Thursday 28 November 2013

Nature Studies: Animals are also victims of war - and in Congo, that means the beautiful okapi

MICHAEL MCCARTHY

Tuesday 26 November 2013
For ages, it was just a myth; soon, it may be just a memory. The okapi, the "forest giraffe" from the Congo - that gentle, fascinating beast known to Western science only since 1901 - is now threatened with extinction. War, illegal hunting and habitat destruction are going to do for it.

How quickly it all seems to be going, does it not? This mammal and that bird, this turtle and that frog…so many of them sliding down the slope to oblivion, all around the world, as revealed today in the latest annual update of the Red List of threatened species, compiled by the International Union for the Conservation of Nature.

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