In the Shadows of the Congo Basin Forest, Elephants Fall to the Illegal Ivory Trade

The 1980s were not kind to African elephants. Poachers committed brutal acts in the pursuit of tusks to feed the human hunger for ivory. Gruesome images of the carnage they left behind—mutilated corpses sprawled in twisted repose, attended by bereft companions and bewildered orphans—helped document the precipitous collapse of Africa’s elephant populations. Between 1970 and 1989, as global demand for ivory grew and poachers traded traditional hunting methods for AK-47s and elephant guns, an estimated three-quarters of a million elephants were killed, leaving just 600,000 survivors. Much of Africa, once home to as many as 10 million elephants, had turned into an elephant graveyard.