How Do We Make Money Off of Elephants?

Despite increased attention from authorities, NGOs, and the media, the poaching crisis and illegal wildlife trade have continued their rapid growth of the last few years. The stats remain astounding: tens of thousands of elephants killed per year, six straight years of record rhino poaching numbers, and just a few thousand tigers left, not to mention the countless other species illegally bought and sold. The big question remains: What can be done to slow what's considered the fourth-largest illegal market worldwide?

How to break the trade is the focus of Thursday's London Conference on the Illegal Wildlife Trade, hosted by the UK government at the behest of Prime Minister David Cameron, as well as at a Zoological Society of London symposium over the next two days. The symposium has a good lineup, and a livestream is available for those of you who want to follow along; we'll also be sharing news from both the ZSL events and the conference as it comes up.

Today, the wildlife world is focused on a new report from the International Institute for Environment and Development that addresses a problem that too often falls by the wayside: How can local people be incentivized to protect the imperiled species they live with? Or, to put it in blunt terms, how can people make money off elephants?

It sounds like a callous question to ask, but it's also pragmatic. Conservation and anti-poaching efforts are expensive, time-consuming endeavors, and it's unrealistic to expect that anyone could take those efforts on without serious financial support.

Much of the focus on the wildlife trade centers around enforcement—arresting poachers, seizing shipments of illegal products, and jailing smugglers. While such enforcement is crucial to stemming criminal activity, it's also reactive. Throwing someone in jail because they killed an elephant won't bring back that elephant, and even threatening to shoot poachers on sight may not be enough of a deterrent when a potential poacher has few other opportunities as lucrative as illegal ivory.

That's why fighting the demand side of the trade is also crucial. The best current example is that of the Chinese shark fin trade, which has declined heavily in the face of successful awareness campaigns. As I've written in the past, the shark fin success story is a great model for the wildlife trade. By continuously informing potential consumers that illegal wildlife products are causing the collapse of animal populations—something ivory crushing ceremonies are designed to do—demand for said products will fall and hopefully bring prices down to levels where poaching and smuggling isn't worth the risk.

Enforcement and demand reduction thus go hand in hand, and big new anti-trafficking initiatives, like that announced by the White House, tend to skew towards the former—much like the drug trade. But the IIED report explains that there's a third component that, also like the drug trade, is crucial, but often overlooked: How can local communities, which are often underdeveloped, afford to sustain anti-poaching efforts?

As the report argues, charismatic wild species like elephants and rhinos are among the most valuable assets that many rural communities have. Conserving those species is extremely costly, which makes relying on conservation alone an unsustainable business, unless funding is found elsewhere. Tourism is valuable, certainly, but finding the cash to develop infrastructure is a tall order. Considering how much ivory, rhino horn, and the like are worth, what about a sustainable, legal trade?

"Responses to wildlife crime must recognise that sustainable use of wildlife—including well-managed legal trade—can underpin rural development and help motivate and fund conservation," reads the report. Again, it comes down to simple economics: "Addressing wildlife crime effectively means developing approaches that protect wildlife for poor people, not from poor people," the report states.

The suggestion that trade in high-demand animals be legalized is certainly controversial, and has been for years. South Africa, for one, has long lobbied to auction off its stockpile of rhino horn, a move that I've previously argued would increase speculation and make horn laundering an easier proposition. There's a historical precedent: A 2008 ivory auction is thought to have at least partially sparked a boom in demand and speculation that's sent ivory prices—and poaching rates—skyward.

At the same time, it's shockingly unfair for foreign nations to expect that a developing community would spend its resources on protecting wild species without them also chipping in. West Africa's lions are the perfect example: Maintaining lion populations requires an incredible amount of funding that's got to come from somewhere. If hunters are willing to pay huge prices for a lion tag, funding that would support further conservation efforts, what incentive does a host country have to turn that money down? Someone's got to pay for lions, after all.

The IIED report lays out an even more blunt example: If an elephant's tusks are the most valuable resource in a developing community, it's naive to think that you can completely stop poaching without offering an alternative incentive. "Under the right conditions, sustainable wildlife use and trade can provide enough incentive (and finance) to deliver both conservation and development goals," reads the report.

Broadly, the IIED report doesn't simply suggest that locals should be allowed to kill whatever they want as long as there's an economic reason. Instead, it argues that development should be a key part of any anti-trafficking initiatives; the millions of dollars the US has pledged to fight trafficking shouldn't go just to law enforcement, but also to helping build rural economies. In the face of safer, legal economic opportunities, poaching becomes less attractive.

But because finding international funding for development, especially if the aim is to protect wild animals, is a difficult proposition, IIED asks that sustainable hunting, especially by locals, be considered during the upcoming discussions on the wildlife trade.

Poaching is negative any way you look at it, as important animals are killed and their parts exported without value being added to the local community. A regulated trade could instead allow locals to fund development while also supporting conservation efforts. Allowing locals to harvest elephants is unpalatable to many, and corruption is a huge concern.

But if the alternative is that conservation efforts remain chronically underfunded with no incentive for protecting key species, then perhaps a legal trade shouldn't be ruled out. When regulated with solid population data, sustainable hunting can be a powerful supporter of conservation.

Of course, there's a third alternative: We could find another way to help support community development that doesn't involve treating ivory and rhino horn as a currency. Foreign investment in developing economies and support for development of eco-tourism infrastructure are both extremely valuable, but heretofore have not been high priorities for the international community. Regardless, conserving the world's imperiled species is a costly endeavor, and without sustainable incentives, conservation efforts won't receive the support they need.

@derektmead