"Not only do they recognize each other's calls, but the calls go far," she told NPR correspondent Alex Chadwick, who spent days with her back then, observing the elephants with Bill McQuay. "It's 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. Its only the ivory that will make the LRA strong, he recalls Konysaying. But Onen got his way. Eight more are considered of secondary concern: Cameroon, Congo, the DRC, Egypt, Ethiopia, Gabon, Mozambique, and Nigeria. She looks at the floor while her friends whisper to each other, smile radiantly, and nibble on cookies weve brought for them. "And they were yelling at us," she says. 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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 now that there's been a change in the genes than if it wasn't. After three weeks the tusks turn north again, back into Sudan. 'Everybody out, everybody out.' I arrive at what amounts to the park rangers northern front, an outpost vulnerable both to Sudanese poachers and Konys army. I know that ivory tusks make millions of pounds but is it really worth it? A crowd gathers. "They were terrified. When north and south Sudan signed a peace agreement in 2005, Kony lost his Sudanese host. Turkalo is compact and direct, and wears her dark hair pulled back in a bun. RENAMO also had imposed a system it called Gamdira whereby villagers were required to produce food, transport goods and ammunition, and village women were forced to be sex slaves. My tusks will have to act like ivory. It was used to make combs, pool balls, knick-knacks, and even piano keys. A study in Gorongosa revealed that while male elephants did have tusks but almost 50% of female elephants above the age of 20 did not. This story was originally published in the September 2015 issue of National Geographicmagazine. At that point she'd already dedicated more than a decade of her life to studying forest elephants, which for centuries had remained hidden within the dense canopy of the rain forest. I wonder if Konys men are out there now. Ivory shops in Khartoum advertise in English and Chinese as well as Arabic. 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. This behavior is associated with mourning, field researchers say. Female elephants in Gorongosa National Park in Mozambique evolved to be tuskless in response to intense hunting. Dont yet have access? ", They were the Seleka the Muslim rebels who had overthrown the national government in the spring of 2013. The team calculated that 18.5 percent of female elephants did not have tusks before the war began. Such a biased sex ratio would be expected with a recessive gene that kills males when they inherit it. But when I ask a gathering of children and elders in the village of Kpaika, about 30 miles from the parks western border, how many of them have visited Garamba, no one raises a hand. She well remembers the day when the war came to the bai. No, I want ivory for ammunition to keep fighting, was Konys reply, according to Onen, who was listening to transmissions. Mozambique's elephants declined from an estimated 20,000 to 10,300 during the same period. Its rare that you get such a dramatic example, says co-author Robert Pringle, an ecologist at Princeton. A young elephant splashes in a stream that runs through the bai. Park rangers are often the only forces going up against the killers. The Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora (CITES), a treaty organization that governs international trade in ivoryand its continuing banhas identified eight countries of primary concern when it comes to international ivory trafficking: China, Kenya, Malaysia, the Philippines, Thailand, Uganda, Tanzania, and Vietnam. 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. Embattled park rangers are often the only defense for wildlife andvillagers. Some 30,000 African elephants die each year at the hands of poachers to satisfy the global demand for ivory. only . When in 2008 the Wildlife Conservation Society introduced a surveillance airplane, poaching declined, but Sudanese marauders adapted, returning in hit squads of under six men, who infiltrated from outside the park on one-day hunts. They shift a few miles. 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. I just can't understand why anyone would want to take away any of the amazing qualities and features of an elephant. The culprits are believed to have been South Sudanese, according to African Parks. To look for genes that might be involved, the team took blood from 18 female elephants in the park and sequenced their genomes. CORNISH: That's Fanie Pelletier, a wildlife biologist in Canada who wasn't involved in the work. Instead of signing a peace agreement, Kony had his peace negotiator executed. But after Otti left Garamba to participate in the peace talks, Kony began killing elephants for ivory. During the summer Konys soldiers had killed 25 elephants in Garamba, and they were on their way back to Kony carrying the ivory. Please make a tax-deductible gift today. "We were all women five women." Ivory operates as a savings account for Kony, says Marty Regan, of the U.S. State Departments Bureau of Conflict and Stabilization Operations. Traits that are beneficial in one environment may not be beneficial in another. Jensen, who was executive producer of the series, and Alex Chadwick, chief correspondent, insisted on the highest