Between 1980 and 1986, South India had experienced a serious poaching wave when almost 150 elephants were said to have been killed. By 1992, when the genesis of this fact file took place, the worst seemed to have been over for the Indian elephant. Trade in ivory had been banned in 1986 by the government. There had been no formal protests from ivory traders though the tradition had been centuries old. Traders, in the meanwhile, continued to import, carve and export African ivory. The ban became absolute after the government banned all imports of ivory in 1991. International ban too became complete when the convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Flora and Fauna too acted similarly. The elephant population in Africa which had plummeted from 1.3 million in 1979 to about 0.3-0.6 million in 1995 began showing signs of recovery.

The scenario was too good to last. Poaching of tuskers began picking up in India. That was when the Asian Elephant Conservation Centre (now, Asian Elephant Research and Conservation Centre) and the Wildlife Protection Society of India decided to study the ivory trade in India. By 1996, undercover dialogues with former ivory traders began to yield information that the ivory trade expected a legal resumption soon. They talked of a meeting in Africa where a decision to resume ivory trade would be taken. One of these meetings took place in Kathmandu in Nepal and another in Thrissur in India with low-level traders who had never heard of either CITES or the Conference of Parties (COP). Tusker poaching picked up with 102 tuskers being killed in 1997, compared to 88 the previous year.

The process of downlisting the African elephant at the CITES COP at Harare in 1997 became infamous. The vote was won by a narrow margin on the last day in a secret ballot particularly because the European Union countries abstained. As things stood, three populations of Zimbabwe, Botswana and Namibia had been downlisted and only a one-time sale of 60 tonnes of ivory to one country was to take place a year and half later. But the message had already gone out to Asia. Traders here were now certain that a reopening of the ivory trade was not a possibility anymore, but a reality.

The AECC-WPSI study came out with facts that were not entirely unexpected. The 1996-98 period saw a tremendous escalation in poaching pressure on the Asian elephant with as many as 253 elephants in poached in India in the period. The actual figure could be as high as two-three times if undetected carcasses and deliberate coverups were to be considered. Poaching was also reported in Myanmar, Sri Lanka and Indonesia. More than three quarters of the various populations of the Asian elephant have been found to be affected by poaching. Fragmentation of habitat was found to be a problem. Poaching pressures, the authors noted, was the last straw for most populations that were already fighting a multitude of threats.

Since ivory poachers of Asian elephants target only males, the target is lower than the 40,000-50,000. In India (which has a resident population of more than 50 per cent of the global population), it is estimated that there could be as few as 1,500 bull tuskers left. The fact that many of them are in isolated or small populations means that the effect of the removal of even a few bulls from a population could be extremely disastrous for the survival chances of that population.

[This is an unpriced publication. Copies can be procured on specific requests from the two organisations which conducted the study - Ed.]