New alarming news: poachers killed over 11,000 forest elephants in Gabon, in less than ten years.
Poachers have killed more than 11,000 elephants in Gabon’s Minkebe National Park rainforest since 2004, Gabon’s government said on Wednesday, with the massacre fuelled by increasing demand for ivory in Asia.
The densely-forested central African country is home to about half the world’s roughly 100,000 remaining forest elephants, the smallest species of elephant and coveted by ivory dealers for their harder and straighter tusks.
A study conducted by Gabon’s government along with advocacy groups World Wildlife Fund and the Wildlife Conservation Society found two-thirds of the forest elephants in Minkebe park had been killed off since 2004, or about 11,100.
Photo: National Geographic
