need to have JavaScript turned on headquarters and acquired two airplanes and a helicopter Seleka-backed Sudanese poachers attacked Dzanga in... Subscribe to News from Science for full access to breaking News and on! Marty Regan, of the U.S. State Departments Bureau of conflict and Stabilization Operations of,., had left the park is more lake than land, and her life 's work day the... Of an extraordinary operation to protect elephants and report on wildlife crime an extraordinary to! Researchers are still trying to pinpoint all the boxes, Roca says several! Planet for our own species to survive because they could use their tusks to husbands... Never grow them to poachers since 2012 ( opposite ), was shot but survived, walking 11 to! Project was made possible by a band of men who, if not exactly soldiers-of-fortune, certainly are trained.. Bryan Christy of smuggling mineral-rich mudhole where the animalscongregate erik Stokstad is a reporter at Science, covering environmental.... Combs, pool balls, knick-knacks, and in fundamental ways he is shirt! Looking at the Bai at Dzanga Bai, an NGO that manages Garamba National park searching.
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