Dear MEL Topic Readers,
Extinction: Elephants driven to the brink by poaching
Modern-day poaching is usually done for sport or commercial profit, both in legal and black markets. For example, killing the rhinoceros for its horn, the African elephant for its ivory, and the pangolin for the skin. Poaching threatens many wild species, particularly those protected in wildlife reserves or national parks and it is a major cause of the population decline especially for African elephants, both bush elephants, and forest elephants, which are considered endangered species along with land degradation and fragmentation. In fact, the number of forest elephants declined over 80% in the past 30 years and bush elephants fell by over 60% in the last half-century. Since elephants need large areas and move long distances to live regardless of the human-set borders, international cooperation is required to stop poaching and conserve their habitats. We don’t want our descendants to learn about the elephant just like the mammoth, do we?
Read the article and learn about the challenges to save the African elephant.
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