Mali's desert elephants face extinction within three years

Conservationists urge government to tackle ivory trafficking as 16 elephants killed in this year, with over 80 killed in 2015

Mali's elephants, one of just two remaining desert herds in the world, will be gone in three years unless the government does more to protect them, a conservation group has warned.

Poachers have taken advantage of the chaos from a growing Islamist insurgency and other unrest in the lawless north to step up ivory trafficking - a trade that the United Nations says funds militants.