What causes elephant poaching?
Poor, badly governed people, mainly
Every day, thousands of rangers patrol national parks and other protected areas in Africa. Their job is fraught with danger, both from hostile humans armed with automatic weapons and from the unappreciative and potentially aggressive wildlife, armed with tusks, teeth and claws, which they are helping to preserve. But their work is important, not least because the data they collect are crucial to conservation planning.
This article appeared in the Science & technology section of the print edition under the headline “The elephant in the room”
From the January 14th 2023 edition
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