Do poachers kill elephants for meat?
Miroslav Bobek et al. Interview with Andrea Turkalo. Part III There are always several BaAka, local Pygmies, at Andrea Turkalo’s camp who work for her as guides and scouts. The camp is also regularly visited by Bantus armed with automatic rifles who guard the reserve. Although the Dzanga clearing looks like paradise on Earth, it is not completely safe for wild animals. However, the situation is much worse elsewhere. Before zoologists discovered Dzanga Bai, did Europeans know about it? Probably yes, because this place was colonised by many years by the French. Before independence, this area was also exploited for ivory and other forest products, like rubber and copal, which is used in making perfumes. The French exported hundreds of tons of ivory out of here from the end of the last century until the 1960s. If you know the book Heart of Darkness by Joseph Konrad, he describes the situation when the Belgians and the French had a concession system and basically mandated that pepople colle
