Zimbabwe elephants poisoned by poachers in Hwange

Discussion in 'Biology & Genetics' started by paddoboy, Sep 21, 2013.

  1. paddoboy Valued Senior Member

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    Poachers have used poison to kill 41 elephants in Zimbabwe's Hwange National Park, an official has told the BBC.

    Zimbabwe Parks spokeswoman Caroline Washaya Moyo said it was suspected that cyanide was used to poison salt pans but tests are still being carried out.

    She said it was Zimbabwe's worst case of elephant poaching.

    There has been a rise in the killing of elephants and rhinos in parts of Africa in recent years, mostly to feed demand for horns and tusks in Asia.





    http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-africa-23991510
     
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  3. paddoboy Valued Senior Member

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    How can we stop these atrocities?
    .
    Do they realise what they are doing.....Probably yes, but don't give a stuff!
    Maybe then if we did give a stuff, and stood the bastards up against a wall!
     
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  5. Billy T Use Sugar Cane Alcohol car Fuel Valued Senior Member

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    The cause of this is the love of ivory, especially if skillfully carved. All who have it or buy it are to blame. If you want to stop it, confiscate and destroy the ivory and send the ivory owners to jail or at least a few weeks of public services work in hospitals etc. Don't blame the poor unemployed who are just trying to make living. You can fill the jails with them and accomplish nothing.

    It is much like the destruction of the Amazon rain forest. The love of mahogany and other beautiful hard woods is the cause , but oil companies prefer you to think sugar cane grown for alcohol car fuel is, so lets kill that idea first:

    Sugar cane is of low value per ton and very bulky. It must be grown less than 100 miles from the fermentation / distillation plants and they must be near the main markets. In Brazil that means near Rio & Sao Paulo. The Amazon rain forest is at least 1000 miles away from the fermentation / distillation plants. No commercial sugar cane is grown any where even near the Amazon, but many oppose its alcohol used as car fuel, even though it is cheaper than gasoline per mile driven has slightly NEGATIVE net release of CO2, and buying it does not indirectly finance the main terrorists but gives jobs to the unskilled without any. (Big oil has won the PR battle against the only real competitor to their gasoline.)

    There are many in the regions of Brazil near and in the Amazon with no salaries. They may collect "Brazil nuts" (whose trees can not be grown in groves - many have tried.) or some exotic birds, especially parrots, or monkeys etc. to earn a little cash by illegal road side sales. Brazil has the world's toughest environmental laws, but a single mahogany tree, cut into logs few meters long is worth several years salary at the minimum wage, so that is done, by poor unemployed men, despite certain decade or more in terrible, over crowded jails if caught. So he sets fire to the forest to hide the crime. By time it burns out naturally, many square miles have been destroyed.

    Then some other unemployed poor man will put a cow, a few pigs and many chickens in the fire made clearing and try to live there. Eventually someone of means will come, properly clear the burnt stumps, and fallen trunks, add some fertilizer and grass seed to the poor soil and raise some cattle. They will be killed and butchered in the field as the more valuable cuts can be moved to the nearest town at a profit.
     
    Last edited by a moderator: Sep 22, 2013
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  7. paddoboy Valued Senior Member

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    Out of the probable millions of poor unemployed in Africa, what percentage of them decide to commit the atrocities that I have listed?
    Both myself and my wife have two "adopted" children in Africa via "World Vision" and if I could do more to alleviate the poverty and hunger I most certainly would.
    I don't know how to stop it all, but it still makes me very angry when I read of such atrocities.

    Once these poachers are caught every effort needs to be made to get them to reveal who they work for.
    In my country imports of ivory and similar valuable animal products are banned.
     
  8. Billy T Use Sugar Cane Alcohol car Fuel Valued Senior Member

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    I don't know but bet at least five for every elephant.
    What is your point? I agree very few try to earn a living by killing elephants for their tusks, but so long as there is a fortune (from their POV) to be made satisfying the demand, there will be several for each elephant.

    Punish the demanders harshly, then the problem is solved. A hundred dollar reward to someone correctly telling who has some ivory in rich countries with a month in jail for the owner of it should solve the problem.
     
