Poaching is one of the worst illegal industries in the world next to drugs. Almost 100 million animals are killed every year and this does not include those whose figures who aren’t maintained by statewide agencies around the world. Slowly but surely animal species are growing extinct where 40 million animals are killed for fur like foxes and minks where the more majestic animals like tigers and elephants are killed for ivory, skins and traditional Chinese medicine. Here are 20 reasons to hate poachers.
The black rhino is the smaller of the African rhino species which is now a highly endangered animal living in the east and Southern African range. Poachers have killed so many of them that less than 2500 were reported living in various areas of Zimbabwe, South Africa, Kenya and Tanzania. The Western African Black Rhino was already declared extinct by the IUCN in 2011 and earth will never see this animal again.
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Now the Northern White Rhino is also in danger of becoming extinct as there are only three left in Sudan. With the last 45 year old male Rhino living in Ol Pejeta Conservancy in Kenya reported extremely Ill this month, chances are that the two females will be the last two of this subspecies left in the world and once they die, this too will become extinct.
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Poachers are a cruel lot. Animals can remain suffering for days in steel-jaw leg traps before being killed by standing on the lungs to crush the air out of them, shooting, clubbing or stabbing.
Fur-bearing animals raised in ranches are made to live in small cages before sale. Often they get insane and start chewing and gnawing on their own hands and feet. Animals in such areas are killed usually by anal electrocution where a rod is stuck into the anus and the animal electrocuted.
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Here’s what it takes to make one fur coat of 40 inches: 16 coyote, 60 mink, 18 lynx, 20 otter, 42 red fox, 40 raccoon, 50 sable, 8 seal, 50 muskrat, 15 beaver, and 45 opossum. The methods of killing the animals are as cruel as the fact that people actually wear such things without a thought.
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Tigers in India are an endangered species where coaching has made a deadly impact on their population. In the world today there are roughly 3, 890 wild tigers whose population has actually increased since the last count of 3200 in 2011. But consider this, there were 100,000 tigers living at the beginning of the 20th century. India accounts for 70% of the world’s tiger population but today there are only 2,226 which was recorded in 2014, an increase from 1,411 in 2006. Most tigers poached end up in China where one skin is worth almost $1million.
The notorious Tiger Poacher called Sansar Chand in India was responsible for wiping out the entire Tiger population of Sariska Wildlife reserve in 2005 a feat he admitted to which included selling 470 tiger skins and 2130 leopard skins to only four clients from Nepal and Tibet. Chand ran the country’s largest illegal wildlife trade undetected for 40 years. He was arrested alongwth his wife and son in 1991.
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Animals living in the wild cannot recover and increase their populating as fast as poaching removes them. This leads to population decline that has a domino effect in seed dispersal that is disrupted where smaller plant species grow extinct. This also reduces the food of several smaller animals and herbivores leading to defaunation.
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Because of poaching, several wildlife tourism destinations lose out on business that in turn leads to reduction in several employment opportunities because of negative publicity.
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Poaching leads to the emergence of zoonotic disease which are pathogens and bacteria transmitted from animals to humans. In the 1990’s the Ebola outbreaks in Congo and Gabon in Africa were linked to the rampant slaughter of apes for their meat. SARS in China and Hongkong was linked to consumption of meat form raccoons, dogs, ferret badgers and masked palm civets. Wild Chimpanzees in Cameroon are the biggest source of Simian Foamy virus and HIV 1 that leads to AIDS in humans.
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Poaching is widely blamed on tribals and natives of various wildlife areas around the world. In India especially in the Kanha Tiger reserve, tribals are prevented from hunting and were also evicted from their homelands as a measure to stop poaching and protect animals; instead the main culprits go undetected. Tribals in places like Africa are often blamed for the decline of wildlife. Although they bear the brunt of action in India, the dwindling tiger population was a result of rampant hunting by colonialists and Indian royalties at the turn of the 20th century.
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Among the reasons to hate poachers is the fact that today poachers are a huge threat to the survival of elephants and just because of their ivory tusks whose trade was banned worldwide in 1989. While there are many western countries with people dealing illegally in Ivory, China is perhaps the largest buyer of such goods including tiger carcass and skins which they believe contains medicinal benefits and is used widely in the making of traditional medicine.
In a large survey the most comprehensive till date, it was reported that over 100,000 African elephants fell prey to poachers between 2010 and 2012.
Local poachers use poison arrows to kill animals like Kenya’s most famous elephant named Satao (image below) who was slaughtered and hacked for his 6.5 feet tusks. There are also poachers equipped with technology and modern weapons who use grenade launchers on unsuspecting herds even within the shelter of so-called protected wildlife parks.
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Cecil the lion was one of the most famous inhabitants of Hwange national park in Matabeleland Zimbabwe, who was the subject of a study by Oxford University. Cecil was killed by recreational hunter and dentist Walter Palmer who killed animals for fun. According to him, Cecil was first wounded with an arrow shot by Palmer, then tracked and killed with a rifle after 40 hours on July 1st 2015. Since Palmer had a permit, he wasn’t charged but he is not allowed to visit the country as a hunter.
Incidentally, Palmer was also responsible for killing a White Rhino in Africa as well as a Nevada Bighorn Sheep which is an endangered animal. Only 500 are left in the world today.
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As cruel as they are with animals, poachers are just as cruel to humans as well especially forest rangers. Poachers have been reported to resort to merciless killings of rangers that include burying them alive in saw pits by illegal timber poachers in India. In Colombia, they are killed by drug cartels and in Africa by landmines and militias. Africa is the bloodiest battleground where poachers and rangers are at a brutal war with each other. In Kenya, six rangers were killed last year including a woman who was pregnant. In Congo alone 183 rangers were killed in the last decade.
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There may be many more reasons to hate poachers but there may be hope yet as more and more governments are waking up to the dangers of poaching and now dishing out jail sentences to poachers. The biggest proof of international pressure on poaching is the rapid decline of the value of ivory which was near about $2100 a kg in 2014. Today in China, elephant ivory is worth jusy$730 a kg. There are also people like Yao Ming from China who films and produces documentaries to create awareness about the dangers to wildlife. The image below was taken of an elephant carcass killed for ivory in Kenya where Yao Ming was filming one of his documentaries titled ‘The End Of The Wild’ we hope it will never come to that.
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