28 elephants killed in Cameroon
A picture taken on February 23, 2012 shows an elephant that was killed by poachers in northern Cameroon near the border with Chad. Park officials said nearly 500 elephants have been killed in the national park in the previous two months by poachers from Sudan and Chad, according to AFP.
Poachers have killed 28 endangered elephants in Cameroon in recent weeks, conservation group World Wildlife Fund announced today. Zacharie Nzooh, the WWF Cameroon representative, said that his group found the carcasses of elephants in the forest, stripped of their husks, Reuters reported.
"The poachers used automatic weapons, such as AK-47s, reflecting the violent character of elephant poaching," he told Reuters.
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The news comes just a week after a study came out with disturbing findings about the elephant population.
The study, published in the journal PLOS ONE, found that elephants in Africa could go out of existence soon due to all the poaching. A total of 62 percent of forest elephants have been killed for their ivory in the past decade, Science Daily reported.
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