The last male northern white rhino
theguardian.com
theguardian.com
As one door closes an opportunity is forever lost. The effects of man-made extinctions reverberate through time and fill the pool of unreachable truths (Hofstadter).
It's unethical toward the whole human race as well.
Of course, there's much we won't get back. There was no doubt a huge amount of variation in the historical population of the rhinos that just isn't present in the handful that remain.
The biodiversity argument is not a warm and touchy-feely one, but it is certainly an economic and social one that should only enhance the touchy-feely arguments of saving a precious animal. A rhino is a 3 billion year old piece of technology that we were gifted a glimpse of. One that we yet have a lot yet to learn from. And we, as species, smelted down that technology to make a ring or necklace. Imagine if a future civilization a billion years more advanced bestowed their version of the iPhone to us, and we melted it to extract the shiny gold... what fools.
Large animals have a generational gap of, let's say 5-10 years, and have numbers in the tens of thousands. Bacterial generational gaps measure in minutes to hours, and their numbers are so large there are no confident approximations. Unsuccessful bacteria species number in the thousands of trillions. One can only imagine what the numbers are for successful species.
This means that the genetic algorithm running a pathetitc bacterial species has a clock speed something like 100 terahertz. It does 100 trillion calculations per second. The genetic algorithm that runs "on" the human race has a clock speed of around 5 calculations per second. For most animal and plant species, the speed would be significantly less than 1Hz. Guess which of these two makes the discoveries ... (the theory being that viruses, on rare occasions, transplant DNA "discoveries" from bacteria into other species, so while humans do evolve, they rarely, if ever, successfully mutate. Rather we are the product of natural genetic manipulation by viruses and natural selection. The same applies for plants and other animals)
The reason large animals survive at all is that their biomass just does not register on the "success" charts for bacteria. Killing every single plant and animal on the planet and fully converting all that mass into new bacterial biomass would not represent 0.01% change in population size for bacteria. That is the only reason why animals survive : we're simply neither a threat, nor a worthwhile target.
For example, Siberia will really like to get rhinos, mammoths and other large animals back, and it is possible to breed them from existing warm-climate ones. And there's a lot of space for them to thrive.
This is an understandable position, but difficult in practice. We're losing "information" in a lot of other ways as well. Habitat destruction is probably the most obvious part of that for many species. It's not enough to have a genome without knowledge of what I'll call that genome's "context of relevance". Which amounts to a vast web of climate, local environmental history, other organisms in that context, and so on. All of that will likewise affect any given organism's epigenetic expression, something else that a naive recording of genetic data will miss.
Likewise, we're destroying what amounts to animal "culture". Go read Elizabeth Marshall's The Tribe of Tiger[1], esp. the part that describes the extremely interesting relationship between the Bushmen tribes of the Kalahari desert and the resident prides of lions.
As far as we can manage, it's still best to preserve as much as possible of our "archives of life" in living form vs. recorded on media somewhere.
[1] http://www.amazon.com/Tribe-Tiger-Elizabeth-Marshall-Thomas/...
According to the book, the primary use for the horns is to make jewelery. There were thousands of Northern White Rhinos in the early 1900s, 1,000 in 1980, 13 in 1985, and the population got up to 22 by the time the book was published in 1990. He thought we could save them.
> The appetite for killing rhinos to saw off their horn is fuelled by demand in the far east, which has risen as countries such as Vietnam, one of the biggest consumers of rhino horn, and China have become more prosperous.
> Rhino horn is made of keratin, the same material as human toenails, but an unfounded belief that it cures everything from hangovers to cancer and can serve as an aphrodisiac, has fed demand and sent prices soaring to an estimated $75,000 (£50,000) a kilo.
[1]: http://www.theguardian.com/environment/2015/apr/27/ol-pejeta...
> There is a widespread myth about what people want rhino horns for - in fact two myths. The first myth is that ground rhino horn is an aphrodisiac. This, I think it's safe to say, is just what it appears to be - superstition. It has little to do with any known medical fact, and probably a lot to do with the fact that a rhino's horn is a big sticky-up hard thing.
> The second myth is that anyone actually believes the first myth.
