Princes Charles and William launch wildlife campaign

They are seated side by side, looking straight into camera - two future British kings with a message that matters deeply to them.

Prince Charles and Prince William have launched a campaign calling for an end to the illegal trade in elephant tusks and rhino horns.

They say it has reached unprecedented levels, placing the animals at risk of extinction.

It comes a day after Prince William was reported to be hunting deer and wild boar in Spain.

Both Charles and William are passionate in their support for the world's endangered wildlife, and increasingly exercised by the threat posed to that wildlife by organised criminal gangs which slaughter animals for their tusks or horns or other body parts.

As Charles says in the unprecedented video message which launches their anti-poaching campaign, the numbers being killed are "staggering": nearly 100 elephants killed every day - a rhinoceros killed every 11 hours - a wild tiger population which, a century ago, numbered around 100,000 and which, today, has been reduced to an estimated 3,200.

There is, he says, an apparently "insatiable" demand, much of it from Asia, which is driving this trade and which is giving rise to levels of killing and related violence which has not been witnessed before.

Father's footsteps

For the British royal family, a commitment to the cause of conservation is a long-standing one.

Charles's father, Prince Philip - the husband of the Queen - was one of the original founding fathers of the World Wildlife Fund, now the World Wide Fund for Nature.

Half a century ago, he travelled the world urging audiences to pay greater attention to the needs of the natural world.

And just as Charles followed in his father's footsteps, William has done the same - three generations of royals each of whom has been drawn to the African bush and the majesty of its wildlife.

From BBC News

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