Overkill

Ninety per cent of the world's megafauna has disappeared since humans migrated from Africa and fanned out across the world. Mammoths, mastodons, woolly rhinoceros and the huge carnivores that preyed upon them were soon extinct. The slaughter progressed across Eurasia, the Americas and, finally, the islands. Africa became the planet's last megafaunal sanctuary, its creatures having watched humankind and their weaponry evolve, and learned to avoid them.

But can Africa's megafauna survive modern weaponry, the poaching onslaught by criminal syndicates and the current loss of habitat? Fraught though the situation is, the author is cautiously optimistic. Conservation initiatives are gaining a new urgency; African governments and the international community are showing increasing concern and, most important of all, the Far East - which absorbs 90 pre cent of the illicit wildlife products - is beginning to clamp down on the trade. And across sub-Saharan Africa huge transfrontier wildlife reserves are currently under consideration.

"Overkill" describes
• the history and extent of human impact on Africa's land and marine wildlife
• the current status of Africa's wild animals
• how Africa's wildlife has reached its lower ebb - and whether the tide may now be turning.