Elephant Poaching In the early 20th century there were 3-5 million elephants throughout Africa, India, and Asia, but numbers are rapidly dropping leaving only 472,000-640,000 left in the wild. So what happened? Like most problems, you can find a way to trace it back to humans and in this case it is almost entirely our fault. Because of excessive poaching, agricultural expansion, and many other factors humans are slowly killing off these beautiful and sophic creatures. China is the leading country in ivory sales with almost 70% of all illegal ivory being shipped, and then sold at 10 times its average cost. In China, the trading of ivory is illegal unless: the tusks came from an extinct mammoth, were bought from the government stockpiles
