As many as 35,000 African elephants are killed by poachers every year. In the last five years, the elephant population in Tanzania—historically one of the great elephant range states—has declined by more than 60 percent. To the south, nearly half of Mozambique’s elephants have disappeared, again as a result of poaching. And in Central Africa, 65 percent of forest elephants have been killed in the span of a decade.
Each day, approximately 330,000 people pass through New York City’s Times Square intersection. Within this concrete jungle, tourists take selfies with street performers, billboards on towering buildings flash images of celebrities, and taxis honk their horns at slowpokes in crosswalks.
A few decades back from Carl Sagan …
“Memories of events late in the first year of life are not extremely rare, and there are possible examples of even earlier recollections. At age three, my son Nicholas was asked for the earliest event he could recall and he replied in a hushed tone while staring into middle distance, ‘It was red and I was very cold.’ He was born by Caesarean section. It is probably very unlikely, but I wonder whether this could just possibly be a true birth memory.”
Update: Latest reports show the rhino horns seized in Mozambique have now gone missing. We will provide additional updates as we learn more.
More than 40 years have passed since the Convention on International Trades in Endangered Species (CITES) became law. Today, 181 countries and international bodies are treaty members, but despite a worldwide commitment to end poaching of Africa’s iconic, threatened wildlife, many species still face an acute risk of extinction.