> It was probably the invention of a journalist, or at best a misunderstanding. It's easy to see where the idea came from when you consider the variety of things that the Chinese, for example, believe to be aphrodisiacs, which include the brain of a monkey, the tongue of a sparrow, the human placenta, the penis of a white horse, rabbit hair from old brushes, and the dried sexual parts of a male tiger soaked in a bottle of European brandy for six months. A big sticky-up hard thing like a rhinoceros horn would seem to be a natural for such a list, though it's perhaps harder to understand, in this context, why grinding the thing down would be such an attractive idea. The fact is that there is no actual evidence to suggest that the Chinese do believe rhino horn to be an aphrodisiac. The only people who do believe it are people who've read somewhere that other people believe it, and are ready and willing to believe anything they hear that they like the sound of.
> There is no known trade in rhino horn for the purposes of aphrodisia. (This, like most things, is no longer strictly true. It is now known that there are a couple of people in Northern India who use it, but they only do it to annoy.)
> Much horn is used in traditional medicine in the Far East, but a major part of the trade in rhino horn is caused by something much more absurd, and it's this: fashion. Dagger handles made of rhinoceros horn are an extremely fashionable item of male jewellery in the Yemen.
> That's it: costume jewellery
Further arguments against on: https://www.savetherhino.org/rhino_info/threats_to_rhino/poa...
Update: Argh! From savetherhino.org:
> There is a belief in the West that rhino horn is used as an aphrodisiac and sexual stimulant but this is not correct and seems to have been misunderstood or misinterpreted by Western media. However, research has shown that people in Vietnam are starting to believe this rumour as they are consuming it for new reasons.
Great.
Is there a name for this? Because it seems pretty widespread across almost every controversial topic. (e.g. "public outcry" against X, that never existed, can still get knee-jerk reactions from governments, people, etc.)
unintended consequences, streisand effect -- no, "Streisand Singularity", creating an issue where there was one.
Actually, it's "ironic".
And hair and fingernails and ..
Which brings up the obvious point that the best way to "save the rhino" is to gather about 1000 pounds of nail clippings, grind them up, and put them on ebay as counterfeit rhino horn. That'll poison the marketplace (something we're pretty good at) which will help ruin the profitability of rhino poaching, and it'll also kill the price, changing rhino poaching from "a worthwhile risk with the possible reward of a zillion bucks" to "an idiotic risk with little return"
The governments and activists involved should be flooding the market with counterfeit rhino horn today, if they really cared about the rhino.
This can obviously be abstracted to my innards are grass, because the amino acids in the cow were consumed and re-arranged into programmer pot belly and my stylish hair do. (glances down at my hairy belly) yes you are grass aren't you...
The other epic fail is there's real food, then there's bread, and finally at the bottom of the barrel theres not-even-bread. And the worst of the chemically preserved artificial bread shaped stuff may include various peculiar preservative compounds. But when I eat junk food like bread, I eat the good stuff. So, no, "bread" is not a singular atom or compound or food, and only the cruddy stuff is full of preservatives of weird sources.
Whether you personally eat that bread is not very relevant for this discussion, but for what it's worth, I personally think that whether cysteine is made from duck feathers or from human hair is irrelevant, it's chemically the same molecule. I generally bake my own bread, but when I don't I have no qualms about eating bread with cysteine in it, and if my own bread would taste better with cysteine I would put it in. Scary chemicals are just a label people put on things, salt is a scary chemical too when you call it natrium chloride.
Duly noted that HN prefers not to learn such factoids though =)
I highly recommend listening to the audiobook version narrated by Adams himself. It's quite excellent; Adams is really a perfect narrator. You can find it on YouTube, since I don't think it's available for purchase anymore.
(On the bright side, many of the animals mentioned in the book are doing better these days.)
I view poaching as a poverty issue. Poachers are largely in poverty and buyers of animal goods are largely in cultures with major poverty issues. Yes some rich people in those cultures spend outrageous sums of money on items, but I contest that if you eliminate poverty the majority of these issues are also eliminated.
The boom in trade in rhino horn, elephant ivory, etc. has been largely fueled by increasing incomes in China and elsewhere. It is not the result of poverty.
