KEY POINTS:
In Chad, Janjaweed militia from Sudan killed 100 elephants in one afternoon; in Kenya, Somali warlords armed with rocket-propelled grenades killed four wildlife rangers during a bloody raid on herds in the Tana Delta; in Democratic Republic of Congo, a whole host of rebel groups have turned the
country's dwindling elephant population into a new cash crop.
The fight to protect Africa's elephants has just got more dangerous.
Across the continent, armed groups linked to civil wars and conflicts are using the illegal ivory trade to fund their activities.
Groups like the Janjaweed, responsible for carrying out countless atrocities in Sudan's western Darfur region, are now the "greatest problem for the protection of elephants in Africa", says Michael Wamithi, head of the elephant programme for the International Fund for Animal Welfare (IFAW).
"Small groups of people used to kill elephants and take their ivory for purely commercial reasons," he said.
"Now it is a very different thing. It is organised and it is funding these dangerous groups."
Hundreds of elephants have been killed in Chad's Zakouma National Park in the past two years, mostly by fighters crossing from Sudan, say officials in Chad.
Illegal ivory was now being used in conflicts in east Africa in much the same way as "blood diamonds" were in civil wars across west Africa in the 1990s, Wamithi said.
Fears over dwindling elephant populations in some parts of central Africa have been overtaken by concerns that the slaughter of elephants is now funding the killing of humans.
Illegal ivory is far from the only source of funding for those groups poaching elephants, but animal welfare experts in the region believe the demand for it has boosted elephant poaching by turning it into a lucrative and reliable form of income.
Demand for ivory in the Far East, particularly China, has reached record levels. Ivory taken by the Janjaweed in Chad is taken to Khartoum where it is sold on to China, says the IFAW.
A study published last year by University of Washington scientists warned some regional elephant populations in Africa could become extinct.
They said the illegal trade had returned to the "devastating levels" last seen before the 1989 international ban on the sale of ivory.
Another study, by Traffic, the WWF's wildlife trade monitoring network, said the number of large-scale seizures of illegal ivory had rocketed in the past decade.
The Democratic Republic of Congo and Chad have the biggest poaching problems. And it is no coincidence, says the IFAW, that both countries have been involved in protracted civil wars and have been used as bases by many different armed groups.
In Congo, three parties to the country's recent conflicts have been accused of killing elephants, rhinos and gorillas - the Mai Mai, the FDLR (the former Hutu Interahamwe responsible for the genocide in neighbouring Rwanda), and the Tutsi militia belonging to the renegade Congolese General Laurent Nkunda.
In the past two years, a new group has taken up residence in Congo's Garamba National Park - the Lord's Resistance Army, which has been fighting a civil war in northern Uganda for more than 20 years.
These groups have had a catastrophic effect on the local elephant population.
Initially, park rangers believed animals were being killed for their meat - to feed hungry troops. But increasingly they believe the elephants are being killed for their ivory.
For the rangers trying to protect the animals, their job has become as dangerous as a soldier's. More than 100 rangers were killed in Congo in 2005 alone.
"They are very ruthless people - they are trained killers," said Wamithi. "Killing is their business - it has become a very big challenge."
In Kenya, a successful campaign led by Richard Leakey made elephant poaching illegal in the 1980s.
Since then the country's elephant population has stabilised and grown.
The biggest threat Kenya's elephants now face is from armed groups in Somalia crossing the porous Kenyan border to poach the animals and sell their ivory.
AREAS OF CONFLICT
CONGO
Hundreds of Congolese park rangers have been killed protecting gorillas, rhinos and elephants. It was thought most of the elephants had been killed to feed soldiers, but, according to the International Fund for Animal Welfare, rebels have begun trading in ivory. The Garamba National Park's rhino population has also been devastated.
SUDAN/CHAD
In the past two years, conservation officials in Chad have reported several attacks on elephants by Janjaweed crossing the border. In one incident, 12 men launched an attack on a store of ivory that had been seized by rangers.
SOMALIA/KENYA
Somalia's disparate armed groups have sought funding from several sources. The main insurgent group, known as Al Shabbab, is thought to have been given large amounts of money by supporters in Arab states. But the Kenya Wildlife Service has also reported a rise in Somali gangs coming into the country for elephants.
- INDEPENDENT
