Elephant Poaching

Came across this article this morning about Elephant poaching, thought others would like to read it:

http://www.smithsonianmag.com/scien...ers-180951853/?no-ist=&fb_locale=sv_SE&page=1

Thanks Phil. This keeps me fired up.

I read this article and sat for a moment because the magnitude of the problem is truly hard to get a handle on. Those incredibly brave and selfless individuals who continue to fight poaching deserve our respect.

Thank Phil.
Poaching is a big scourge for African wildlife...

X 2 Pheroze! Hope the poaching can be curtailed. If China would prohibit ivory imports this stuff would stop. They want to be world leaders but in so many areas they lack real vision.

Thanks Phil for sharing this Artical. It saddened me to read it but there is so much for people to learn from reading it.

CAustin said:

X 2 Pheroze! Hope the poaching can be curtailed. If China would prohibit ivory imports this stuff would stop. They want to be world leaders but in so many areas they lack real vision.

Click to expand...

That would definitely help and is a big part of the problem but it is still only one part. Depending on the area and country the locals maybe neutral towards elephants or they might view them as a nuisance. Most Americans (especially farmers) who live in feral hog country can tell you how big of a problem feral hogs are. Now imagine being a subsistence farmer in Africa and having an elephant (which is like a pack of feral hogs on steroids) raiding your crops, eating an entire year's or months worth of crops and destroying your property and very well endangering your life even. You aren't to fond of the animal to begin with and add to that the fact that it has several hundred or thousands of dollars on its head (an entire yearly wage perhaps) and its no wonder people are tempted to and do kill it.

Another major problem in Africa is widespread poverty and hunger. A single elephant can feed a lot of people for a long time, meat poaching or the bush meat trade is a big problem to apart from the ivory trade. Africa also has a lot of civil wars and during this time law and order breaks down and there is a demand for meat to feed the army or milita groups (an army marches on its stomach) and this leads to a lot of meat poaching.

Now you also have Africa transitioning from a developing continent into a developed you see an exploding birth rate and population growth, increased technology etc... it has a long way to go but it is moving in that direction. During this period is when wildlife and the environment faces its biggest risks. Think about America a hundred years ago.The huge herds of buffalo had almost been wiped out, wolves had almost been eradicated in the lower 48 and grizzlies where almost gone to. Heck even deer numbers had plummeted. It was actually concerned sportsmen Theodore Roosevelt and the Boone Crockett club that helped to save a lot of these species from extinction. And look at America's wildlife today while it has not fully recovered it has gotten much better and continues to improve mostly thanks to hunters not the various animal rights nuts who claim to do a lot to help the environment and animals but apart from bashing hunters they do squat. Africa's biggest problem apart from poaching is the huge population growth and the fact that areas are being cleared of forest, animals etc... to make for human habitation and animals have run out of places to go. Most of the African countries that have the healthiest wildlife populations have one or all of these factors present 1. The country has a low population density and vast wilderness areas where the wildlife can live. An elephant cannot live in city for example it needs the wild. 2. It has a well managed and legal sport hunt and quota system in place. All the African countries that have large and healthy elephant populations also hunt them. Kenya banned sport hunting in favor of photographic safaris and its elephant population is less than a third today what it was a few decades ago- poaching killed far more elephans than hunting would and without sport hunting the elephants value is that of its ivory tusks or its killed because its a nuisance and people don't want to tolerate it. And finally a country needs political stability and a decent living standard and income. Countries that are badly afflicted by civil war and instability and have a very low living standard will have rampant poaching.

One of our elephants poached in July.

Thank you for the article. It is so sad to see the herds destroyed and lost forever. It's easy to see how the anti's get fired up by this and fail to see how hunting preserves herds. I am just waiting to see what happens in the Okavango over the first year of the absense of Safaris sponsored anti-poaching patrols and the mass unemployment of the good people who found work with the outfitters with concessions there. There certainly would be no joy in seeing an increase in poaching in Botswana however it's a foregone conclusion.