Tragically, education seems to have been insufficient to protect animals in Rwanda, where poachers last week killed two of the world’s last remaining mountain gorillas. The poachers were attempting to capture and sell baby gorillas. According to Rwandan wildlife conservation officials, two men killed two female gorillas and trapped one baby gorilla, in the first such attack since 1985. The men are in custody, but are believed to be part of a wider criminal ring. With just 350 mountain gorillas left in the wild, the population is sufficiently fragile that the loss of any given individual is a blow. The gorillas are the biggest tourist attraction in Rwanda (where visitors pay about $250 per hour for a chance to see them), and the forests where they live are normally heavily patrolled against poachers.
