We've talked about biodiveristy loss on the largest scale, but now it's time to take a look at some of the major contributors to it. As many of us know, nearly all environmental problems are connected in some way or another, and poaching is no different. While it may be caused by economic issues as opposed to environmental ones, it contributes heavily to the species and overall biodiversity loss humans have perpetrated over the past few decades. And, as always, we need to understand the problem before we can tackle it. So, let's dive into poaching, and talk about the implications it has for us and our world.
What is Poaching?
Due to the long-standing nature of the problem, many people already have a fairly good idea of what poaching is. Officially defined, it means, "to take game of fish by illegal methods" (https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/poach). While accurate, this definition doesn't quite capture the real scale of the issue. Poaching can often be thought of as the problem of a faraway land, considering we really only hear about it through the news. While this might be true to a certain extent, poaching not only connects itself to but negatively effects even the countries that do it less frequently.
Why poach?
While present in many countries, the majority of poaching takes place within the continent of Africa, and as such to determine the reason for it we need to look at the local culture. Horns of animals such as the Rhino are believed to treat hangovers, fever, impotence, and cancer, while ivory from the tusks of elephants are used to make jewelry, utensils, religious figurines, and trinkets. While the uses of these materials might be a bit surprising to someone living in the U.S., the real reason behind their widespread collection should not be. I don't think it should come as a surprise to anyone that these materials are harvested for money. According to the African Wildlife Foundation, ivory can sell for up to $1,000 on the black market, while rhino horn can garner as much as $60,000 per pound. Is it any surprise that these animals are hunted so frequently?
Additionally, animals like zebra are hunted for their skins, and can be used for meat and medicine, and captured gorillas sell for up to $40,000. Tigers are hunted for their bones and skins, and many other animals are hunted just for the prize of their defeat. While people hunting alone doesn't normally make much profit, organized crime syndicates have also been formed to hunt and profit off of these animals, at the expense of their ecosystems. Typically, rare items not used for medicinal purposes are sold to the rich in countries like China and the United States.
The major problems with poaching
When done legally, the hunting of animals poses little to no threat to their populations. After all, it's only natural that these animals should be hunted, that's how our world works! We begin to see a problem, however, when these animals (especially ones that are already endangered) are hunted out of legal limits. Keystone species (animals that inhabit an ecological niche that cannot be filled by another animal) like the African Elephant are extremely important parts of ecosystems, but when hunted to the brink of extinction by poachers they can't fill the niche they had before. As a result, ecosystems are forced to radically change, and if they can't, they die off. As this continues to happen, we begin to recognize the widespread biodiversity loss.
And what's more is that the poaching industry itself it based off of a resource that cannot last for much longer. They're hunting endangered species here, and the term endangered is not used lightly. So what happens when they run out of important, supposedly beneficial animals to kill? It's very similar to the issue most countries are starting to see with the use of coal and oil as energy sources: they're not going to last forever. The people who build their lifestyles around the illegal poaching of animals are essentially condemning themselves. Sure, once one species dies off they could always move on to another, but it gets progressively harder to sustain. There's no real thought towards the future here.
And that's the inherent, causative problem behind most environmental issues: there's no real thought towards what our future will be like. Groups like those who poach see opportunity in the present, and according to them, as long as the money keeps coming in, there's no reason to worry about whether or not it will five or ten years from now.
Where does poaching happen?
I mentioned earlier that the majority of poaching happens within Africa. While this is true, it's certainly not the real extent of the problem. Because the truth is, poaching happens everywhere. Wherever there's an animal that could be killed for profit, there will always be a poacher willing to do it. A study released by the Department of Fish and Game in California released a report in 2010 stating, "an approximate $100 million worth of California's native wildlife is being poached annually for profit or personal gain making poaching second only to the illegal drug trade in black market profitability" (http://www.fgc.ca.gov/public/reports/DFGissues/Poaching%20of%20Wildlife.pdf) and the numbers have only gone up from there. So while it may not seem like it, poaching happens in our homes too. It's just not easy to spot.
Conclusion
So, what can we do? What can we do to stop crime syndicates, change culture around the world, and restore these animals back to their original populations? Well, the truth is, as much as I like to tout the power of the individual, no one's going to solve this problem on their own. After all, how many of you are rich aristocrats buying black market tiger skins? No, this problem unfortunately can't be solved by conscious, intelligent decision making, nor necessarily by the spreading of the problem through word of mouth. Instead, we need to take a much more direct course of action, of which I'll be discussing next week. If we don't act, our great tapestry of wildlife could very well disappear before our eyes. Let's make sure it doesn't happen.
All credit for information used in this post goes to (visit them to learn morea bout poaching!)
http://www.fgc.ca.gov/public/reports/DFGissues/Poaching%20of%20Wildlife.pdf
https://campaign.awf.org/poaching-infographic/
https://www.worldwildlife.org/threats/illegal-wildlife-trade
http://www.poachingfacts.com/
https://www.savetherhino.org/rhino-info/poaching-stats/
https://animalpoachers.weebly.com/animals-that-are-poached.html
Images:
https://www.ibtimes.com/kenya-torching-270m-worth-ivory-leonardo-dicaprio-elton-john-george-soros-attend-anti-2286940
https://mybroadband.co.za/news/software/93021-fighting-rhino-poaching-in-sa-theres-an-app-for-that.html
http://wwf.panda.org/wwf_news/?214237/Rhino-poaching-statistics-highlight-need-for-action-against-crime
https://moviewriternyu.wordpress.com/2014/01/07/pluto-trying-to-buy-its-way-back-to-big-boy-planet-status/
https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/china-finally-came-clean-about-its-shady-underhanded-trade-tiger-skins-180952038/
http://belizeinfocenter.org/ecosystems/terrestrial-ecosystems/
https://www.downtoearth.org.in/news/climate-change/world-s-forests-continue-shrinking-but-at-a-slower-pace-fao-report-51060
https://www.promptcloud.com/blog/Future-of-Web-Scraping
http://blog.mastermaps.com/2013/09/creating-webgl-earth-with-threejs.html
http://fantasticaanimal.blogspot.com/2012/12/the-amazing-gorilla.html
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