Those who benefit the most from poaching are the well funded criminals. But the locals do benefit, the well funded criminals just ensure the locals only benefits as much as needed to ensure they still get their own big payday.
If the locals weren't benefitting at all, it wouldn't end all poaching, but it would have a significant effect. If instead the locals benefitted from stopping poaching, it would have an even greater effect.
Consider the case of control animal hunts where big game hunters pay to hunt the infertile old elephants who are still consuming resources that could otherwise go to the herd. The money spent helps the local economy, including to help pay for protection of the younger fertile elephants, and it helps the herd by culling the older elephants (my understanding is that the older ones interfere with the fertile elephants mating, there could be some benefit to having older herd leaders who are infertile, so it isn't a simple calculation).
That's what GP said. The people doing the dirty work are in poverty.
I mean, if we think of the rhinos and horns like a fleecy flock of sheep in a commons, it's like we're telling people who want to shear the sheep that they will be shot on sight. This boosts the price of wool, and encourages people to shoot the sheep and quickly skin it. Otherwise, there is no way to get any wool ever. Seems like there must be a way to encourage a more long-term approach of shearing the sheep and leaving it to produce more wool and more sheep...
(Disclaimer: I am not affiliated with Pembient).
Also, I wouldn't be surprised if it's analogous to the Dr. Oz / anti-vaccine set in the U.S. Those people have access to all the knowledge they could want, but you still couldn't shake their misguided beliefs out of them.
This article appears to support you. Letting people know that rhino horn is not medicine reduced the numbers of people wanting to buy rhino horn.
This article appears to support you. Letting people know that rhino horn is not medicine reduced the numbers of people wanting to buy rhino horn.
It's really fascinating, and similar to the arms race in detecting purity levels in drugs. Also, mobs and stuff too make it pretty exciting and non-typical 'startup' work.
To the Chinese, consuming these things (rhino horns, bear gall bladders) isn't crazy. It's more or less mainstream, though of course it has zero scientific credibility beyond the placebo effect.
Keeping the species alive is better than not. Now, we try to figure out humane farming, if we want to
There are entire farms where crocodiles are bred just for their skin. People like crocodile skin, they make shoes and crap from them. Some people think rhino horn makes their dicks work. Ok fair enough, lets make a shitload of horns.
Checks out. This guy is from South Africa.
I've thought about this with respect to the Oryx, which has been extinct in the wild since the ~1920s, but found a niche on game farms in Texas and Argentina. Now, hunting the Oryx is illegal in the United States and I've wondered how long until the animal goes extinct. At $4000 to $7000 to hunt, it was a lucrative trade.
I would guess that the issue with rhino/elephant would be resource management of a herd that does not hit breeding age for quite a few years. Of course, at these prices, that could work out.
Personally, I think the Asian horn powder market is barbaric.
We won't see the extinction of the chicken, cow or pig as long as there is an incentive to keep them alive.
Rhino farming would make it more profitable and thus more likely to protect them and keep them breeding.
While red junglefowl and wild boar are doing OK, the aurochs is extinct. If you just incentivize rhino horns, you don't incentivize preserving the species or genetic diversity.
While many animals are far harder to raise than cows, the difficulty results in lower numbers and thus increased rarity which thus increases the price of the animal once brought to maturity. Any animal that is risking extinction from being hunted should be sufficiently desirable to make this equation balance out to a sufficient population of the animal being raised.
The only issue I really see is that in the long term this will likely lead to such species being slowly domesticated.
http://www.npr.org/blogs/krulwich/2011/05/10/136029423/the-l...
- At what point did Sudan become the last male northern white rhino?
- Were similar conservation and breeding efforts done on the previous male northern white rhinos?
- If so, why did those fail (for both conservation and breeding)?
- How far back were conservation and breeding efforts executed and failed, leading up to the last one?
- Is this a case of hunting efforts out-pacing diligent conservation and breeding efforts, or was there not enough education and funding for truly diligent conservation and breeding efforts?
Unfortunately, the goal of this article seems to be to strike at the readers' emotions vs. present a factual story of the past and present. Not saying the former is bad, just that I was hoping for more of the latter.
