Poor national governance and low law enforcement are said to be amongst the primary drivers of the lucrative global ivory trade, which continues to threaten the existence of African elephants, a study by the University of Cape Town (UCT) and Oxford University found. The study, which also listed low household wealth and health and global elephant ivory prices as other contributing factors, sought to uncover what might drive, facilitate or motivate continent-wide poaching. The illegal wildlife trade is one of the highest value illicit trade sectors globally, with thousands of wildlife species - worth billions of dollars - being poached, trafficked and sold annually. This is a major threat to biodiversity and ecosystems, which are the bedrock of human well-being, as the recent multi-national United Nations Biodiversity Conference made clear. Published in the Proceedings of the Royal Society recently, the study found that forest elephant populations suffered higher rates of illegal killing than savannah elephants. The paper - in which Dr Tim Kuiper and Professor Res Altwegg of the Centre for Statistics in Ecology, Environment and Conservation at the UCT department of statistical sciences participated - found weak evidence that armed conflicts may increase the illegal killing of elephants, and no evidence for effects of site accessibility, vegetation density, elephant population density, precipitation or site area.