Nearly 25 years after an international ban was placed on ivory, African elephants are being slaughtered at a rate that could bring about their extinction this century. By allowing the trade of ivory acquired before 1989 to continue, the ban put the burden on law enforcement to distinguish between legal ivory and poached. Now, a new method for dating elephant tusks, could make it easier to enforce the ivory ban and save the African elephant from extermination say researchers. The method might also be applied to endangered rhinoceroses and other wildlife

Elephant tusks grow ring by ring, recording what plants the animals ate. Elephant tusks, it turns out, also record how much radioactive carbon was in the air, giving scientists a time marker for all those meals. During photosynthesis plants absorb radiocarbon put into the air by nuclear weapons testing in the 1950s and 1960s. The radiocarbon travels up the food chain, finding its way into the fingernails, hair, teeth and tusks of animals. By comparing radiocarbon levels in those tissues against the fluctuating "bomb curve" of radiocarbon in the atmosphere, forensic scientists can pinpoint when the tissues formed, and in some cases, when the animal died

Elephant poaching is now at its highest more elephants are slaughtered today, at the rate of 30,000 a year-than before the 1989 ban, but now some 423,000 African elephants are left. Much of the illegal ivory leaves Africa through Tanzania and Kenya and ends up in Asia, where it is carved into religious icons, decorative art and signature seals popular among the Chinese and Japanese. While China imports about 70 percent of the smuggled ivory, the next biggest market is the United States, where ivory is worked into the handles of guns and knives

The disappearance of the African elephant will mean more than the loss of a majestic, highly intelligent creature. It could change the structure of Africa's savannahs and rain forests. The Elephants keep the woods down in the savannah and are the most important dispersers of seeds of rain forest trees. The central African rain forest is the second most important area on earth for capturing carbon dioxide and storing it.

Extinction of African Elephants can lead to annihilation of Nature Balance. We have to save them.