Drivers and facilitators of the illegal killing of elephants across 64 African sites.

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 enfor

SUBMITTER: Kuiper T 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC9832558 | biostudies-literature | 2023 Jan

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature