Comment by adamnemecek | Hacker News Reader

Comment by adamnemecek | Hacker News Reader

You guys should consider donating to the International Anti-Poaching Foundation[0][1] which fights these poachers. The founder, Damien Mander[2], is an Australian ex spec-ops sniper who is using his military experience to train the park rangers since they, unlike the poachers, tend to be poorly equipped and trained as well as understaffed.

There is also the David Sheldrick Wildlife Trust[3][4] which takes care of elephant and rhino orphans (most of them are orphans due to poaching). For $50 a year, you can become a sponsor of a particular animal and they'll send you photos and updates about how your sponsored animal is doing. You can for example sponsor these cuties [5][6]. It's a good gift.

You should also check out http://reddit.com/r/babyelephantgifs for a daily dose of elephant gifs.

[0] http://www.iapf.org/

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_Anti-Poaching_Fo...

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Damien_Mander

[3] http://www.sheldrickwildlifetrust.org/

[4] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Sheldrick_Wildlife_Trust

[5] http://www.sheldrickwildlifetrust.org/asp/orphan_profile.asp...

[6] https://www.instagram.com/p/BZz6S-fFBQL/?taken-by=dswt

As a child in the early 90s I was given the "gift" of an adopted whale. I did get updates about my whale, where it was an what it was doing. The data was likely all junk but it was an interesting gift for a kid interested in oceans. The gift then went sour. My name/address had obviously been put on a list. Other organizations started sending me mail containing pictures of dead and abused animals, not images for children. It took years for this to stop. I fear a modern version: waking up to see every website I visit flanked by ads full of crying puppies. Instead, I donate cash to local animal centers.

I donated 100 to each

May your code be forever bugfree.

+1

Interesting blessing . Bugs may be reason someone is employed as the code needs to be maintained.

> You guys should consider donating to the International Anti-Poaching Foundation which fights these poachers.

The people in the video capturing calves are not poachers - they are Parks and Wildlife rangers. The sale to zoos are entirely legal in both countries, but might be contravening CITES rules.

Donated 50 to each. Thanks for sharing!

Out of curiosity, are these organizations literally fighting poachers? I.e. we're saying that an elephant's life is more valuable than a human's?

That's an interesting moral question.

Eh, play stupid games, win stupid prizes.

Yes, they are. The countries that have a shoot on sight policy for poachers tend to have very low poaching rates.

> That's an interesting moral question.

It's not actually. The poaching groups are connected to the likes of Boko Haram http://www.nationalgeographic.com/tracking-ivory/article.htm.... So it's two birds with one stone really.

Also the poachers kill anti-poachers regularly

https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2017/apr/25/two-wild...

https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2017/aug/17/leading-...

Is it so interesting? I'm sure they would apprehend poachers without violence if they had any reason to believe the poachers wouldn't fight for their freedom.

It's a bit like asking whether a human life is more valuable than a sack of money when a bank robber goes down shooting. Either law enforcement has teeth or there are no laws.

Harmers are less valuable than victims, regardless of species. All consciousness should be respected.

Depends why they're causing harm. Nothing is ever black and white.

    > Nothing is ever black and white.

This is true, but I feel like people claiming this often intend to imply that everything is exactly 50% gray which is also never the case.

So kill all leopards, lions, tigers, wolves etc.

It's a valid point, I do agree it's worth thinking about, I've heard of the movement before.

But it means you are very pro poacher though. Every animal they kill often saves hundreds.

Interesting outlook.

A few years ago I was on a trip in Tanzania, visiting Ngorongoro Crater. At one point, high up on the crater rim, the guide pulled the Land Rover to the side of the road to give a ride to a couple of uniformed "park rangers". They were dealing with "reports of poachers", and each was carrying an AK-47. It was unclear whether actual shooting was part of their remit; they were not talkative.

While in the Kruger National Park, our driver was speeding and caught by a pair of rangers. One approached the car to collect the fine (cash only), the other had an assault rifle at the ready.

That's not the question at all. The question is whether we should let humans hunt species to extinction.

--

https://www.smithsonianmag.com/science-nature/fight-against-...

"Between 2010 and 2012, ivory hunters shot down an astonishing 100,000 elephants across Africa—more than 60 percent of central Africa’s elephant population has been lost during the ten-year period beginning in 2002—according to the U.S. National Academy of Sciences."

http://www.bagheera.com/inthewild/van_anim_elephant.htm

"Demand for ivory, combined with habitat loss from human settlement, has led to a dramatic decline in elephant populations in the last few decades. In 1930, there were between 5 and 10 million African elephants. By 1979, there were 1.3 million.

In 1989, when they were added to the international list of the most endangered species, there were about 600,000 remaining, less than one percent of their original number.

Asian elephants were never as abundant as their African cousins, and today they are even more endangered than African elephants. At the turn of the century, there were an estimated 200,000 Asian elephants. Today there are probably no more than 35,000 to 40,000 left in the wild."

--

So, we ask the question: Why save endangered species?

http://www.bbc.com/earth/story/20150715-why-save-an-endanger...

1) We like them, 2) The biosphere provides trillions of dollars to the global economy, 3) Loss of species impacts ecological systems and puts us at risk as we depend on them for survival.

> "...The question is whether we should let humans hunt species to extinction."

Why is this the question? Why is "extinction" so important? The fate of most species is extinction anyway.

I added an answer to this at the bottom of my comment.

Great article, thanks for sharing.

> "...1) We like them, 2) The biosphere provides trillions of dollars to the global economy, 3) Loss of species impacts ecological systems and puts us at risk as we depend on them for survival."

Is there a non-selfish reason, that is morally justifiable, for preventing species extinction?

Considering these arguments or normally made to people thinking of humanity first, non-selfish arguments wouldn't make much sense to use. Consider the audience of the argument.

How is to not jeopardize the ecological system a selfish reason?

Assuming humans did not exist, the main moral justification I see would be to prevent the unnecessary suffering of living beings. Of course suffering is a part of natural systems, but as living beings, we can identify with the discomfort of said suffering, and find it a moral imperative to limit suffering to only that which is necessary.

When natural systems can no longer sustain life, that life dies out. This can happen when there are no longer enough natural resources to support said life. But this does not necessarily happen quickly. The cause could be drought or famine or climate chane, resulting in lack of an environment suitable to life. This can cause the deterioration of a species to the point of disease, starvation, cannibalization, and other painful processes.

Let's take an example. Assume that some new disease affected a wolf population in a given area. Once those wolves died out, the lack of natural predators would cause other species (say, deer) to reproduce abundantly, and then overgraze, which would then affect the growth of forests, which then would affect the ecology sustaining a myriad of species that live in said forest. Assuming those species attempted to adapt by migration, they may be adversely affected by other species in a new region, or adversely affect those species themselves, setting off new chain reactions.

This is not a theory. This is a real problem affecting the northeast united states. Except it wasn't disease that killed off the wolves: it was humans.

The question is whether it's okay to shoot first at a gang of heavily armed criminals, or whether you have to attempt an arrest first.

Yes, you have to attempt an arrest first. Poaching is not a capital crime.

Bank robbery is not a capital crime either but cops shoot as soon as they see an armed gang. Isn't this a good comparison?

I think Kenya is one place where poaching is a capital crime. They issued a shoot to kill order some years ago. It made the news and I'm not sure of the efficacy of such programs.

Importantly, this isn't poaching. This was lawful collection of elephants. Morality aside, this does provide funding for cash- strapped nations and some of that funding goes to protection of stressed animal populations.

> Morality aside

Yeah let's not do that.

I'm not comfortable attempting to force my morality on other people and other cultures, and I think it detracts from our ability to be objective.

I personally dislike zoos and don't visit them. At the same time, I'm not comfortable telling you how you should feel.

Elephant's don't go around shooting humans....

If they could, would they?

Does it matter?

From those specific "humans"? Definitely yes. Humans like those, who harm other creatures just to make profit, deserve to die.

Is an elephant’s life more valuable than a randomly selected human? Probably not.

Is an elephant’s life worth more than someone who poaches endangered animals? Probably.

Also, these poachers are usually armed and willing to kill for their poach. The best defense against an idiot with a WWII export AK variant is a smarter person with a much longer-range weapon.

> Is an elephant’s life more valuable than a randomly selected human? Probably not.

According to The Law of Scarcity isn't the life of an elephant more valuable than a human?

No? Scarcity alone isn’t enough to make something valuable.

The article indicates these elephants were taken legally. So, in this case, I'm pretty sure we aren't actually discussing poachers.

I'll outright say it-an endangered animal's life is more valuable then a randomly selected human's. You could kill 10 or 100 humans for each of an endangered species and make no (net) difference in the ability of the human race to survive.

As if that's the only consideration. The survival of the race? Turn that around you can justify just about anything, like killing <human group here> because you believe it's better for 'survival'.

I think the moral takeaway is not that the lives of these people is worth less than that of an animal. It's that they are breaking knowingly and are often murderers themselves.

So if you could choose between saving the lives of five elephants, or preventing the Las Vegas shooting, you'd choose the elephants? That seems to be what you're saying.

I don't know if that's what they are saying, but I would say that. Tragic though the Vegas shooting was, humans aren't an endangered species.

Don't get me wrong, I happily hunt and fish. I clean and process dead animals with great frequency. The difference, in this case, is that elephants are truly at risk of extinction.

Do the same rules not apply in almost all countries when someone commits armed robbery of priceless artifacts with military grade weapons?

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