Some of the last big tuskers gather in Tsavo, Kenya. A single large tusk sold on the local black market can bring $6,000, enough to support an unskilled Kenyan worker for ten years.

VORY WARS

Bodies are what remain in Cameroon’s Bouba Ndjidah National Park after one of the largest mass elephant slaughters in decades. Armed with grenades and AK-47s, poachers killed more

than 300.

The home of a Filipino collector is lavish with ivory religious icons. “I don’t see the elephant,” says another Filipino collector. “I see the Lord.”

A worker in China’s largest ivory-carving factory finishes a piece symbolizing prosperity. China legally bought 73 tons of ivory from Africa in 2008; since then, poaching and smuggling have both soared.

Smugglers failed to get this contraband past Kenya’s law enforcement, but the animals are still gone. Small tusks indicate that young elephants were poached.

Kruba Dharmamuni, aka the Elephant Monk, keeps Asian elephants at his temple in Thailand. Activists

accuse him of starving one elephant to use its ivory for amulets, a charge he rejects.

To keep the ivory from the black market, a plainclothes ranger hacks the tusks off a bull elephant killed illegally in Kenya’s Amboseli National Park. In the first half of this year six park rangers died

protecting Kenya’s elephants; meanwhile, rangers killed 23 poachers.

A Chinese reporter in Kenya covers the 2011 burning of 5.5 tons of smuggled ivory. Kenya helped launch a global ivory ban in 1989 but lately has been stockpiling its ivory. The ivory here

belonged to other countries.

A sculpture like this can take a master carver years to produce. Front and center are the popular Taoist gods Shou, Lu, and Fu—symbols of long life, money, and luck. “We hope—no, we insist—

we can continue to protect these skills,” says Wang Shan, secretary-general of the China Arts and Crafts Association.

Filipino master ivory carver Marcial Bernales transforms an elephant tusk into the head and hands of the Madonna. His first love is carving wood, but ivory has a special draw. “Much high prices,” he says. Smuggled ivory flows to Asia via the Philippines, itself a destination for illegal ivory, which is carved into religious icons and often smuggled to other countries, including the

United States. Raw tusks are not Bernales’s only medium—the heads of some of his saints began as billiard balls.

A cemetery for privately owned elephants in Surin, Thailand, shows deep devotion. Thailand allows internal trading of ivory from domesticated Asian elephants, and smuggled African ivory

finds its way into the mix.

Last Stand in Zakouma

Slaking their thirst at a dry season water hole on the Salamat River, elephants in Zakouma National Park have flourished, with their numbers growing from 1,100 to around 3,500 during

the past 21 years. Outside the park, the scene is not so benign.

Skin and bones are all that remain of the 20 elephants killed last May just outside the southern border of Zakouma National Park. Poachers hauled away the ivory, leaving park officials with an

ongoing challenge: How to protect herds that wander beyond the park's protective umbrella.

When one matriarch searches for food outside Zakouma, a herd of 800 elephants falls in behind. Wise old females, responsible for the well-being of family groups, know every trail and creek

crossing, every village and road. They know where dangers lie, and where to find the best forage.

Armed guards patrol Zakouma, but they're outnumbered by poachers—and outgunned. In the past eight years, six guards have been killed by poachers, and at least six poachers by guards.

After ivory poachers hacked the face off a 20-year-old elephant, park guards were left with few clues and a cold trail.

Park guards will lock up these tusks, but the men who killed the elephant got away. Seizures of illegal ivory reached record levels in 2005. In China—the fastest growing consumer—dealers sell

worked ivory on the Internet, shipping it worldwide./

Water holes are in short supply at the end of the dry season, when as many as 500 elephants can converge on this pool near Tinga. By June, torrential rains engulf the park, and the herds

leave in search of better food. At Zakouma, sanctuary comes and goes with the seasons.

BYJ.JAYAKRISHNAN