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JOHANNESBURG, July 28 (Xinhua) -- Many populations of African elephants continued to face serious threats to their survival in 2015 from the illegal trade in ivory and unacceptably high levels of poaching, according two new reports released on Thursday.
The reports are to be presented to the 17th meeting of the Conference of the Parties to the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora (CITES CoP17), which is scheduled for September in Johannesburg.
The reports show that elephants are particularly vulnerable in Central and West Africa, where high levels of illegal killing continue.
Two CITES monitoring programs -- the Elephant Trade Information System (ETIS) and Monitoring the Illegal Killing of Elephants (MIKE) -- indicate that the sharp upward trends in poaching, which started in 2006, have started to level off, with continental levels of illegal killing of elephants stabilizing or slightly decreasing.
However, the levels of poaching remain far too high to allow elephant populations to recover, with some populations facing risk of local extinction, the reports said.
The ETIS report shows that in 2012 and 2013, levels of illegal ivory trade reached their highest levels since CITES agreed to ban the commercial trade in (raw) ivory in 1989.
The MIKE figures show that the steady increase in levels of illegal killing of elephants since 2006, which peaked in 2011, has been halted and stabilized but that levels remain unacceptably high overall.
It is estimated that the number of elephants illegally killed annually in Africa between 2010 and 2015 ran into the tens of thousands.
Although overall trends are moving in the right direction, elephant poaching in 2015 remains a cause for serious concern, the MIKE report says.
Figures show that Southern Africa is the only sub-region that has not seen illegal killings exceed natural deaths since MIKE monitoring began in the early 2000s. However, poaching levels remain high in some Southern African sites, such as Niassa Reserve in Mozambique.
Positive news comes from East Africa, where estimated poaching levels declined in 2015 for the fourth consecutive year. Yet the situation is also mixed, with increases in poaching evident in parts of Tanzania.
The most serious levels of poaching were again recorded in Central and West Africa, where illegal killings continue to far exceed natural deaths, according to the MIKE report. Enditem
