In 1977, two years after declaring independence from Portugal, Mozambique erupted into civil war. Over the next 15 years, the violent conflict claimed at least a million lives—and that was just the humans.

Government troops and resistance fighters also slaughtered their way through the wildlife in the nation’s renowned Gorongosa National Park, once touted as a natural paradise. Thousands of elephants were hunted for their ivory, which was sold to buy arms and supplies. Zebras, wildebeest, and buffalo were killed for meat. Around 90 percent of the park’s large mammals were shot or died of starvation ...

Ecologists compiled 65 years’ worth of data on the abundance of large mammals across all of Africa. These populations, they found, were stable during peacetime, but almost always fell during periods of war. And in explaining declines in wildlife, nothing mattered more than war — not human population density, the presence of towns or cities, protected reserves, or droughts.

War happens most often in places where wildlife otherwise flourishes. Between 1950 and 2000, 80 percent of major armed conflicts took place in biodiversity hotspots, where animal life is at its richest and most diverse. That is because the same factors that cause peril for wildlife — climate change, the harvesting of natural resources, and fast-growing human populations — can also heighten tensions between people. And so, when people declare war on each other, they inadvertently declare war on the natural world.

Read the full article about the connection between war and wildlife destruction by Ed Yong at The Atlantic.