Facts About Poaching, and Why it NEEDS to be Stopped
1. Poaching is just like trading drugs and arms, but instead of drugs and arms, it is a part of an animal. It could be ivory from elephants, to bear gall bladder.
2. Rhinos were being poached twice per day, in a whole year that is 730 rhinos, but of course it increases per year
3. Most tigers are killed and its parts like the organs, pelts, and bones, are sold underground in the black market
4. Other countries like in the east use the animal parts for mythological medicine, which are disapproved of and do not have any medical value
5. United Nations have reported that gorillas could be extinct from Congo Basin around 2020
2. Rhinos were being poached twice per day, in a whole year that is 730 rhinos, but of course it increases per year
3. Most tigers are killed and its parts like the organs, pelts, and bones, are sold underground in the black market
4. Other countries like in the east use the animal parts for mythological medicine, which are disapproved of and do not have any medical value
5. United Nations have reported that gorillas could be extinct from Congo Basin around 2020
Illegal trades of plants and animals are very high in profit as they can be worth as low as $70 billion a year to a high of $213 billion a year. This is ruining not only our economy but our population of animals as well.
People who poach, which is when you are forbidden to hunt, fish or snare, are the following; there is the “Subsistence Poachers and Farmers” they are the ones who are illegally killing animals just to get food, they do not hunt big animals for trophies or profit. Then there are the “Commercial Poachers” they make themselves a career out of killing/ trapping any animals illegally, then they sell off the parts of the animals to make their big profit. The “Organized Crime & Criminal Syndicates” are the ones who give away the parts of the animals from the “nobody” poacher and it goes up to international buyers, who pay big bucks for certain parts of animals. The “Rebel and Insurgent Militias” are both “armed insurgent groups and rebel forces” that are in Africa. These people commit terrorist attacks, and they are the ones who get most of their income from big-game poaching, like elephants and rhinos. The next ones are the “Military and Corrupt Officials”, yes there are the people who are very high ranked in the world and they are using their high position to their advantage as some are making their income by poaching/ illegal trading. The last ones are the “Wildlife Traffickers and Smugglers” they are people who sell the animals that are “exotic, protected, or endangered species” and since these animals are almost the last of their kind they are worth major money, and so when they are traded these people are making around $70-$213, this includes all environmental crimes.
In Kenya where a lot of poaching happens, in the year of 2013 there were “1,549 suspects that were arrested and prosecuted”. These poachers that were arrested had 99 pounds of rhino horn, 22,280 pounds of bushmeat and 51,025 pounds of ivory. Then in South America during the same year there were 343 poachers that were arrested/ killed. Then in 2014 there were 386 suspected poachers that were arrested.
Poaching is mainly targeting animals such as the “tigers, rhinos, elephants, gorillas, and other African and Asian species”. When WWF started their “African Rhino Programme in 1997” the population of the white rhinos were 8,466, there were 2,599 black rhinos that stayed in the wild and were in extreme danger for becoming endangered. With the WWF helping out the rhinos the numbers of the rhinos started to increase, as of now there are around 17,500 white rhinos, and the “extreme danger of becoming endangered” black rhinos have increased their numbers to 4,000. The facts are that there is a growth of mountain gorillas over the past years, they have increased their numbers but 26%. There were 11,065 rhinos in 1997 and now there are 21,000 that is an increase of 9,935 rhinos. WWF is hoping to increase the tiger population by double the amount in 2022. Then the dark news, there were 100,000 African elephants that were killed in the year 1980, just a year, that is crazy.