Infographic: Traditional Medicine Fuels the Mass Slaughter of Wild Animals

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Infographic: Traditional Medicine Fuels the Mass Slaughter of Wild Animals

Humans are uniquely gifted at driving other animals into extinction.

This story appears in the December issue of VICE magazine.

Humans have been killing wild animals and stripping them of their parts for millennia, and it's gotten to the point where we've pushed some species to near extinction. Today, there are just over 3,000 wild tigers worldwide, down from 100,000 a century ago. Africa had 26 million elephants in 1800 but has fewer than a million today. The robust economy in Asia is helping to fuel the demand for animal parts, and poachers around the world are readily meeting that demand with frightening efficiency.

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