Archive note: This page reconstructs the history of the original Elephant Ivory Project from contemporary reporting and surviving references. ElephantIvoryProject.org is now maintained as an independent archival and educational resource and does not claim to represent the original project team.

The Elephant Ivory Project did not begin in the Congo. Its public story can be traced back to 2010, when filmmaker and National Geographic explorer Trip Jennings was working on an elephant-poaching project that combined field reporting, conservation science and visual storytelling.

2010 — following the ivory trail in Bangkok

Outside reported in March 2010 that Jennings was working in Bangkok on the Elephant Ivory Project, looking at one end of the illegal ivory trade: carved ivory for sale in a major consumer market. The reporting described Jennings and collaborators moving through Bangkok markets and hotels, documenting how illicit ivory could appear far from the elephants killed for it.

That early phase matters because it shows that the project was never only about collecting dung. From the beginning, it was trying to connect the chain: elephants in Africa, poaching pressure, trafficking, consumer markets and the science that could help trace ivory back to source populations.

Late 2010 — the project becomes public

By December 2010, National Geographic was describing Jennings and Andy Maser of EP Films as preparing a forensic-biology expedition to the Democratic Republic of the Congo. A Portland fundraiser, Go Wild: A Night of Fashion + Celebration to Save Elephants, brought together local designers, conservation advocates and supporters around the project.

The expedition’s scientific purpose was tied to the work of Dr Samuel Wasser at the University of Washington’s Center for Conservation Biology. Wasser’s team had spent years building a geographic reference map of elephant DNA from dung collected across Africa. DNA extracted from seized ivory could then be compared with that reference map to estimate where the elephants had come from.

Why the DRC mattered

Some parts of the Democratic Republic of the Congo remained poorly sampled. In March 2011, Jennings and Maser travelled to the country carrying collection vials and field equipment, aiming to obtain elephant dung from regions that could improve the accuracy of the wider DNA map.

National Geographic’s field reports repeatedly highlighted the importance of the TL2 landscape around the Lomami River. Samples from that central area could help fill a major gap between better-sampled elephant populations elsewhere in the country.

Into TL2

The expedition moved through Kinshasa and Kisangani before heading toward Kindu and the Lomami region. Jennings and Maser worked with long-term Congo researchers John and Terese Hart, whose field network and knowledge of the landscape were central to the operation.

Travel involved aircraft, motorbikes, motorised pirogues and long stretches on foot. Local researchers and guides were not peripheral to the work: they helped locate elephant sign, navigate the forest and collect samples in terrain where outside teams could not have operated effectively on their own.

Weeks without elephants

The expedition reports are striking because they do not read like a neat conservation success story. For days, the team found old sign, bones and evidence of poaching but no usable elephant dung. In parts of the forest, vegetation had begun reclaiming old elephant clearings.

Then local teams began returning with samples. Later, Jennings and Maser themselves located fresh tracks and dung during a roughly 75-kilometre trek. They reported collecting six viable samples on that leg, while other teams had already obtained additional material elsewhere in the landscape.

What happened to the samples?

Each usable dung sample was labelled with geographic information and intended for the wider reference collection used in elephant DNA analysis. The point was not to identify individual poachers from a pile of dung. It was to improve the genetic map against which seized ivory could be compared.

That distinction is important. A forensic ivory result is only as useful as the reference data behind it. Better geographic coverage can improve the ability to identify recurring source regions and focus enforcement and conservation attention.

The project was also a storytelling experiment

The Elephant Ivory Project sat at an unusual intersection: expedition filmmaking, conservation campaigning, field biology and forensic science. The team used National Geographic field blogs, photographs, video, live location tracking and public events to make an otherwise technical conservation problem visible to a wider audience.

That is part of why the project still has value as an archive. It captures a moment when elephant DNA forensics was moving from specialist research into the public conservation conversation.

What survives today

The original website is incomplete, and not every piece of its content survives. Rather than recreating missing material from memory, this archive separates documented history from later interpretation and preserves the URLs that still have historical references pointing to them.

Primary contemporary reporting