Cape Town – The number of African elephants in their home continent has dropped by more than a fifth in the past decade due to a surge in ivory poaching, the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) said Sunday.
There are only 415,000 elephants left in Africa, compared to 526,000 in 2006, the organization said on the second day of a Convention on Illegal Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Flora and Fauna (CITES) in the South African city of Johannesburg.
A handout picture made available on 20 August 2015 shows the African bull elephant Kibo exploring his new enclosure in Erfurt, Germany, 19 August 2015. The number of African elephants in their home continent has dropped by more than a fifth in the past decade due to a surge in ivory poaching, the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) said Sunday.
The decline in the elephant population is the most serious in 25 years, according to IUCN.
“Poachers have killed off some entire elephant populations in West Africa and could wipe out the remaining forest elephants unless Central African countries act now to arrest the poachers, prosecute the trafficking kingpins and tackle the corruption that allows wildlife crime to thrive,” said World Wide Fund for Nature elephant programme leader Lamine Sebogo.
– dpa
