IVORY  (CONT)

"Elephants are majestic animals and are not trivial to the ecosystem," said Wasser, the study's lead author and director of the Center for Conservation Biology at the University of Washington. "They are a keystone species and taking them out significantly alters the habitat. It has ripple effects on lots of different species."

Wasser and his colleagues urged western governments to help African nations curb the illegal trade by targeting poachers.

Poor nations, such as Zambia, can't do it alone, they contend.

"If it really is organized crime that's driving this, then the only hope we have of stopping it is to stop the ivory at the source, to not let it into the international market," Wasser explained. "Because once it's in the international market, the trade is very hard to stop."

The world implemented a ban on the ivory trade in 1989 amid evidence poachers had decimated the population by some 60 percent during the 1980s.

The World Conservation Union estimates some 400,000 to 600,000 African elephants remain in the wild, down from as many more than 1.3 million in 1979. Poaching and habitat loss are the key threats to the species.

Western nations contributed heavily to enforcement efforts when the international ban took effect in 1989, the researchers note, and in the next four years poaching was virtually eliminated. But the success apparently left a sense that the problem was solved and the nations withdrew their funding.

In addition to stronger enforcement, the researchers call for education programs to discourage poaching in Africa and to persuade people in Asia not to use ivory, much of which is obtained illegally.

"If people really realized what is happening they would be ashamed to be part of the crisis," Wasser said. "We don't want to spend our time catching criminals, we want to stop the crime from happening. That's the most effective enforcement you can do."

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