Elephants and other endangered species could be driven to extinction unless Western governments begin to take the illegal wildlife trade as seriously as terrorism or drug running, the president of Gabon has warned.

Ali Bongo Ondimba, whose country is home to the world’s largest surviving population of forest elephants, called for an international intelligence and law enforcement effort to break up the transnational criminal groups who now dominate the trade in ivory.

“You still have people not believing that we can one day wake up without any African elephants. They say ‘oh, you’re exaggerating this’. But in the meantime, it is happening,” Mr Bongo told the Telegraph .

“We cannot win this battle alone,” he said. “We are being confronted now by a real network of illicit traffickers. It is an organised one, and it does not just end with wildlife. They are moving into gold, they are moving into human trafficking,” said Mr Bongo.

Mr Bongo and the Duke of Cambridge will be among dignitaries attending international conference on the Illegal Wildlife Trade in London on Thursday.