BRIEF HISTORY on HUNTING & POACHING of ELEPHANT and RHINO

The last five years have led to an alarming decline of both species as the adults are poached faster than young are born, young are often shot first to attract adults into the open, and each year's death toll increases over the last.  At this rate, both species are expected to go extinct in the wild in about six years.

Human hunting is believed to have contributed to the extinction of the Mammoth. Similarly, the Asian rhinoceros and Asian elephant exist only in marginalized populations and will soon be extinct in the wild due to recent poaching, as well as excessive, legal hunting practices.

The only remaining potentially viable populations of elephant and rhino left on the planet are in Africa, but like in Asia, they too now exist in only minuscule quantities compared to populations a few decades ago, and live in limited areas due to the current explosion of poaching by modern humans.  Ongoing human hunting combined with habitat loss has decimated the populations of both species—they are now about 4% of what they were in 1900.

Both rhino and elephant are hunted solely for their horn and tusks—other body parts are seldom used and the butchered carcasses are left to rot in the dirt, sometimes even while the animal is still alive.