During a single night in March, horse-riding poachers slaughtered 89 elephants in Chad, including over 30 pregnant mothers. Now officials say they have caught the ringleader behind the mass-killing: Hassan Idriss, also known as Gargaf.
Idriss was presented to journalists along with 124 tusks earlier this month. Officials say that Idriss ran a crew of around 50 poachers. In total, Chad’s Environment Minister, Mahamat Issa Halikimi, says that Idriss has been behind the slaughter of nearly 200 elephants since August 2012, including an incident where five wildlife rangers were killed.
“It is unacceptable that lawless men roam our forests and carry out massacres of large animals when efforts to protect the environment in our country are well recognized internationally,” Halikimi said.
Elephant poaching has hit record levels in recent years, driven by demand for ivory in East Asia, including Thailand, the Philippines, and China. Recent research has estimated that 60 percent of the world’s forest elephants have been killed by poachers in the last decade alone.
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Dozens of elephants massacred in Chad
(07/26/2012) Poachers killed at least 30 elephants in southwestern Chad during the early hours of Tuesday, July 24. During the night, Stephanie Vergniault, president of the organization SOS Elephants, described on her Facebook page how a group of armed horsemen chased a herd of elephants with “war weapons near the SOS Elephants camp in the Chari Baguirmi area. After daybreak, the SOS Elephants team counted 28 carcasses, most with missing tusks. The exact number of carcasses with missing tusks is unclear because the team was afraid to stay and investigate further due to the presence of the poachers hiding on the other side of the Chari River.