Central African countries agreed to mobilize as many as 1,000 soldiers and law-enforcement officials to combat a group of 300 elephant poachers from Sudan.
It comes after horsemen slaughtered 89 elephants in Chad on the night of March 14 and 15 in the worst poaching incident in the region since February last year, when 300 elephants were killed.
The emergency plan will cost about 1.8 million euros ($2.3 million).
Some 50 Arabic-speaking poachers carried out the latest mass killings of elephants, including 33 pregnant females and 15 calves, hacking off their tusks for sale in the illegal ivory trade. According to information obtained by WWF, the massacre was carried out by the same group of poachers that in early 2012 travelled more than 1,000 km on horseback from northern Sudan across the Central African Republic (CAR) and Chad to kill over 300 elephants in the Bouba N’Djida National Park in northern Cameroon.
Photo: Tony Karumba/AFP via Getty Image
Anti-poaching rangers watching an elephant in Laikipia, Kenya.
