Elephants will be wiped out in some parts of Africa unless more countries get involved in efforts to prevent poaching and ivory smuggling, according to wildlife regulator CITES. "We need to widen the net," John Scanlon, the chief of the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora (CITES), told AFP on the sidelines of a meeting in Geneva this week focused on illegal wildlife trade. Over the past three years, more than 60,000 elephants have been killed in Africa, "far exceeding the number of elephants being born," Scanlon said. He warned that "in some regions, in particular central Africa, the local populations are being decimated and they will be driven to extinction locally in very quick time."
Global effort needed to stem elephant slaughter
