While Ethiopia has far fewer elephants than it had back in the 1970s ( around 10000) it does still have three or 4000 elephants spread across the reserves that reside within its border.
In a time where elephants need every deal with what pressures come from living in the Natural World, this might well be enough but unfortunately that doesn’t seem to be the case anymore.
There is little or no demand for the Ivory locally, but compared to local incomes it can be sold for a small fortune in China.
Seemingly the Ethiopian people are not as pleased with having elephants locally as when trying to find out who had killed the elephants the local people refuse to engage with the investigators at all.
If the elephants are to survive in Ethiopia the authorities will have to get a grip on it quickly otherwise they will be gone in a short period of time, more importantly tourism is extremely important for the Ethiopian economy and this could be significantly damaged by the loss of elephants.
There are quite a number of national parks within the borders of Ethiopia, which is good news for the survival of many species however local extensions can therefore be caused by relatively small amounts of poaching.