Bryan Christyis an investigative journalist forNational Geographicand he has been on a mission : “ to hunt the people who kill elephants . ” In an awing feature film detailed in the magazine’sSeptember cover story , Christy capture a taxidermist to design stilted , realistic elephant tusks and embed them with GPS tracking flake . He then followed the fake tusks as they swapped hand with notorious rebel militia and terrorist groups .
Poaching dumbfound a serious menace to African elephants . Around 33,000 elephantsare kill every yearfor their ivory . If current rates of universe decline continue , the African elephant could become locally extinctwithin 50 geezerhood . Thoughthe Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora(CITES ) banned the international trade of ivory in 1989 , illegal markets keep to flourish . conservationist have linked the upsurge in the illegal off-white swop withincreasing demandfrom China ’s growing center course of study .
Armed with this cognition , Christy asked spectacular taxidermistGeorge Danteto do something he ’s never done before – create artificial tusks that were so realistic they could play a trick on the mostprominent players in the illegal pearl trade . The fake tusk were embedded with custom - made GPS twist .
“ I will use his [ Dante ’s ] tusk to hunt the people who pour down elephant and to learn what roads their tusk plunder keep up , which port it leaves , what ship it travels on , what cities and res publica it transits , and where it end up , ” Christy wrote in his feature film .
Christy was able to track the tusks as they were moved through grave smuggling networks . Christy toldNPR ’s Terry Gross of Fresh Air that the tusks were in the first place put on a known illegal bone route fromGaramba National Parkin the Democratic Republic of Congo to Sudan . Christy watched as the phony off-white traveled from country to commonwealth , break to part of the earthly concern that were simply too dangerous for him to visit .
The fake ivory locomote “ 600 miles from jungle to desert in just under two months , ” Christy write . In the end , Christy told NPR that the story is n’t just about elephant poaching , but about how this illegal craft funds terrorist groups and furiousness .
