ArticleProceedings. Biological sciences2023
Drivers and facilitators of the illegal killing of elephants across 64 African sites.
Article in Proceedings. Biological sciences, 2023. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 5 papers, 1 of them a synthesis that pooled it.
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Who cites it
5 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
- Strengthening biodiversity conservation and One Health through ranger monitoring of wildlife health in protected areas.Conservation biology : the journal of the Society for Conservation Biology · 2026Article
- Pan-African review of cultural uses of carnivores.PloS one · 2025Review
- Whole-Genome Analyses Reveal the Distinct Taxonomic Status of the Hainan Population of EndangeredEvolutionary applications · 2024Article
- Drivers and facilitators of the illegal killing of elephants across 64 African sites.Proceedings. Biological sciences · 2023Article
Corrections and comments
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Authors and funding
11 authors.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
Ivory poaching continues to threaten African elephants. We (1) used criminology theory and literature evidence to generate hypotheses about factors that may drive, facilitate or motivate poaching, (2) identified datasets representing these factors, and (3) tested those factors with strong hypotheses and sufficient data quality for empirical associations with poaching. We advance on previous analyses of correlates of elephant poaching by using additional poaching data and leveraging new datasets for previously untested explanatory variables. Using data on 10 286 illegally killed elephants detected at 64 sites in 30 African countries (2002-2020), we found strong evidence to support the hypotheses that the illegal killing of elephants is associated with poor national governance, low law enforcement capacity, low household wealth and health, and global elephant ivory prices. Forest elephant populations suffered higher rates of illegal killing than savannah elephants. We found only weak evidence that armed conflicts may increase the illegal killing of elephants, and no evidence for effects of site accessibility, vegetation density, elephant population density, precipitation or site area. Results suggest that addressing wider systemic challenges of human development, corruption and consumer demand would help reduce poaching, corroborating broader work highlighting these more ultimate drivers of the global illegal wildlife trade.
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