In the last decade, two-thirds of the world’s forest elephants – found only in the rainforests of Equatorial Africa – have been slaughtered by ivory poachers.
Why the explosion in killing? Since 2000, more than 50,000 kilometres of roads have been bulldozed into this habitat, mostly by industrial loggers, inadvertently opening it up to poachers armed with powerful rifles and cable snares. The elephants simply have nowhere to hide any more.
Such ecological carnage is being repeated the world over. The last remnants of nature are in retreat – and it is roads and other infrastructure that are often the root cause.