© Stringer/AFPUgandan soldiers patrol through the central African jungle during an operation to fish out notorious Lord's Resistance Army (LRA) leader Joseph Kony.
Rabat - One of Africa's oldest national parks is under attack "from all fronts," said its director on Friday after 68 elephants were slaughtered over the past two months by poachers wielding chain saws and grenades and shooting them from helicopters.
Garamba National Park in the Democratic Republic of Congo is under constant assault by renegade Congolese soldiers, gunmen from South Sudan and others. And this is just a slice of the carnage: international wildlife regulators say 20 000 elephants were killed just in Africa in 2013.
The Johannesburg-based African Parks group, which manages the park, said that since mid-May, the 5000km² Garamba National Park in Congo, which was established in 1938, has faced an onslaught from several bands of poachers who have already killed 4% of its elephant population.
"The situation is extremely serious," Garamba park manger Jean-Marc Froment said in the statement. "The park is under attack on all fronts." A 2012 census found just 2 000 elephants in Garamba Park, down from 20 000 in the 1960s.
One group is shooting the elephants with rifles from a helicopter and then taking off their tusks with a chain saw. They are removing the elephants' brains and genitals as well.
Conservationists say a thriving ivory market in Asia is helping fuel the worst poaching epidemic of African elephants in decades.
In some cases the attacks in Garamba seem to be indiscriminate, killing baby elephants that do not yet possess the valuable ivory tusks.
African Parks, which runs seven parks in six countries in cooperation with local authorities, said the poachers include renegade elements of the Congolese army, gunmen from South Sudan, and members of the Lord's Resistance Army, a militant rebel group whose fugitive leader Joseph Kony is an alleged war criminal.
In one skirmish with poachers, park guards had to try to protect themselves from hand grenades thrown by Southern Sudanese poachers, some wearing military uniforms.
Comment: Unfortunately it seems this will become a reality for more and more people as they are forced to realize that the American Dream was just that - a dream. A couple of people in the article seem to think that being Republican can somehow save them from poverty. What will it take for people to let go of their various ideologies that keep us fighting each other and see that the issue isn't Republican vs Democrat, white vs black, gay vs straight, women vs men, middle class vs the poor, America vs the rest of the world, but rather psychopaths (especially those in power) vs human beings?
Poverty has always been a reality for some people and, too often, those people have found themselves demonized by the more fortunate who have managed to avoid it, but now, as things get progressively worse and pathologicals tighten their grip, many in the upper and middle classes are being schooled in the uncomfortable and inconvenient truth that many in the US and around the world have known for centuries: that most governments are corrupt and anyone can suddenly find themselves on the bottom rung at any time.
For more insight on how the American Dream has been a nightmare for many, see these Sott links:
The facade of the American dream
The American Dream: How the Banksters captured and subverted the United States
American Eulogy