Washington: A new research paper has warned that elephants face the thereat of extinction by 2020 because of a high fatality rate due to poaching. African elephants are being slaughtered for their ivory at a pace unseen since an international ban on the ivory trade took effect in 1989. But the public outcry that resulted in that ban is absent today, and a University of Washington (UW) conservation biologist has contended that it is because the public seems to be unaware of the giant mammals' plight. "The elephant death rate from poaching throughout Africa is about 8 per cent a year based on recent studies, which is actually higher than the 7.4 per cent annual death rate that led to the international ivory trade ban nearly 20 years ago," said Samuel Wasser, a UW biology professor, lead author of the research paper. But the poaching death rate in the late 1980s was based on a population that numbered more than 1 million. Today, the total African elephant population is less than 470,000. "If the trend continues, there won't be any elephants except in fenced areas with a lot of enforcement to protect them," said Wasser. He added that elephants are on a course that could mean most remaining large groups will be extinct by 2020 unless renewed public pressure brings about heightened enforcement. Wasser's laboratory has developed DNA tools that can determine which elephant population ivory came from. That is important because often poachers attack elephants in one country but ship the contraband ivory from an adjacent nation to throw off law enforcement. Evidence gathered from recent major ivory seizures shows that the ivory is not coming from a broad geographic area but rather that hunters are targeting specific herds.