Heartbreaking article by Peter Canby in The New Yorker. A must read. Who knew an elephant is killed every 15 minutes by poachers or that most experts believe that elephants are a vanishing species and it is only a matter of time before they become extinct.
“Iain Douglas-Hamilton, a zoologist who pioneered the study of elephant social behavior, said that “to a great extent they are finished.” Tomo Nishihara, the technical adviser for Nouabalé-Ndoki, told me that between 2006 and 2011 the number of elephants in the park and its surrounding buffer zones fell from ten thousand to five thousand. “That gives us five more years before they’re gone,” he said.”