It's closer to true than you think. The demise of tribal traditions. Antelope, elephant, wild pigs and, most worrisome to ecologists, primates, which breed too slowly to replenish their ranks. In the heart of the African continent, tribes like the Baka pygmies have been hunting for eons, but their small villages only nibbled at the forest's bounty. Increasingly, the native hunters are abandoning their snares to join the lucrative commercial hunt.
Poachers can wipe out entire social groups of primates in a burst or two of automatic gunfire.
If the infants are not killed, they are captured for the illegal pet trade or wind up in cramped orphanages, excluded from the wild gene pool. Westerners admit they were dazed by how swiftly the hunt has spread. We don't have time for each group to try its own project. We need an unprecedented collaborative effort. And different methods, too.