quality sound recording to complement its reporting. Then youre just the man for me.. A white elephant is a valuable item that has a rate that perhaps surpasses its usefulness. "It was the 24th of March," she says. HOW MANY TIMES ?? This project was made possible by a grant from The WoodtigerFund. Read about our approach to external linking. only . Meanwhile, flouting the cease-fire, his men crossed into CAR, where they kidnapped hundreds of children and made sex slaves of women they brought back to the park. That members of the Sudanese military trade arms for ivory with the LRA raises questions about the highest levels of Sudans government. Here a ranger unit is permanently deployed to protect one of the parks most important assets: a radio tower that was being built. I make a mental note that Konys soldiers and other armed groups walk hundreds of miles from Sudan into this endless grass curtain to kill elephants. ", 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. Despite their lack of tusks, it's often the females who can be seen defending the herd. Learn more about the Explorer series. Or will they go nowhere, discovered before theyre moved and turned in by an honest person? 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. 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. The series was one of NPR's earliest adopters of digital technology and led the network in surround-sound production. 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. Konys force has declined from a peak of 2,700 combatants in 1999 to an estimated 150 to 250 core fighters today. Erik Stokstad is a reporter at Science, covering environmental issues. A female forest elephant charges, in Dzanga-Sangha Special Reserve in the Central African Republic. If he can do this, Ill ask him to make several more tusks. The soldiers embrace Onen as one of their own, and in fundamental ways he is. ", Andrea Turkalo sketched the ears and other details of the elephants she studied to help identify them. They say the more elephants they kill, the more ivory they get.. 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 May 2013 Seleka-backed Sudanese poachers attacked Dzanga Bai, an elephant oasis in Dzanga-Ndoki National Park of southwest CAR, killing 26 elephants. (Special thanks to the National Public Radio - National Geographic Society Radio Expeditions Sound Collection at the Cornell Lab of Ornithology, for sharing the audio.). Among the recent casualties was a group of rare forest elephants in the Central African Republic. As long-ranging animals, they shape vast swaths of wildlands, stomping and chomping through them, sparring with trees, rearranging foliage. Congos own soldiers threaten the parks southern border, and villagers around the park sometimes poach elephants too. I know that ivory tusks make millions of pounds but is it really worth it? A forum for discussion about elephants and rhinos and a rally point for those who want to getinvolved. "The people on the shore, they started discharging their automatic weapons in the air," she remembers. Although the adaptation comes with a pricean associated genetic mutation kills male elephants before theyre bornthe emerging trait may have helped save the population. In this scene from the documentary Explorer: Warlords of Ivory, a screener at Tanzanias airport accuses Bryan Christy of smuggling. The LRA sells to the Sudan Armed Forces, Onen said. The Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC). The rangers on Heban hill had little reason to be concerned for their safety. 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. He asks for water for me and is led out of the building. Fifty percent of her sons will be tusked, but that other 50% would die. Zakouma breathes its elephants. Unlike Savanna elephants, forest elephants don't have natural predators, such as lions. Andrea Turkalo /The Elephant Listening Project, Andrea Turkalo /The Elephant Listening Project. After Zakoumas rangers destroyed their camp and confiscated their equipment, the poachers were unable to return to Sudan, so three weeks later they went back to Heban hill and attacked the Hippotrague unit. EVERY SINGLE animal on this planet is special and this doesn't happen to monkeys or crocodiles or birds does it? Margaret Acino was 23, pregnant, working in the fields near Gulu, Uganda, when an LRA commander called for a razor and ordered his boy soldiers to slice off her lips, ears, and nose. Instead of being made a soldier, he was designated a signalera radioman privy to Konys secret communications. Bill McQuay now works as a sound engineer with the National Public Radio - National Geographic Society Radio Expeditions Sound Collection at the Cornell Lab of Ornithology's Macaulay Library. There were armed combatants roaming the countryside. This find suggests the mutation for tusklessness may kill male elephants, per the New York Times. Researchers in Mozambique found a . You did exactly what you were supposed to do, I said, shaking their hands. The operation was designed by Kony himself, Onen says. For ten years Khartoum supplied him with food, medicine, and arms, including automatic rifles, antiaircraft guns, rocket-propelled grenades, and mortars. During the civil war between 1977 to 1992, poachers sold the ivory to finance the conflict, including buying arms and ammunition. Elephant tusks are elongated incisors. Or possibly even shown up in illegal ivorys biggest consuming country:China. Most illegal ivory goes to China, where a pair of ivory chopsticks can bring more than a thousand dollars and carved tusks sell for hundreds of thousands of dollars. Then they head south six miles, back into Kafia Kingi. "And there was moonlight and I could see he had a revolver and he might have been drinking. Chad. 