South African Development Community (SADC) members have been calling for legal international ivory trade for many years. Their pro-trade rhetoric can be boiled down into two main arguments.

First, Southern African nations contain most of the remaining elephant populations on the continent proving they’re managing wildlife successfully. Second, the economic potential of legal ivory trade can fund future conservation programs and benefit elephants.

While it is true Eastern African nations were hit hardest by the recent poaching crisis, it is naive to say Southern African nations fared better due to their wildlife conservation programs. Additionally, efforts to legalize the international ivory trade will reverse the positive effects of the 1989 trade ban and increase poaching pressure across the continent.

When looking at why Southern African nations fared better in the recent poaching crisis, it is critical to understand where the majority of poaching occurred and why.

Scientists compared DNA results from past African elephant studies to recent illegal ivory seizures and found poaching largely occurred in two centralized hotspots within Central and Eastern Africa.

The split between the two areas can be attributed to the types of elephant species found on each side of the continent. The central hotspot supplies forest elephant ivory while the eastern hotspot supplies bush elephant ivory.

Forest elephants are prized among ivory traffickers due to morphological differences in their tusks compared to their bush elephant cousins. Tusks from forest elephants are harder and allow for more intricate designs during ivory carving.

But why was Eastern Africa hit harder than Southern Africa when both areas had relatively abundant bush elephant populations? The answer comes from the logistics of transporting ivory from Africa to Asia.

An analysis of 19th century ivory trafficking routes showed elephants were poached within interior East Africa and their tusks brought to the coast for shipment overseas. Coastal ports provided easy access to shipping lanes for international markets.

While logistics have greatly improved in modern day, it still makes sense for ivory traffickers to use ocean freight when moving product due to the scale of transportation and economics. This is why we continue to see Mombasa, Zanzibar, and Dar es Salaam listed as the three main exit ports for illegally trafficked ivory.