African elephants could go extinct "within decades", say conservationists
Digital Reporter
Tuesday, March 24, 2015, 2:14 PM - The threat to Africa's elephants has reached such a level that they may only have a few decades left.
That's the alarm being sounded by conservation groups attending a conference in Botswana this week.
"This species could be extinct in our lifetime if the current trend continues ... within one or two decades," according to Dune Ives, a senior researcher at conservation organization Vulcan, the AFP reports.
The species faces a variety of threats, the most serious being illegal poaching for ivory and meat, as well as a decline in its habitat due to human expansion, according to the International Union for the Conservation of Nature, which lists the African elephant as a "vulnerable" species, one level removed from "endangered."
It's facing a drastic decline in numbers, falling from 550,000 individuals in 2006 to 470,000 in 2013, according to numbers released by the IUCN at the conference.
The most precipitous fall has been in East Africa, which fell from 150,000 to 100,000 over the same period.
SOURCE: IUCN | The Guardian | Time
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