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Community conservancies provide jobs as rangers and income to poor local people. Then the clans protect the elephants. Elephants are being killed faster than they can reproduce. Their range has decreased from 3 million square miles in 1978 to 1 million square miles in 2007. The Russian mob, Irish organized gangs, the Chinese mafia, and African and Asian gangs control the $ 188 million per year illegal ivory trade. This is part of the huge, $ 19 Billion per year illegal trade in plants and animals: illicit timber, animals, birds, rhino horns, animal pelts, .... There are many good groups working to save elephants: the Environmental Investigation Agency, Born Free USA, Wildllfe Direct, Save the Elephants, the park and wildlife wardens, Kenya's Northern Rangelands Trust (that do the community conservancies), the International Fund for Animal Welfare, WWF's TRAFFIC, the Project for the Application of Law for Fauna, Wildlife Direct, Maisha Consulting, ConflictArmament, C4ADS, Wildlife Conservation Society, WWF, Elephant Listening Project, Global Witness, Eagle Wildlife Law Enforcement, the Max Planck Institute, and Greenpeace. link ( some of the groups come from the other articles: New Yorker and Earth Island.)

Only a few thousand forest elephants remain in the Central African Republic. 62 % of them were killed and they lost one third of their range between 2002 and 2011. Peter Canby wrote in the New Yorker about Andrea Turkalo, a biologist who has observed them for years. Activists, groups, game wardens, and researchers try to protect the elephants. Militias and armed gangs poach them to sell to Chinese profiteers. Chinese logging companies log the buffers around the parks, and the logging roads and trade in conflict timber to China allow the poachers to get access to the elephants and to export the ivory. link

A Boulder activist with Frack Free Colorado hung from the bridge with other Greenpeace activists, delaying the Shell icebreaker ship from getting up Alaska. The activists who were hanging 100 feet below the bridge and 100 feet above the water and roped together. After 3 of them were removed by police, lots of kayaks tried to block the ship. When the police grabbed the kayaks, some of the kayakers dove into the water and swam out to try to block the ship. This delay might keep the drilling from happening, the ice free season is short. LINK This reminds me of Ben White of the Animal Welfare Institute. He would swim next to navy ships with superloud sonar and next to oil prospecting ships with superloud sounds, to put his body in the way these tests that would harm whales, dolphins, and fish. He also would cut the nets that trapped dolphins and whales that were being trapped for aquariums. Link link .

New loopholes would remove protections from ponds, wetlands, and streams if they are over 4000 feet from other waters, if they are used for farming, ranching, or silviculture, if they are channelized or ditched, or if they are connected underground to other waters.

link to article on how ivory is smuggled from Africa to China and Hong Kong via Thailand, Vietnam, Laos, and Burma.

Corruption, organized crime, low pay for game wardens and custom officials, high demand from China, and more trade between China and Africa contribute to Elephant poaching. Link