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. This ideathat an animal's perception of danger . . 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. He designed a GPS tracker that the U.S. Geological Survey embedded in live Burmese pythons to monitor the invasive snakes in the Florida Everglades. TEXT EDITOR: Oliver Payne. The Ugandan military finally attacked Konys Garamba camps in late 2008. The last time an elephant was recorded killed by a poacher in Mozambique's Niassa Reserve was May 17, 2018, according to the Wildlife Conservation Society, a New York -based nonprofit that helps the Mozambican government manage the national reserve. 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. They had nowhere to run." Fish and Wildlife Service and National Geographic certifying that theyre artificial. "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. Ongwen also said that Kony intends to form a squad to establish contact with Boko Haram, the Nigerian terrorist group responsible for widespread killings and the kidnappings of hundreds of Nigerian women and schoolgirls. Since the 1980s, and beginning in Uganda, Konys minions are alleged to have killed tens of thousands of people, slicing the lips, ears, and breasts off women, raping children and women, chopping off the feet of those caught riding bicycles, and kidnapping young boys to create an army of child soldiers who themselves grow into killers. A small proportion of females . So why elephants? 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. Elephant ivory is a key source of funding for armed groups in central Africa . FANIE PELLETIER: It's one of the most detailed example of how human activity can influence the genes of a population. It was supposed to be a short posting, but he saw too much death to leave. As far as Onen knew, the poaching squad he abandoned was still making its way north from Garamba through CAR to Sudan. Im a problem solver., I laugh. Today, poaching has stopped in Gorongosa, and the elephant population is recovering. Andrea Turkalo/The Elephant Listening Project, Andrea Turkalo /The Elephant Listening Project. Geli Oh, 16, spent longer with Konys army than her two friendstwo and a half terrible years. 'They seem like white elephants . In Tanzania and Mozambique, elephants . In the morning, after officials from Tanzanias Wildlife Division and the U.S. Embassy arrive, Im released. A few days later the tusks proceed to Songo, the Sudanese market town where Onen said Konys men trade ivory. Issa claimed he was merely a lookout, not a poacher. National Geographic commissioned the creation of artificial tusks with hidden GPS trackers that were planted in the smuggling supplychain. 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. The study is extremely thorough and ticks off all the boxes, Roca says. All around me I hear the click-clack of automatic weapons being loaded. Normally both male and female African elephants have tusks, which are really a pair of massive teeth. They found that the tuskless trait was genetic, found in the X chromosome, and it was deadly in males. From the moment of his capture, Onen says, he was a complainer. 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. It sort of found me. But its rare to figure out the genetics behind this human-caused evolution, experts say. AUDIO: Justin O'Neill. Suddenly they move steadily north, about 12 miles a day along the border with South Sudan, avoiding all roads. 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. 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. Soldiers Kill Wild Elephant. South Sudan. Seleka and its rival, anti-Balaka, have set fire to people, thrown them off bridges, and murdered people wantonly, turning CAR into a lawless statethe kind of place where Konys group and other terrorist organizations thrive. To test ivory, dealers will scratch a tusk with a knife or hold a lighter under it; ivory is a tooth and wont melt. During the civil war in Mozambique, soldiers killed elephants with tusks in order to sell the ivory, so fewer elephants with tusks survived. One possibility is that surges of intense hunting have occurred on and off in Gorongosa over millennia, letting the genes occasionally provide a benefit. It's run by a band of men who, if not exactly soldiers-of-fortune, certainly are trained warriors. 75/129 = 58.1%. In March 2006 he fled for the DRC and set up camp in Garamba National Park, then home to some 4,000 elephants. By 1913, the African elephant population had dropped to an estimated 10 million. "You know, a lot of the NGOs, we just cut and run," she tells us matter-of-factly. According to Col. Mike Kabango, of the African Union forces, the image shows a large tent and two smaller ones; to Ryan Stage, a remote-sensing specialist in Colorado, it shows a large truck and two small tents. According to Cline Sissler-Bienvenu, Francophone Africa director for the International Fund for Animal Welfare, who led a group into the park after the slaughter, the poachers were most likely from Darfurs Rizeigat tribal group, with ties to the janjaweedthe violent, Sudanese-government-backed militias that have committed atrocities in Darfur. The Rhodesian armed forces lacked the manpower to effectively protect its 1,300-kilometre (800 mi) border with Mozambique against entering ZANLA insurgents. VIDEO: J.J. Kelley, NG Studios. Rangers practice their riding skills at Zakouma National Park, in Chad. In 1978, the elephant was listed as threatened under the United States' Endangered Species Act. 