Extinction. Thanks to poaching, that’s the threat facing India’s elephants. They could be wiped out within a decade, says ecologist Vivek Menon, founder of the Wildlife Trust of India, based in New Delhi. What’s ironic is that Menon leads the fight against wildlife crime in a country that ought to be overflowing with elephants. Why? Because Hindus revere them as gods, and stampeding elephants are allowed to crush villages because locals won’t shoot them. Yet India has turned into an ivory poacher’s paradise. Michael Bond asked Menon how that has happened.
There are 27,000 elephants in India, which sounds a…
