A herd of elephants walks in the dawn light as the highest mountain in
Africa, Mount Kilimanjaro in Tanzania, is seen in the background. About
85,181 elephants have been killed in Tanzania in the past five years.
Photograph: Ben Curtis/AP
Government data shows industrial scale of poaching for ivory as
number of elephants in Tanzania drops from 109,051 in 2009 to 43,330 in
2014
Tanzania
has emerged as the epicentre of Africa’s elephant poaching crisis after
a government census revealed it had lost a “catastrophic” 60% of its
elephants in just five years. The results will pile pressure on a government that has been heavily criticised for its inability to stop a flood of poached ivory being stripped from its national parks. Tanzania’s elephant population is one of the continent’s largest. But
data, released on Monday by the Tanzanian government, showed that
between 2009 and 2014 the number dropped from 109,051 to 43,330. When an
annual birth rate of 5% is taken into account the number of dead is
85,181.
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