Ivory’s Trail of Terror
An investigative journalist used fake elephant tusks to trace illegal ivory’s violent path through Africa.

Poachers slaughter some 30,000 African elephants for their tusks every year. The killings are decimating the species, which experts say could go extinct within just a few decades. But elephants are hardly the only victims of the ivory trade. Next month’s National Geographic cover story, "Tracking Ivory," exposes ivory’s role in financing African terrorists and militias, who not only murder park rangers trying to stop them but also enslave, rape, and kill villagers, and turn children into soldiers.

Investigative journalist Bryan Christy devised a way to trace ivory’s violent path out of Africa. The scheme sounds like something out of Mission Impossible, he told NPR’s Fresh Air. Christy commissioned the production of a pair of artificial tusks that would be realistic enough to fool even the trained eye, then outfitted them with GPS trackers. It worked. The fakes looked and felt so authentic, Tanzanian officials arrested Christy for smuggling at an airport.
After planting them on the black market in the Central African Republic, Christy watched the tusks make their way north—all the way to the Kafia Kingi enclave in Darfur, Sudan, where notorious warlord Joseph Kony is suspected to be hiding.
Head to National Geographic to follow the ivory trail yourself and check out more pictures, video, and audio from this remarkable—and heartbreaking—investigation. And tune into National Geographic Channel on Sunday, August 30 at 8/7c to watch the film, "Explorer: Warlords of Ivory." Every step of the way, you’ll be reminded that ivory is not only an elephant tragedy, but a human one.



All images from National Geographic's September cover story, "Tracking Ivory," courtesy of National Geographic.
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