Elephant Poaching Research Paper

In East Africa many parks find themselves under siege for their elephants and ivory. Poachers are sneaking into parks, killing masses of elephants and then crossing borders to evade park rangers and police. Then the ivory from the elephant tusks are smuggled to various destinations for sale on the black market. This is when Taxidermist George Dante was tasked with creating an artificial tusk with a tracking device to track trafficking of ivory and to potentially find terrorist hideouts.

The main countries affected by the problem of elephant poaching are The Central African Republic, The Democratic Republic of The Congo, and Uganda. From these countries Terrorist groups such as the Lord’s Resistance Army will cross the border into South

Sudan where they can take refuge. This makes them nearly impossible to track. In addition to poaching, terror groups target local villages and abduct people to make child soldier armies. In particular Joseph Kony leader of the Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA) claimed his goal was to overthrow the Ugandan government and rule by his opinion of the Ten Commandments. Since Kony made the LRA they have killed tens of thousands of people and abducted many more. In 1994 Kony and the LRA left Uganda for Sudan starting border hopping that has made him difficult to track. Once in Sudan the government supplied him with food, weapons, and medicine. In 2006 Kony went to the Democratic Republic of Congo where he hid in Garamba National Park, and home to more than 4,000 elephants. He signed a peace treaty with the Ugandan Government and stayed in the park. While in the park Kony’s men have decreased to only around 200. Kony’s remaining men hunted elephants and ate the meat after sending off the ivory. This ivory is used as Kony’s bank account and a source of money to fund his actions.
Garamba Park has roughly 150 rangers to combat the illegal poaching. These 150 are lacking the proper equipment to properly combat the poachers. Even though there is enough funding to outfit the rangers with better equipment the approval from the army has not been passed. Leaving the rangers with old AK-47’s mostly recovered from the poachers and a handful of bullets per person. These under supported rangers are the main opposition to illegal poaching and ivory trafficking in East Africa.
The real problems of the illegal ivory trade is that it supports these terrorist groups such as the LRA, and that the lack of a strong governments allow for a terrorist safe haven. In addition, the poaching is pushing elephants to near extinction, and harming local villages. The solution to all of these problems begins with strengthening the government's. The strengthened governments would allow for a more staffed, better trained and funder group of rangers. This would cause the amount of elephant poaching to rapidly decrease. When the amount of elephant poaching decreases the terrorist group's main sources of money rapidly decreases and they will grow broke. After the terrorist groups are eliminated the local villages can restore themselves and stop worrying about abductions. Also this would eliminate the border hopping tactic that allows many poachers to avoid law enforcement.
All in all the illegal poaching and terrorism is a problem that can easily be solved and avoided. This would help restore the elephant population, eliminate terrorist groups, and restabilize Africa, making a win-win situation for everyone.