In 2007, there were 14 of these rhinos left, 4 wild and 10 in captivity: http://www.theguardian.com/environment/2007/mar/04/conservat... - this article also cited a number of 30 back in 2000.
In October 2014, the second-to-last male died at the relatively young age of 34, leaving just 6 and removing the last realistic hope for breeding: http://www.theguardian.com/environment/2014/oct/18/northern-...
In December 2014, the next-to-last male died, of old age, leaving just 5: http://www.theguardian.com/environment/2014/dec/15/northern-...
It's painting a pretty dismal picture altogether. I guess conservation efforts were too little, too late, with the remaining population already too small and too aged to ever offer much hope for success. :(
Since Rhino horn is just like keratin and dirt or something, design a process to create spot-on fake rhino horns and flood the market with them.
You would make lots of money at first and eventually drop the price of rhino horn to the point where it wouldn't be economically feasible to harvest real Rhino horn.
Bad rhino horns drives out good
Personally I think it's a bad idea, as it's demand which drives this not supply. fixing supply may only increase demand for the 'real thing' even more.
It's also not been considered too urgent since they have the sperm and eggs already, they can always put the baby in a Southern White Rhino.
You must also consider the fate of that animal and the security it would require. It might be better to let them go extinct, make a big deal about it, then bring them back. Plus if they did it this way they would get much more recognition verses if they saved the species with a few still living.
Source? Why is the Guardian article framing Sudan as the species' last chance if this is the case?
The Guardian article is written by someone who is most likely a freelance writer. Their goal is to pump out articles that make attention grabbing claims while staying truthful. The author was not a rhino expert and likely didn't do much journalism research to find the facts people need to know, but some sob story about the last of it's kind is better news (more shares, more likes, more viewers, more ad revenue).
The Guardian writer, Jonathan Jones, is the art critic for the newspaper. Hence, the links to art history and a very descriptive interpretation of the rhino in the picture ("His head is a marvellous thing. It is a majestic rectangle of strong bone and leathery flesh, a head that expresses pure strength").
The article is part of a series called 'Framing the debate' which the site describes as follows:
"A great photograph doesn't only say more than a thousand words, it can also create a hundred different reactions. In this series we take a close look at contemporary and historical photographs and videos that divide opinion"
http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/series/framing-the-...
There are some sci-fi ideas, as others mentioned, but they are long shots.
[1] http://www.endangeredspeciesinternational.org/overview.html
Could we stop the poaching of near extinct species for some unproven alternative medicine? Hopefully.
In other news, terrorists and other enemies of the US are trying to make the Yellowstone volcano explode, that's scary. Can we not "cool" the magma under Yellowstone? Maybe even use that heat? Are geothermal plants too expensive?
Animals killing animals is still "natural" predator:prey survival. Humans killing an entire species by shooting them isn't any less natural than wolves hunting their primary food source to extinction.
The difference is humans don't go extinct when we kill a species - because we aren't dependent on them as a primary source of survival.
Most animals are foragers (eg. squirrels) or hunters (eg. lions) and some can be both (eg. bears) but very, very few animals are creators of their own food.
I cannot think of any other animal that aids another species in breeding for the sole purpose of consumption for survival. Although I can think of a few bacterium examples or even symbiotic relationships. It's not quite the same level I'm arguing for here.
Not quite the same thing you're talking about, but some ants farm aphids to eat something they produce. I would give a citation, but there are a ton if you search, and I don't know if any one is notably better.
I'd say that counts. The others don't seem to be on the "same level" as to what I'm thinking - though the distinction is possibly even arbitrary.
Thanks for the info!
I think the point they were trying to make is that there is no other sapient symbiotic relationships, but there are few sapient species so it's kind of moot.
Symbiotic relationships are not quite the same - again with my definition arguably being arbitrary. I consider a symbiotic relationship to be when two animals happen to benefit from each other due to their actions and it is not one species using another.
That is the case for most symbiotic relationships I can think of. For example, pilot fish and sharks. Sharks happen to host bacteria that the pilot fish eat. Eating the bacteria is obviously beneficial for the pilot fish and happens to benefit the shark as well. It's not that the pilot fish specifically chose sharks to eat bacteria from. This appears to be happenstance.
Some of the examples of ants and aphids seems to be happenstance. The ants defend an aphid from another creature that eats/destroys the aphids so that the ants can eat it. That's fighting to protect their food source - something I consider "necessary for survival" and not "beneficial for survival".
The case I cited where the ants will harvest the aphid eggs, store them safely for the winter, then bring them back to plants to hatch is along the lines of "beneficial for survival". It's an intentional use of aphids as a food source with what appears to be a methodology of breeding and sustaining their honeydew food source. It's a "step above" a symbiotic relationship in my eyes. [2]
[1] http://www.cell.com/current-biology/abstract/S0960-9822%2814...
[2] Again, I recognize that where I'm drawing my line might be arbitrary to some people. I hope I explained how I see some of the scenarios as different to one another in a way that other people can understand where I stand. If not, please ask questions.
The problem is that we aren't starving ourselves into extinction as a result of overkilling rhinos. We're simply moving on to the next species and driving them extinct, then moving on to the next, etc.
So basically, by the time we are extinct, it may be too late.
That's my point - and I don't see how it's a problem unless you consider the extinction of the human race a good thing?
>We're simply moving on to the next species and driving them extinct, then moving on to the next, etc.
So it's as if wolves ran out of moose and deer so began hunting rabbits and small game. They still hadn't figured out how to raise their own food and will eventually run out of food sources. Thankfully, humans have the "food sources" problem sorted out. [1]
>So basically, by the time we are extinct, it may be too late.
Late for what? Even "without human interaction" - animals still go extinct. It's a natural thing, even a very normal thing. With 99% of species going extinct I would argue it's not normal for a species to not go extinct.
Humans are largely against other species going extinct though. I guess there's that tinge of guilt for being the "root cause of the problem". Though to pretend it is somehow unnatural and not how the world works is silly and childish. Predators have caused prey to go extinct for hundreds of thousands of years.
[1] Because we grow food and raise animals for consumption. Most species don't do this.
Yes, but not at the rate and scale that we are causing species to go extinct. We're essentially the equivalent of a mass-extinction event for most species on the planet.
Furthermore, species in nature tend to be in certain states of equilibrium because every predator is prey for something else. Except humans: we're at the top of the food chain and the only threat we face is from ourselves.
>Furthermore, species in nature tend to be in certain states of equilibrium because every predator is prey for something else.
This is not entirely true, I'll add a new term for your vocabulary: Apex predator [0] There is a reason it is called a "food chain" and not a "food pyramid".
Predators die off because of many reasons. Some are human caused and others aren't. Let's bring a bit of math into this: Lotka-Volterra predator-prey equation [1]
I forget the exact term for population dynamics but "food source goes down, predator population dies off, predator population dying off means more food source survives, more food source means fewer predators die from starvation and the cycle continues". It's possible to reach a point of no return if too much of the prey dies off. This happens, I would like to refer to my wolves example from earlier.
[0] Have a look at the "extant" section in particular. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_apex_predators
[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lotka%E2%80%93Volterra_equation
I think you're a bit too focused on the literal definition of the word "natural," and that's rather pedantic. Yes, we're a part of nature. That doesn't mean our actions are ordinary, or like that of other animals. On the contrary, we're incredibly efficient at everything we do, and the impact we're having on the planet is unprecedented. There has never been a species in the entire history of Earth like us. And since we're so vastly different, it's incorrect to treat what we're doing as "natural."
This is where we are splitting hairs. I find it both unfair and arrogant to argue that it is, somehow, not natural. That humans are somehow above nature.
When the resources we depend on are depleted and become scarce, we'll see population decrease - the same natural limitation placed onto every other species. When the resources (ie. food sources) they depend on deplete. They die off.
This is why "natural power" (eg. wind, solar) is so important. This is why "renewable resources" are so important. This is why figuring out how to recycle materials is important. This is why purifying water is important. This is why getting us off of this planet and into space is so important.
The importance of these things is because our very survival as a species depends on these things.
We are a part of nature. We are subject to the same laws that govern other species. These same laws that cause entire species to go extinct. We are not above these laws. Our very survival as a species depends on recognizing this fact and being fucking terrified of this fact.
E: I feel we're straying a bit.
There are legitimate and scientific reasons for why causing species to go extinct is bad for humans. We lose valuable data and the ability to research and learn from these species to better understand our world.
"Boo hoo, this beautiful species is now extinct" is not a reason I care for.
The argument of "it's unnatural" is also not compelling. Efficiency does not make it unnatural, it makes it efficient.
Humans have the unique ability to notice that animals go extinct, we even have the ability to be gods and decide to bring the species back from extinction or not.
What is lost by losing the NORTHERN White Rhino when the SOUTHERN White Rhino is the same creature, just located in a different area?
Allowing the Northern White Rhino to go temporarily extinct is an amazing ability that ONLY humans have ever had. We can easily bring the species back when we solve the poaching problem. Right now poaching is too expensive to defend against while ensuring a high-quality of life for these animals.
Yes, the poachers will still hunt, but it will be more costly for the poachers and hopefully that will deter them somewhat.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/White_rhinoceros
There's a possibility that the Northern White Rhino animal is very different to the Southern White Rhino animal.
> Following the phylogenetic species concept, recent research has suggested the northern white rhinoceros may be an altogether different species, rather than a subspecies of white rhinoceros, in which case the correct scientific name for the former is Ceratotherium cottoni. Distinct morphological and genetic differences suggest the two proposed species have been separated for at least a million years.[18]
The "should be their own species" argument was primarily brought on to promote the endangered status of the rhinos anyways. http://scienceblogs.com/tetrapodzoology/2010/05/03/new-speci...
"The danger in making this sort of suggestion, however, is that changing the taxonomy to suit conservation priority could eventually backfire: it would not look good if zoologists were thought to be tweaking their conclusions in order to suit their favoured conservation projects."
Mass extinction events from millions of years ago are not really relevant to discussion about protecting existing endangered species from human exploitation.
I agree that on the large scale we're no less "natural" or "conscious", but surely we can be better than a Meteor or a Supervolcano.
Some say yes; others think perhaps an albino tiger isn't all that pertinent, when we can (soon) create a pink polka-dot tiger that fetches your slippers.
http://www.latimes.com/local/lanow/la-me-ln-rhino-money-2015...
This quote from that article was interesting to me, I had always assumed that mammal reproductive systems were relatively similar: "The reproductive system of rhinos is very complex and there is still so much we do not know,"
The Southern White Rhino has a population of about 20,000 (Endangered).
TIL about the Woolly Rhino: http://www.rhinos.org/rhinos/extinct-woolly-rhino
Would it even be responsible to save the Northern White Rhino right now? Maybe wait a few years, let the current ones die off, then breed several of them using Southern White Rhino surrogates could be one plan.
I think the tolerance between species is highly variable, but "Fetuses of the Giant Panda have been grown in the womb of a cat by intercurrently inserting panda and cat embryos into the cat womb." http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Interspecific_pregnancy
However, wikipedia says: "Following the phylogenetic species concept, recent research has suggested the northern white rhinoceros may be an altogether different species, rather than a subspecies of white rhinoceros, in which case the correct scientific name for the former is Ceratotherium cottoni. Distinct morphological and genetic differences suggest the two proposed species have been separated for at least a million years."
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/White_rhinoceros#Northern_white...
There are many definitions of species. If they are able to interbreed and create viable (i.e. non-sterile) offspring, they might be considered to be the same species. However, there are cases where offspring are viable, but less fit for a variety of reasons. In this case, many biologists would still consider them separate.
The distinction being that in surrogacy, there is no requirement to mix DNA to make viable offspring. There are likely immunological compatibility concerns at the placental boundary.
Ok, here's the cite http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Interspecific_pregnancy
But, either way, surrogacy is not breeding; it would be a northern egg and sperm implanted in a southern rhino.
Ironically there is a way to prevent these disasters when there is sufficient public will and control over the market.
