ArticleScientific reports2020
State-space models reveal a continuing elephant poaching problem in most of Africa.
Article in Scientific reports, 2020. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 11 papers, 1 of them a synthesis that pooled it.
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Who cites it
11 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
- 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
- Do elephants really never forget? What we know about elephant memory and a call for further investigation.Learning & behavior · 2025Review
- A novel UPLC-based method to identify elephant and mammoth ivory.Scientific reports · 2025Article
- Land use drives differential resource selection by African elephants in the Greater Mara Ecosystem, Kenya.Movement ecology · 2024Article
- Protecting and connecting landscapes stabilizes populations of the Endangered savannah elephant.Science advances · 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
- Elephant genotypes reveal the size and connectivity of transnational ivory traffickers.Nature human behaviour · 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
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5 authors.
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Abstract
The most comprehensive data on poaching of African elephants comes from the Monitoring the Illegal Killing of Elephants (MIKE) program, which reports numbers of illegally killed carcasses encountered by rangers. Recent studies utilizing MIKE data have reported that poaching of African elephants peaked in 2011 and has been decreasing through 2018. Closer examination of these studies, however, raises questions about the conclusion that poaching is decreasing throughout the continent. To provide more accurate information on trends in elephant poaching, we analyzed MIKE data using state-space models. State-space models account for missing data and the error inherent when sampling carcasses. Using the state-space model, for 2011-2018, we found no significant temporal trends in rates of illegal killing for Southern, Central and Western Africa. Only in Eastern Africa have poaching rates decreased substantially since 2011. For Africa as a whole, poaching did decline for 2011-2018, but the decline was entirely due to Eastern African sites. Our results suggest that poaching for ivory has not diminished across most of Africa since 2011. Continued vigilance and anti-poaching efforts will be necessary to combat poaching and to conserve African elephants.
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