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The illegal ivory trade threatens the persistence of stable wild elephant populations. The underground and covert nature of poaching makes it difficult to police. Wasser et al. used genetic tools to identify the origins of elephant tusks seized during transit (see the Perspective by Hoelzel). The majority of source animals were part of just a few wild elephant populations in Africa—and just two areas since 2006.
The illegal wildlife trade has become the world’s fourth largest transnational organized crime and African elephant ivory is a major part of that trade (1). An estimated 40,000 African elephants were killed in 2011 (2), with 41 tons of illegal ivory seized (3). Given the 51 tons of ivory seized in 2013, the number of elephants killed that year could have exceeded 50,000, out of an estimated 434,000 elephants remaining (4).
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