Story highlights African savanna elephant populations are declining 8% per year, according to the Great Elephant Census

Kahumbu: Despite evidence, some countries will deny findings and continue to promote ivory trade for economic gain

Dr. Paula Kahumbu is the CEO of the Kenyan conservation NGO WildlifeDirect and is leading the Hands Off Our Elephants Campaign with Kenya's first lady Margaret Kenyatta. Hands Off Our Elephants is a campaign to restore Kenyan leadership in elephant conservation through behavior change at all levels of society, from rural communities to business leaders and political decision makers. The opinions expressed in this commentary are those of the author.

(CNN) The headline conclusion of the Great Elephant Census that Africa's elephants have declined should not have come as a surprise to anyone. But the horrifying extent has sent a massive blow to the heart of the conservation world, where millions of dollars have been spent in trying to protect these beloved animals.

The decline of Africa's elephants should make us rethink the wisdom of a decision made in 1997 by CITES (Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora), which allowed four southern African countries to have their elephants moved from Appendix I listing, with the highest level of protection, to Appendix II, which allows some trade.

This opened the door for a one-off sale of ivory to Japan in 2002 and to China and Japan in 2008, despite warnings from experts that this would unleash explosive demand -- resulting in ivory price inflation -- and trigger an uncontrollable poaching surge that would feed illegal ivory into the legal markets of China. The predictions were correct, but an underestimate of what happened because nobody imagined the emergence of international criminal cartels, or the rise of online sales.

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CITES introduced a monitoring system called MIKE (Monitoring of Illegal Killing of Elephants) to detect if there was any evidence of a poaching surge. This system has consistently concluded that poaching is increasing, but "no evidence was found to suggest that illegal killing of elephants increased or decreased as a direct result of the one-off ivory sales or the nine-year moratorium."

Instead, the program attributes the poaching to poor governance, corruption and poverty, thus placing the blame on poor African countries and ignoring the fact that the killing is a direct result of demand in countries like China, Japan and the US, which was unleashed when one-off sales were allowed because the stigma associated with owning ivory was lifted.

CNN's David McKenzie speaks with an official at the site of an elephant slaughter.

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