African elephants have been slaughtered at an alarming rate over the past decade, largely because they are the primary source of the world's ivory. Their population has dwindled from 1.3 million in 1979 to just 625,000 today, and the rate of killing has been accelerating in recent years because many of the older, bigger-tusked animals have already been destroyed. "The poachers now must kill three times as many elephants to get the same quantity of * ivory," explains Curtis Bohlen, senior vice president of the World Wildlife Fund.
Though its record on the environment has been spotty so far, the Bush...
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