Diseases, devastating droughts, international poaching operations, civil wars, and neglect of rural peasants all contribute to Africa’s decreasing wildlife.

The superpower struggle between the former Soviet Union and the West resulted in conflicts throughout Africa, with both sides pouring sophisticated weapons into the continent. Often, some of the automatic weapons have been turned on wildlife to feed starving armies and to obtain more weapons from the sale of elephant tusks, rhino horns, and other animal trophies and products. The rapid destruction of wildlife did not stop with the end of the Cold War. The weapons still remain in Africa. Regarding one of Africa’s civil wars, in Angola, the journal Africa South reports: “Poaching, already rife throughout the war, has escalated since the ceasefire because there has been no control of demobilised fighters.” And that war has since been renewed.

Many poachers risk their lives because of the huge amounts of money involved. “A single [rhino] horn can fetch $25,000,” reports an African newspaper, The Star. A conservationist, Dr. Esmond Martin, visited an Asian country in 1988 and found that the price of rhino horn had increased within three years from $695 to $2,114 a pound [$1,532 to $4,660 per kg].

[Box/​Map on page 7]

“Buffalo are down from 55,000 to fewer than 4,000, waterbuck from 45,000 to fewer than 5,000, zebra from 2,720 to about 1,000, and hippo have been reduced from 1,770 to about 260.”​—A comparison of two aerial surveys conducted in 1979 and 1990 in Mozambique’s Marromeu Delta and reported in the journal African Wildlife, March/​April 1992.

“In 1981 about 45,000 zebra migrated through the grasslands and forests [of northern Botswana]. But by 1991 only some 7,000 completed the same journey.”​—From the magazine Getaway in its review of the wildlife video Patterns in the Grass, November 1992.

“During our visit [to Togo, West Africa] we found an interesting and unexpected population of forest elephants in the Fosse aux Lions Nature Reserve . . . An aerial census carried out in March 1991 yielded a total of 130 animals. . . . [But in less than a year,] the numbers of elephants at Fosse aux Lions have dropped to 25.”​—Reported in the journal African Wildlife, March/​April 1992.

[Graphs/​Pictures on page 8]

(For fully formatted text, see publication)

2,720

1,000

1979 Zebra population 1990

55,000

3,696

1979 Buffalo population 1990

1,770

260

1979 Hippo population 1990

45,000

4,480

1979 Waterbuck population 1990

Comparative trends in the Marromeu Delta wildlife populations for 1979 and 1990

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Bottom left: Safari-Zoo of Ramat-Gan, Tel Aviv