Monitoring the Illegal Killing of Elephants

The use of population dynamic modeling to further improve the understanding of the impact of the level of Proportion of Illegally Killed Elephants (PIKE) on elephant populations at the Monitoring the Illegal Killing of Elephants (MIKE) sites across Africa.

The Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species (CITES) Monitoring the Illegal Killing of Elephants (MIKE) Programme is a site-based system designed to monitor trends in the illegal killing of elephants, as well as build management capacity and provide information to help range States make appropriate management and enforcement decisions. MIKE evaluates relative levels of illegal killing based on the Proportion of Illegally Killed Elephants (PIKE). PIKE is calculated as the number of illegally killed elephants found, divided by the total number of elephant carcasses encountered by patrols or other means, aggregated by year for each site. PIKE levels above 0.5 means that more elephant deaths reported were due to illegal killing than other types of death.

The CITES Secretariat, in collaboration with the MIKE-ETIS TAG, has initiated a process to investigate the use of population dynamic modelling to further improve the understanding of the impact of the level of PIKE on elephant populations at the MIKE sites across Africa, as well as a broader investigation to determine whether there are alternative means to reflect poaching pressure on affected populations. A system dynamics population model was developed by UNEP’s Science Division Foresight Unit that provides an additional resource for decision makers in understanding the impact of the level of PIKE on elephant populations.

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The use of population dynamic modeling to further improve the understanding of the impact of the level of Proportion of Illegally Killed Elephants (PIKE) on elephant populations at the Monitoring the Illegal Killing of Elephants (MIKE) sites across Africa.