Wildlife

Elephants Adapt to Poaching

Elephants in eastern Africa have learned to travel at night and hide during the day to avoid poachers who are hunting tuskers into extinction, researchers reported Wednesday.

Normally elephants forage for food and migrate in daylight, resting under cover of darkness. But a sharp increase in illegal hunting driven by the global trade in ivory has forced the massive mammals to upend their usual habits.

In an upcoming study, Ihwagi details his findings, based on data gathered from 60 elephants in northern Kenya tracked with GPS devices for up to three years during the period 2002 to 2012.

The nighttime movements of the elephants increased significantly in sync with poaching levels, especially for females. In high-danger zones, females reduced daytime activity by about 50 percent on average compared to low-danger zones.

According to the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN), the number of African elephants has fallen by around 111,000 to 415,000 over the past decade.

The killing shows no sign of abating, with around 30,000 elephants slaughtered for their ivory every year, mainly to satisfy demand in Asia for products coveted as a traditional medicine or as status symbols.