Abstract

For centuries, people have hunted and killed both African and Asian elephants for their ivory. Despite many efforts to protect these animals, elephant populations worldwide are still declining. The rapidly increasing human population, on the other hand, has led to elephants’ habitat shrinking. This further endangers elephants, leading to more frequent encounters between them and humans, which only makes things worse. When trying to find a solution to this problem, we stumbled upon some disturbing findings: poachers in Myanmar have started to kill elephants for their skin and meat instead of just their ivory. This makes all elephants a target, including females and juveniles, not only the males who have tusks. Myanmar has the largest remaining natural areas suitable for sustaining elephant populations, so a rapid decline in their populations there would pose a great risk to their global populations.