Hvad gør man, når man står midt i en "revolution" (læs : privatmilitaristisk autonomi), landets institutioner og kontrolorganer er væk, politiet er væk - og våbnene flyder i stride strømme uden nogen kærer sig synderligt over hvad de egentlig bliver brugt til, og mod hvem?
Vi ved positivt at mange etniske og religiøse grupper under dække af "det arabiske forår" fik kærligheden at føle - det var forventet, de arabiske despotier beskyttede trods alt i nogen omfang mindretal - mere overraskende er det imidlertid, at "oprørere" også har set sit snit til at tage ud i beskyttede naturområder og plaffe løs på stærkt truede dyrearter.
Sahara Conservation Fund's colleagues in Tunisia, Algeria and Libya have found hundreds of photos showing the goriest scenes of wildlife slaughter on the internet.
Species hardest hit are the slender-horned and dorcas gazelles and the Barbary sheep, all listed as threatened and restricted to a tiny number of sites. While much of the damage probably took place during the revolutions that toppled the former leaders of Tunisia and Libya, there is good evidence for continued poaching, especially in the deserts of southern Tunisia.
Here, as elsewhere in the Sahara, the new weapons of choice are the motorbike and the quad. Capable of chasing down and exhausting wildlife over the difficult terrain, the motorbike is rapidly becoming the number one scourge of gazelles in even quite isolated places.
