According to the study done, by the year 2024, there might no more elephants if illegal wildlife trade is not checked. Reports indicate that the level at which illegal hunting of elephant is at is really alarming. The study was done from National Academy of Sciences, led by George Wittemyer of Colorado State University and he says new elephants births are not keeping pace with the killings which means more are killed and less are born.
Sadly Kenya is one of the leading transit routes for smuggling ivory out of Africa with evidence of several ivory seizures and recovery of wildlife carcasses in the past days. In the whole of Africa, Central Africa is the hardest-hit with regional elephant population declining by 64% in a decade. Report indicates that more than 100,000 African elephants have been killed by poachers between 2010 and 2012 with 24,000 being killed in Eastern Africa, 42,000 in Central Africa and 41,000 in South Africa.
Kenya Wildlife Service stated that elephant population in early 1970s was about 167,000, but in five decades, it has reduced to slightly more than 35,000.there for if poaching continues for the next 10 years, elephants in Kenya will be wiped out completely. The researchers said only about 3% of the elephant population is expected to die every year in the absence of poaching.
wildlife safari news
