Chengeta Wildlife's Rory Young + Two Journalists Ambushed in Burkina Faso

Prominent elephant anti-poaching activist and conservationist Chengeta Wildlife's Rory Young was ambushed murdered in Burkina Faso this week. Coffins carrying the bodies of Young and Spanish journalists David Beriain and Roberto Fraile, who were working with the Chengeta Wildlife director on a documentary on poachers in a national park bordering Benin, were flown out of Burkina Faso to Madrid on Friday.

The two journalists Beriain and Fraile were members of the Reporters Without Borders organization

The reporters were accompanying Young and a government convoy on the road leading to the Pama national park in the east of the country, according to Burkinabe security and governmental sources.

The convoy included security forces and forest rangers protecting the Europeans working on the documentary in Arly National Park. Local reports are that the team was strongly advised not to visit the park, due to well-known dangerous conditions.

The attackers used two trucks and about 12 motorbikes, according to security sources. Spanish Foreign Minister Pedro Sanchez held a press conference saying the three men had been “executed”.

The area has a lot of vegetation, and the road is rough where they were attacked, which means they wouldn’t have been able to drive very fast, Burkinabé police superintendent Rachid Palenfo told Reuters.

The deadly attck was waged against a new joint army, police and forestry unit that had recently completed six months of training and was launching operations in conservation areas around Pama on the border with Benin and Togo.

Burkina Faso, like much of West Africa's Sahel region, faces a deepening security crisis. Groups with links to al Qaeda and the Islamic State are stepping up attacks on the army and civilians, unfazed by the presence of French and U.N. forces.

Rory Young was born in Zambia and held Irish citizenship. He was married to Marjet Young Wessels The couple have two children and lived in The Netherlands.

Chengeta Wildlife in the Congo Basin

Protecting elephants and other precious wildlife is a very dangerous occupation, as rangers on the front line of animal conservation in Virunga National Park, located in Republic of Congo, know well.

Chengeta Wildlife's Rory Young was featured in this 2020 PBS feature about the organization’s work. A new factoid to AOC is the enhanced financial value of forest elephant ivory. Due to its increased density, tusks of forest elephants command a higher price on the black market than savanna elephant ivory.