Elephant Poaching Equals $25 Million Lost in Tourism

Elephant poaching can lead to a loss of tourism revenue of up to $25 million ever year.

Poachers looking to capitalize on the very lucrative trade in rhino horns and illegal ivory kill around 20,000 elephants each year in Africa. This has led to a 20 percent decline in the elephant population. To make matters worse, the elephant poaching also leads to $25 million lost in tourism opportunities.

A recent status report issued by the International Union for the Conservation of Nature( IUCN) points out that Africa only has an estimated 415,000 elephants left alive in the wild. The report emphasizes the strong ethical arguments in support of the protection of elephants from poachers. Their argument is reinforced by a new study, published this Tuesday in the Journal Nature Communications, which has found that there is also a very strong financial incentive to strengthen the protection measures of animals.

A team of researchers from the University of Vermont, the World Wildlife Fund and the University of Cambridge, has discovered that African tourism is severely affected by elephant poaching. More specifically, countries with elephant populations affected by poaching lose up to $25 million in tourism revenue.

For their study, scientists took into consideration how several parks were affected by an increase in elephant poaching. Their findings suggest that the conservation efforts should be increased, even if purely on a financial reasoning. For every dollar invested in measures that protect the populations of elephants in countries in the West, East and South of Africa, can lead to a $1.78 return. This type of study is the first one that has managed to offer a continent-wide quantification of financial losses suffered from elephant poaching.

Unfortunately, their financial arguments meant to convince the countries to improve their conservation efforts only make sense where elephant tourism is high. Currently, countries with large parks in savannahs which allow tourists to easily spot and admire elephants have the best financial incentive to protect the animals. However, countries located in Central Africa where forest elephants predominantly live have less to gain from conservation efforts. This is caused by the fact that those elephants are elusive, much harder to spot by visitors and thus tourism activities are not as profitable.

In this regard, the scientists have stated that financial incentives should only complement the ethical imperative and other forms of justification in protecting the biodiversity of our planet.

Image source: Wikipedia

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Nancy Young

When I was younger I used to spend almost all of my free time playing computer games. My mom and dad would go mental over this. “You’re never going to do anything with your life if you are going to play games all day” they used to say. What was even more unusual was the fact that I played more games than most of the guys in my friend group. Looking back, I have to admit that I probably played a bit too much, but I also learned a lot of great things. When I turned 20 I decided that it was high-time to make some money of my own, but the only jobs I could get were that of waitress or cashier. How exciting. After several excruciating months of serving tables I had a great idea: since I love gaming so much, why don’t I write about it? That’s when I started doing small writing projects on Elance. Eventually, I got an offer for a part-time job. During that time I learned all about content marketing strategies and how search engines work. I started writing about various topics such as technology, health and lifestyle and discovered that I was actually good at it. On November 24, 2014, I became part of the ArgyllFreePress team.