Infographic: It's A Bad Time To Be An Elephant

Friday, September 21, 2012 - 09:00 in Biology & Nature

Wildlife Crime Scorecard World Wildlife FundA Look at Worldwide Efforts to Stop Illegal Trade The demand for ivory and other illegal animal parts is on the rise in China and other Asian markets, and in Africa, tens of thousands of elephants are being slaughtered each year to meet it. Rhinos and tigers-whose horns and various other parts are also popular in China and Viet Nam-are aggressively poached as well. Recently, the World Wildlife Fund took a close look at how hard the world's nations are working to stop the illegal trade (most countries are part of a treaty called CITES that expressly forbids it), and summed up their results in an infographic: Click here to see this infographic even larger. According to a press release accompanying the report, Viet Nam's high demand and lax enforcement of rhino protection laws has triggered a poaching crisis in South Africa, where several hundred...

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