Egypt’s endangered Gazelles taken down by machines guns and pick-up trucks. Piece by piece, we’ll kill this planet yet…

“Egypt’s gazelle population has decreased consistently and drastically for the past four decades mainly due to two factors: unregulated hunting practices and habitat destruction. Three species of gazelle used to live across Egypt. The Arabian gazelle is thought to have completely disappeared, as the most recent footprints of this mammal were found in the 1930s in Wadi al-Arish at the border with Israel. The slender-horned gazelle’s population is difficult to estimate, but according to Omar Attum, professor of biology at Indiana University Southeast who closely studies Egypt’s gazelles, the number of slender-horned gazelles is likely no higher than a hundred. “Slender-horned gazelles have low population densities. There have been some records of them in Siwa recently, but I really worry as the revolution in Libya has made weapons more widely available in a very large and porous border area,” he explains, stressing that whenever there is an armed conflict anywhere in the world, wildlife is threatened. Richard Hoath, British naturalist and author of the book, “A Field Guide to the Mammals of Egypt,” explains that the population of slender-horned gazelles is limited to an area southwest of Fayoum. “This gazelle is strictly a desert species; it is able to survive without drinking water its entire life, provided it can feed on desert shrubs and bushes,” he explains animatedly.”

Source: Almasry Alyoum (via climateadaptation)