Poaching for ivory remains a devastating threat to African elephant populations, causing immense suffering and disrupting complex social structures that elephants depend on for their wellbeing.
Poaching causes severe suffering at multiple levels. Individual animals experience violent deaths, often through snares or poison that cause prolonged agony before death. Survivors — particularly calves — experience profound grief and trauma responses that persist for years, disrupting their development and social integration. Elephant herds that lose key members show measurable changes in stress hormone levels, aggression, and social cohesion. The psychological complexity of elephants means that poaching causes suffering far beyond the individual animal killed. Protecting elephant populations from poaching is both a conservation and a welfare imperative of the highest order.