Alarm at decline in Kenyan elephants

The study said that in 2000 the region of Samburu had 38 known elephant males over 30 years of age. But by 2011 only five of those original 38 were still alive. Almost half of the known females over 30 years also died during this period, at least half from illegal killings.

Targeted poaching deaths of Africa’s elephants have accelerated in the past few years.

The killings are driven by the rising price of ivory as demand increases across Asia – and especially in China – for the rare natural resource.

Animal experts worry that unless China’s increasingly wealthy middle class can be educated about how elephants must not be killed to provide the ivory used to make small, coveted trinkets, the world’s elephant population will be in danger of being hunted to extinction.

“Ivory demand and prices have reached a point at which poachers are willing to target well-protected, closely monitored populations,” said Iain Douglas-Hamilton, founder of Save The Elephants, in a statement to release the report.

“This is now being replicated in other protected areas across Africa.”

The new study, published in PLOS One, an online scientific journal, found the elephants of Samburu appeared to recognise the threat they faced and increased their reproductive rate.

Africa’s elephants last faced a threat to their survival in the 1970s and 1980s.

But the banning of ivory helped stem the threat until recent years, when the price again began climbing.

This month a family of 12 elephants was killed in Kenya’s largest wildlife park; all their tusks were removed.