28 elephants killed: Poachers killed them
Carcasses of elephants slaughtered by poachers in Boubou Ndjida National Park, Cameroon, Feb. 16, 2012 YAOUNDE — Poachers have killed 28 endangered forest elephants in the Nki and Lobeke national parks in southeast Cameroon in recent weeks, the conservation organization WWF said on Wednesday. With demand for ivory rising from Asia, poachers have reduced the population of Africa's forest elephants by 62 percent over the last decade, putting the species on track for extinction, conservationists say. The parks of southeast Cameroon, along with parts of the Democratic Republic of Congo and Gabon, have some of the last significant populations of forest elephants. "Elephants in these two protected areas in the Congo Basin are facing a threat to their existence," said Zacharie Nzooh, WWF Cameroon representative in the East Region. Nzooh said that between Feb. 10 and March 1, WWF found the carcasses of 23 elephants, stripped of their tusks, deep in the Nk...