they're killing wildlife for profit. who cares if they get shot out there? it's what they deserve.
Okay, so I don't want to go too deeply into this because this is just meant to be an animal media blog.
Poaching seems to conjure an image of a greedy villain, profiteering off of $90 000 per kilo of rhino horn*. Poaching is not *just* rhinos and leopards and tigers being killed - poaching is *any* illegal hunting or catching of animals or plants.
If your children are starving you aren't going to think 'oh but what about the poor animal it might go extinct', you're going to go and kill that giant sable antelope because it contains enough meat to feed your entire family for weeks. You will kill that rhino for $5 000 per kilo of horn* in order to send your kids to school so they at least have a chance of a better life than you. If you're living in a rural village and the nearest clinic is *several hours away*, for which there is only ONE doctor who tends to the ENTIRE AREA and the waiting line is SEVERAL DAYS LONG so you go to the local witch doctor who tells you that they can cure your dying spouse with crushed pangolin scales you will kill that pangolin. If your community relies on mealies for food but the elephants keep on trampling them, you and your village are going to do whatever you need to to drive off those elephants - even kill them.
If you can't find it in yourself to have sympathy for people in difficult situations with few options, then what about the people caught in the crossfire? What of that seven year old child the article mentioned, shot in the leg because they wandered too close? What of that disabled man shot dead because he didn't know he was in a restricted area? What of people who's communities are forcefully relocated several times over?
Sure, there are people who involved in poaching only because they are rich and greedy but those are not the people shoot to kill will affect (and even then, death penalty is inefficient in that it will cost more than a life imprisonment.) Shoot to kill also affects ability to find other poachers — if you shot five poachers, you've just shot five poachers. Arrest five poachers and you might uncover information on ten more — and perhaps even get enough information to dismantle an entire operation.
If the reason many people kill animals are because they are starving then the solution is simple: give them food. Give them housing. Give them clean water and education. Give them jobs.
You'll notice how the articles mention that shoot to kill doesn't reduce poaching. You know what does? Ecotourism.
'During the five years that the project was externally funded the community experienced a significant improvement in their standard of living. During each year of the project, more than 2,000 Japanese tourists visited the community generating sufficient income for the families involved to enable them to meet their monthly cost of food, and when operating at capacity the project employed a significant number of community members as drivers, cooks, gardeners, housekeepers, and in a few instances in managerial roles such as temporary wildlife rangers managing the forest around the villages.
Correspondingly, there was a decline in poaching. The community generally understood animals were a major tourism drawcard and needed to be protected to continue attracting tourists. This view was common throughout the kampongs (villages)... Noting that some members of the community continued to play an active role in many wildlife and forest conservation programs within the adjacent reserve ' (unfortunately this project did fail because the funding for professional managers was withdrawn and the people of the village were not taught adequately how to manage everything by themselves, which lead to a steep decline in visitors and thus they had to go back to poaching to survive.)
Ecotourism is wonderful and is a great help towards both people and animals.
Ecotourism World is an information media that transmits information related to ecotourism in the world.We do it in order that more traveller
Obviously, these are complex issues that need way more investigation and perspectives than I have the time for or can offer but I’m going to close it here; you can read the articles and hopefully they can give more information and a broader starting point to this issue.
This is all I'm going to be saying on this to anons. If anyone wants to discuss this further, you are welcome to message me, leave a comment in the notes or send an ask off anon. Anon hate will be blocked.
*notice the discrepancy between the earnings of the people who kill the poached animal and the people who sell the poached product to the final buyer.
This is exactly how Jane Goodall went from researching apes to being a humanitarian. When the villages surrounding the chimpanzee habitat were empowered, the forests and animals benefited because the locals no longer relied on poaching or logging.
If you want to be an animal activist you must also be a human rights activist.
this is an artistic rendition of my irrational fear of a head that attacks only under the cover of the very loud toilet flush in the scary top floor bathroom at the hospital and how i exited the bathroom when i decided to flush and run as opposed to my normal method of flushing and putting my back to a wall
I have this headcannon that Silco has a green house that he uses to get away from the violence and stress of being a crime lord, and he and Jinx bond over the botanicals <3
stormborns
pixelskylines
snowghoul
theartofmadeline
dailybridgerton
izzy806
annaxmalina
