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Young World
Highway of death
PHOTO: AP
POACHERS MAKE INROADS: Attack of the last refuge.
Central Africa's growing network of roads is creating "highways of death" for critically endangered forest elephants that are being slaughtered for their ivory, conservationists warn. New roads penetrating deep into the dense rain forests of the Congo Basin region are giving poachers better access to the last refuges of these jungle elephants, the latest research shows. The findings were the result of a survey of 26,000 square miles of protected wilderness stretching from the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) to southwestern Gabon. The team discovered more than 50 poaching camps and 41 slaughtered elephants. At last count, taken in 1989, an estimated 170,000 forest elephants remained in the wild. The current figure may be much lower, the study team warned, due to road construction fuelled by logging and development that are eating into forest elephant territory. Forest elephants are different from their Savannah cousins, being smaller in size and having shorter, straighter tusks. Relatively little is known about the mammals' biology because they live in dense forests. Researchers walked over 3,700 miles in five countries to conduct the survey, during which they used the elephants' dung to estimate their numbers.
COMPILED BY ROHINI RAMAKRISHNAN
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