ArticleNature communications2019
African elephant poaching rates correlate with local poverty, national corruption and global ivory price.
Article in Nature communications, 2019. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 16 papers, 1 of them a synthesis that pooled it.
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The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
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Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
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Who cites it
16 citing papers in PubMed, 1 synthesis or guideline pooled it.
- Systematic review of the impact of restrictive wildlife trade measures on conservation of iconic species in southern Africa.Conservation biology : the journal of the Society for Conservation Biology · 2025Pooled it
- Assessing the integration of social marketing principles in ivory demand management interventions in China and Southeast Asia.Conservation biology : the journal of the Society for Conservation Biology · 2026Review
- Using lessons from criminal justice research to improve conservation law enforcement research and practice.Conservation biology : the journal of the Society for Conservation Biology · 2026Review
- The Emerging Role of Prolactin as a Biomarker for Reproduction, Health, and Welfare in Wildlife Species: Elephants as a Model.Advances in experimental medicine and biology · 2026Review
- Microsatellite Variation of African ElephantsEcology and evolution · 2025Article
- Short-read full-length 16S rRNA amplicon sequencing for characterisation of the respiratory bacteriome of captive and free-ranging African elephants (Loxodonta africana).Scientific reports · 2024Article
- African savanna raptors show evidence of widespread population collapse and a growing dependence on protected areas.Nature ecology & evolution · 2024Article
- Drivers and facilitators of the illegal killing of elephants across 64 African sites.Proceedings. Biological sciences · 2023Article
- More than half of data deficient species predicted to be threatened by extinction.Communications biology · 2022Article
- Financing conservation by valuing carbon services produced by wild animals.Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America · 2022Article
- Social Disruption Impairs Predatory Threat Assessment in African Elephants.Animals : an open access journal from MDPI · 2022Article
- Simulated poaching affects global connectivity and efficiency in social networks of African savanna elephants-An exemplar of how human disturbance impacts group-living species.PLoS computational biology · 2022Article
- Air Pollution From Forest and Vegetation Fires in Southeast Asia Disproportionately Impacts the Poor.GeoHealth · 2021Article
- State-space models reveal a continuing elephant poaching problem in most of Africa.Scientific reports · 2020Article
- Helping to heal nature and ourselves through human-rights-based and gender-responsive One Health.One health outlook · 2020Review
- Global extent and drivers of mammal population declines in protected areas under illegal hunting pressure.PloS one · 2020Article
Corrections and comments
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Authors and funding
5 authors.
Funding
Abstract
Poaching is contributing to rapid declines in elephant populations across Africa. Following high-profile changes in the political environment, the overall number of illegally killed elephants in Africa seems to be falling, but to evaluate potential conservation interventions we must understand the processes driving poaching rates at local and global scales. Here we show that annual poaching rates in 53 sites strongly correlate with proxies of ivory demand in the main Chinese markets, whereas between-country and between-site variation is strongly associated with indicators of corruption and poverty. Our analysis reveals a recent decline in annual poaching mortality rate from an estimated peak of over 10% in 2011 to <4% in 2017. Based on these findings, we suggest that continued investment in law enforcement could further reduce poaching, but is unlikely to succeed without action that simultaneously reduces ivory demand and tackles corruption and poverty.
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