  9. Asguard Kiss my dark side Valued Senior Member

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    There was an interesting radio artical I herd a while ago about the causes of elephant\human conflict and it has nothing to do with ivory, the real reasons are that elephants kill people, eat crops, destroy wells and destroy villages. Now some of these issues can be solved but its no where near as simple as "punish the poachers" because that ignores the real issue
     
  10. Billy T Use Sugar Cane Alcohol car Fuel Valued Senior Member

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    that is true. Not all elephants are killed for their tusks, but some are.
     
  11. Asguard Kiss my dark side Valued Senior Member

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    and this sounds like the kind which isn't because poachers aren't that kind, they don't kill them first sadly where as poisoning? sounds like what villagers would do
     
  12. paddoboy Valued Senior Member

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    Where do we draw the line in protection of a species near extinct?
     
  13. Stryder Keeper of "good" ideas. Valued Senior Member

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    Could be a classic attempt of market manipulation. Increasing the rarity of an already illegal act of Elephant killing (to herd genocide) even if not directly for the tusks would likely bump the black market prices up higher. Like I've said before elsewhere, which the current level of research into genetics and the ability to grow things in the lab, why not just grow ivory in a lab, no elephants would been needed other than the starting cell culture.
     
  14. Asguard Kiss my dark side Valued Senior Member

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    Why "draw the line" at all?
    why not work with the locals the way wildlife organisations do now to try to solve the issues in a many beneficial to both sides? for example this women who was working with WWF I believe was saying one solution they came up with for stopping elephants from coming into the villages was to recognise that they were after water and get the village to put its wells OUTSIDE the village and the problem went away. There were other solutions for some of the other issues but the point is if you look at the issues in a problem solving manner most can be solved, if you look at them as a "law and order" or "good vs bad" one then nothing will change. The villages have as much right to be there as the elephants do
     
  15. paddoboy Valued Senior Member

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    Agreed......
    But it doesn't solve the poaching issue....

    In 2012, a shocking 30,000 elephants in Africa were slaughtered for their ivory, 7.4 percent of the entire population. Rhinos are in an even more precarious situation. Last year in South Africa, the last bastion for these species, 668 rhino were killed for their horns. This year, as of July 31, 536 rhino have been poached in South Africa. This is out of a global population of fewer than 30,000 rhinos, compared to 500,000 in Africa and Asia at the start of the 20th century.


    For countries like Tanzania, Kenya, and South Africa, home to these charismatic species, their existence fuels an ecotourism industry that generates millions of jobs and billions of dollars in foreign exchange. Wipe out these animals, and the tourists who come to see them will vanish. Jobs and futures will follow suit and many people will be tossed into a life of grinding poverty.



    And with regards to the poachers driven to it by their circumstances, the following should be noted.......




    NAIROBI, Kenya, July 19, 2013 (ENS) – Two Kenya Wildlife Service officers were killed in two separate gunfights with suspected poachers Thursday while responding to a poaching incident within the Kipini Wildlife and Botanical Conservancy in Tana River County.

    The two who lost their lives in these confrontations are the unit commanding officer and a ranger belonging to an anti-poaching unit in the area. The rest of the rangers escaped unhurt.


    A poacher was also killed in one of the incidents.


    http://ens-newswire.com/2013/07/19/poachers-kill-two-kenya-wildlife-service-officers/


    Sad, very sad........

    An AK47 rifle, three rifle magazines and 208 rounds of ammunition were recovered.
     
  16. Asguard Kiss my dark side Valued Senior Member

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    true but your "solution" wont fix that. Its not the west which is the issue, for ivory its china and Thailand and according to that same story its reasonably easy to fix because the Thais love elephants and just need to be made aware that the little elephant statues they make out of the ivory are obtained by killing an elephant, when told they are horrified by this and stop selling them. The Chinese may or may not be harder to convince. The rhino horn on the other hand is sold in Vietnam as a hangover cure and a cure for cancer and its sale is more underground and dangerous for those opposing it. There the strategy is about getting the word around about the fact it doesn't work to the desperate but to the more well off who use it to show there opulence its harder

    Very fascinating interview, wish I could remember what show it was on so I could try to source it
     

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