I’m lucky, in a way. I’ve seen the devastation with my own eyes. The rotting carcasses with their heads removed, and the little orphaned babies. When crocodiles and lions kill elephants, they go for the babies, which is heartbreaking to watch when you see it on television. But poachers go for the biggest ones they can, and that means orphans.
Out in Lamu, on the northern Kenyan coast, there were tens of thousands of them only as recently as the 1970s. Quite a few were killed by the spears and the poison arrows of the Boni tribes people. Then, more recently, the Somali Shifta turned up, with their AK-47s, and the game changed entirely. Now there’s only a few hundred in that particular area.
There are places in Africa where the last few rhinos of their kind are under 24-hour armed guard. Men guarding animals, risking their lives, and losing. Some of the poorest people in the world, killed saving animals. It’s noble, but it’s not right.
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