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. All rights reserved. During the same period, neighboring Mozambique is reported to have lost 48 percent of its elephants. As she sips her tea in the Providence coffee shop, Turkalo is the picture of calm. A booming Chinese middle class with an insatiable taste for ivory, crippling poverty in Africa, weak and corrupt law enforcement, and more ways than ever to kill an elephant have created a perfect storm. I unzip my suitcase to expose two fake tusks and hand him letters from the U.S. This shift might be due to random chance or inbreeding after a population goes through a bottleneck. But instead, that morning the poachers were hiding among trees surrounding the rangers camp. 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. ". 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. They can get what they want today, he said, and keep it there for two, three, or even more than five years.. It hadnt explodedyet. 19/129 = 14.7%. The reason why the soldiers killed the elephants was to gain ammunition and arms from the money received after selling their ivory. They included South Sudanese armed forces (SPLA) and Sudanese military, as well as defectors from those militaries and an assortment of Sudan-based rebels. As of this writing, my artificial tusks sent out their last communication from a Sudanese town called Ed Daein, 500 miles southwest of Khartoum. 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. Garamba is managed through a partnership between the DRCs wildlife department and African Parks, a group based in Johannesburg, South Africa. PHOTO EDITOR: Kathy Moran. Six years later, on October 25, 2014, Onen tells me, his poaching mission to Garamba was scheduled to deliver its ivory to Kony in Sudan. That's where Princeton evolutionary biologist Shane Campbell-Staton found himself a few years ago. It's nothing extraordinary for humans. We meet in a busy coffee shop full of students from nearby Brown University. 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. 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. The tension broke. He said they bury sealed buckets of water along parched travel routes and bury ivory for safekeeping as well. So did the African Union military forces, whose CAR-based men in Obo are tasked with finding Kony. Halfway through our patrol, we come upon a clearing of burned grass beside the Kassi River, the site of a recent battle between Garamba rangers and SPLA poachers, in which, rangers tell me, they killed two poachers. 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. But it could take a long time for tusked females to become as common as they once were. On September 11, 2014, Michael Onen, a sergeant in Konys army, walked out of Garamba National Park carrying an AK-47, five magazines of ammunition, and a story. An official in Dar es Salaams international airport, in Tanzaniaone of several countries I scouted for launching my tusks into the illegal tradesquints at an x-ray screen as my luggage rolls through hisscanner. Click the arrow below to hear the amazing audio tale they brought home. So 50% of her daughters will be tusked. 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 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. National Geographic television producer J.J.Kelley takes the floor in the waiting area. "As a result there were large numbers of soldiers in the area and a lot of associated. In May 2013 poachers with the insurgent group Seleka massacred 26 elephants at Dzanga Bai, amineral-rich watering hole in CAR. The UN estimated that the massacre displaced more than a hundred thousand Congolese and Sudanese. Widows now get a sum equal to six years of a rangers salary. CORNISH: Campbell-Staton had heard all of this before. 4. Onen had been part of an LRA poaching operation in Garamba consisting of 41 fighters, including Konys son Salim. DNA suggests that some of the ivory is from elephants killed in May 2013 at Dzanga Bai in CAR. A pilot study published this year showed that the presence of a beehive fence reduced the odds of an elephant crossing the river by 95%. At least 26 elephants were massacred at the Dzanga Bai in the Central African Republic in the spring of 2013. When north and South Sudan, avoiding all roads other, smile radiantly and... Robert Pringle, an outpost vulnerable both to Sudanese poachers and Konys army with Konys army than her two and... Studied to help identify them going up against the killers invasive snakes in the air, '' she.. Females to become as common as they once were back in a busy coffee shop of! Revolver and he might have been drinking poaching has stopped in Gorongosa National park then. Just the man for me.. a white elephant is a reporter at Science, covering issues! 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