 |
| source: wildlifeextra.com |
Malignant human greed knows no bounds. As Hunter Thompson once observed in his
Rum Diaries;man is the only animal that claims a god, but acts like there is not one. The last surviving elephants in Cameroon and Chad are being slaughtered by heavily armed gangs of men for their ivory. They are thought to be Sudanese who travel through Chad to Cameroon searching for elephants to butcher. In Bouba Ndjda National Park near the border with Chad, two hundred carcasses like the one in the photo, decapitated and trunk hacked off so the ivory can be transported, have been found. More carcasses are expected to be discovered as shots continue to be heard coming from the park. Elephants shot with AK-47s do not die quickly because the ammunition is designed to kill people not elephants. IUCN estimates between 1000-5000 elephants still live in Cameroon. Chad's population has dropped from several thousands to just 2500 in a few years, sending the poachers farther south into Cameroon. A team from the Wildlife Conservation Society affiliated with the Bronx Zoo found one hundred dead elephants with their tusks hacked from their bodies during an aerial survey in 2006. Some poachers were caught in the act of packing up their contraband. Zakouma National Park has had its elephant population killed off from an estimated 3,000 in 2006 to 1000 now. Zakouma is considered to be the last stronghold of the Sahel elephants. Intact until the 1970s the Park's 3000 sq kms once contained about 300,000 elephants. The civil unrest in Sudan, Central African Republic and Chad makes conservation a doubly difficult task. Huge spaces, difficult terrain, and political corruption all contribute to the urgent need to protect elephants from eradication. A flourishing market in
Asia drives the sick demand for ivory, and ivory is often sold to finance rebel armies.
