The Currency of Ivory

In March 2026, Zambian authorities seized nearly 550kg of illegal ivory in Lusaka, the result of a months-long intelligence operation led by the Department of National Parks and Wildlife and acting on intelligence provided by the Environmental Investigation Agency (EIA), a long-standing David Shepherd Wildlife Foundation (DSWF) partner working to expose environmental and wildlife crime.

On paper, it’s a success, but this seizure offers a glimpse into a trade that continues to operate largely out of sight.

And it is not an isolated incident.

In recent months, major ivory seizures have also been reported in Tanzania and Botswana. In Tanzania, authorities arrested an alleged illegal ivory trader found in possession of more than 500 elephant tusks worth approximately $2.3 million (£1.7 million). In Botswana, 20 elephant tusks representing the loss of at least 10 elephants were reportedly seized in late May¹.

Taken together, these cases suggest wildlife trafficking networks remain active across the Southern African Development Community (SADC) region and may be scaling up their activities.

This raises a more difficult question: how much ivory is still moving undetected?

From elephant to commodity

Half a tonne of ivory does not move by chance.

Using UNODC ivory conversion ratios, the 550kg of ivory seized in Zambia may represent the deaths of approximately 50 elephants, although exact numbers depend on tusk size and age².

For traffickers, ivory only acquires value once an elephant is dead. The killing is not a by-product of the trade. It is the trade.

It points to coordination. Ivory seizures of 500kg or more are considered ‘large-scale’, indicative of organised crime gangs owing to the sophisticated logistical arrangements needed to move such quantities. Supply chains. Criminal networks operating across borders. Elephants are killed, tusks are gathered, transport is arranged, routes are mapped, and buyers are waiting at the other end. This is not incidental. It is organised, well-funded and deeply entrenched. And at the heart of it lies a simple truth. Ivory has no value until an elephant dies.

A living elephant has no value to an ivory trafficker. The moment that elephant is killed, its tusks become a commodity. A product that can be transported, traded and sold.

That transformation sits at the heart of the ivory trade. It is what turns ivory into currency.

A crisis decades in the making

The consequences of this system are not theoretical. Between 1979 and 1989, Africa lost around half of its elephants to poaching driven by ivory demand, with populations falling from approximately 1.3 million elephants to around 600,000³. Today, Africa’s elephant population is estimated at around 415,000 individuals, a fraction of the numbers that once roamed the continent⁴. Those losses were so severe that they prompted CITES to introduce the international ivory trade ban in 1989.

The 1989 ban was never the end of the story. It simply changed the way trade operated.

The 1999 and 2008 CITES-authorised ivory ‘’one-off’’ sales also stimulated a surge in poaching and international trafficking in the late 2000s and early 2010s⁵. Between 2007 and 2014 alone, more than 140,000 African savannah elephants were lost to poaching, largely driven by demand for ivory⁶.

Behind every shipment is a network

This is where the perspective shifts. The ivory trade is often portrayed as a wildlife issue. In reality, it is organised crime.

Behind every tusk is a dead elephant.
Behind every shipment is a network.

The illegal ivory trade is driven by transnational criminal syndicates that exploit corruption, weak enforcement and porous borders to move products across continents⁷.

The same criminal networks that traffic ivory frequently move pangolin scales, big cat products and other illicit wildlife commodities. In some cases, these products are transported alongside other illegal commodities, including timber and drugs, exploiting the same trafficking routes, corrupt networks and cross-border supply chains. The networks are adaptable. The systems are designed to survive disruption.

This is why seizures matter.

Not simply because of what is confiscated, but because of what they reveal.

Recent analysis by EIA found that countries within the Southern African Development Community (SADC) accounted for more than 70% of all large-scale ivory seizures globally since 2023, representing over 13 tonnes of ivory and approximately 80% of the total volume seized worldwide⁸.

The seizure in Zambia is not an isolated incident. It is part of a much larger system.

The imbalance at the heart of the trade

It is easy to place blame on those immediately arrested, but the reality is more complex.

At the lower levels, individuals often assume the greatest risks while holding the least power. Wildlife becomes currency, not always through indifference, but through exploitation and economic pressure. Meanwhile, the highest-value actors sit further up the chain, far removed from the landscapes and communities affected by the trade.

Profit concentrates upwards. Risk stays local. The imbalance is built into the system.

What actually disrupts the trade?

Disrupting something this embedded requires more than isolated interventions. It demands sustained pressure at multiple points across the chain.

Intelligence-led investigations expose trafficking routes and criminal networks. Rangers on the ground work to protect wildlife before it enters the trade. Stronger legislation closes loopholes that traffickers exploit. International collaboration helps ensure enforcement does not stop at national borders. Proper implementation of key international policy provisions is also critical. For seizures of 500kg or more, DNA analysis needs to happen in order to cross-check, map and aid investigations. Governments also need to regularly report their levels of ivory stockpiles to help track weak points where stockpile leakages may be feeding the trade. However, implementation is inconsistent and so missing pieces prevent the puzzle from being completed.

This is the approach we support at DSWF.

Through support for intelligence-led conservation, protection on the ground, and international policy efforts, DSWF supports partners to disrupt wildlife crime at multiple levels. Because tackling wildlife crime means recognising that the species targeted by traffickers do not exist in isolation. The same criminal networks that traffic ivory often exploit multiple wildlife products, crossing borders and adapting their methods to avoid detection.

The real cost of ivory

But lost within discussions of trafficking routes, seizures, intelligence operations and organised crime are the animals themselves.

Every tusk represents a dead elephant. A life removed from a herd.

A matriarch lost from a family structure that may have existed for generations.
An ecosystem engineer removed from a landscape that depends on it.

Elephants shape the environments around them. They disperse seeds, create pathways through dense vegetation, dig water holes used by other wildlife and help maintain entire ecosystems.

Their loss extends far beyond a single species.

And elephants are not the only ones paying the price. Around 100 wildlife rangers are killed globally each year while protecting wildlife from organised crime and poaching⁹.

The ivory trade only works because an elephant is worth more to a criminal network dead than alive. The trade continues because demand for elephant parts and products continues to exist, predominantly in East and Southeast Asia. Until that changes, elephants, and the ecosystems they exist within, will continue to pay the price.

And until the networks driving this trade are dismantled, seizures like the one in Zambia will remain moments of temporary disruption, not victory.

The fight against the ivory trade is not about protecting a product.

It is about ensuring elephants are never reduced to one.

1. https://eia-international.org/news/global-ivory-trafficking/
2. https://www.unodc.org/documents/wwcr/Ivory.pdf
3. https://savetheelephants.org/about-elephants/statistics/
4. https://www.worldwildlife.org/species/african-elephant
5. https://eia-international.org/news/global-ivorytrade/
6. https://time.com/4516137/cities-ivory-trade-end/
7. https://www.worldwildlife.org/our-work/wildlife/wildlife-crime/stopping-ivory-demand/
8. https://eia-international.org/news/global-ivory-trafficking/
9. https://www.worldwildlife.org/our-work/wildlife/wildlife-crime/stopping-ivory-demand/