Elephants are magnificent animals. They are cherished not only across their range but throughout the whole world, and play a unique and critically important ecological role. But the years leading up to 2014 were bleak for African elephant conservation, with illegal killing and ivory poaching rampant in many regions. The leaders of Botswana, Chad, Gabon and Tanzania, and the foreign minister of Ethiopia, met in London and decided they had to stop the slaughter. They agreed that EPI countries should observe the moratorium on international commercial trade in ivory for a minimum of 10 years, which gives this report a tidy salience. They also agreed to close domestic ivory markets and put ivory stockpiles beyond economic use and, subsequently, to draw up National Elephant Action Plans (NEAPs), consistent with the 2010 African Elephant Action Plan.
This report design was commissioned to tell the story of the first decade of the Elephant Protection Initiative (EPI), a unique alliance of African countries committed to conserving their elephants. It is written by the EPI’s secretariat, the EPI Foundation.
