NIOKOLO RANGER OUTPOST, Senegal — The nighttime horizon glowed red from fires started by poachers. In the distance loomed a hillside that illegal gold miners were blasting with explosives. And in the middle of a busy highway, a park ranger straddled a speckled female bushbuck antelope and slit its throat.

Threats to wildlife lurk in every corner of Senegal’s biggest national park.

Multitudes of lions, leopards, elephants and other beasts once roamed Senegal, but decades of hunting and development wiped out almost all of them.

Even here in the national park known as Niokolo-Koba, dangers abound for the small sample of wildlife that has managed to hang on.

The antelope succumbed to one of them. She was hit by a car, and the ranger put her out of her misery.