"No man is an island entire of itself; every man is a piece of the continent, a part of the main; if a clod be washed away by the sea, Europe is the less... any man's death diminishes me, because I am involved in mankind.
And therefore never send to know for whom the bell tolls; it tolls for thee."
After that, to be a poacher will mean taking a tremendous risk: simultaneously becoming not only hunter, but hunted. Hunted by a group of psychopaths who appear wherever poachers appear, anywhere in the world, to take advantage of the treaty.
And, of course, many of those psychopaths will be none other than ... competing poachers. All traces of cooperation among poachers will be gone, replaced by paranoid mistrust of the purest kind.
A poacher won't even be able to sell an elephant tusk to anyone without fear. If you're approached by someone offering a tusk, he can be defined by the treaty as a poacher, which means you can legally kill him and take the tusk (and the same risk upon yourself as you try to do with that tusk what he just did).
How do you even define a poacher ? Maybe they start using intermediaries.
They use anonymous locations as a way to sell the horns ?
Maybe once their buyer appears on site to take the horn, they take a picture and shot the buyer calling him the "poacher" to collect the poacher money and resale the horn ?
Allowing legal murder of humans should only be instituted by the state and not be individuals, even the state screws up the process and individuals are much less trustworthy.
The poaching problem requires both attack from supply side and demand side using various soft techniques. The only reason the horns are important is due to its social value.
We do not have poaching problems with ants,spiders,monkeys,etc. because killing and the keeping their body parts has little social value to humans and there exists a strong penalty if you have a dead monkey in your house !
This is frankly china's problem.
Quite trivially. First, precisely identify certain geographic areas (habitats of endangered animals subject to poaching). Then, anyone in those areas with any sort of equipment for poaching (guns, traps, whatever) is by definition a poacher. To make it simple, a poacher killer, if armed, is also defined as a poacher while inside one of these areas. "Inside" also includes air space, which extends 30,000 feet above ground, and three miles beyond the border of the area. Anyone who would be a considered a poacher if standing in the area is also a poacher if in the air space. All passengers and crew of the craft are considered poachers if any one of them satisfies the definition.
If individuals don't realize the impact of their actions on the world at large, shouldn't the government or public groups (e.g., in Vietnam or China) step in and take a stand on it, no matter how unpopular that stand is?
You'll never win the fight against the poachers. The only way is to cut the demand at source. Too late for that unfortunately. This really made me sad.
"Human beings – we always kill the things we love."
1. Lots of humanity doesn't agree that those are less important things, and
2. Among those that have a value system that does agree with you on that point, there's still a tragedy of the commons problem.
There are five northern white rhinos left. All of them were in zoos until four were moved from a zoo in Czech Republic to a conservancy in Africa.
Can you imagine being the last human being and living out the rest of your short, lonely, depressing life in a tiny artificial habitat, poked and peered at by weird creatures for god knows why?
Most of these animals were born in captivity. That means they don't even reflect the mentality of the original animal in its natural habitat. This is effectively no longer a wild animal; it is our pet. The hope, one imagines, is that somehow scientists can figure out how to breed enough of them that they could reintroduce them to the wild, but this is a risky, expensive, difficult, long-term process. But the track record of this system over the past 50 years proves this will not work.
In order to try to convince poachers not to kill them, there was a systematic attempt to dehorn rhinos in captive populations in the 90s that continues today. In order to keep these animals alive, we mutilate them, ignoring the long process of evolution which adapted these animals with very pronounced and specific biological features. This still doesn't stop poachers from killing them for a multitude of reasons, but it reduces the likelihood of human and rhino caused mortality.
Extinction is a natural process, which occurs due to geological transformation, climactic oscillation, and species interaction. About 99.9% of all species that have existed on the planet are extinct.
Human growth, however, has drastically accelerated the extinction of species. Some of the ways humans cause extinction include water pollution, overfishing, overgrazing, thermal pollution, excess turbidity, deforestation, agricultural development, urban conversion, introduction of alien species, and of course, hunting. In rainforests, which include up to 80% of the species diversity of the planet, deforestation causes the loss of up to 50,000 species a year.
Considering all of that, think about this: we are guarding one fucking rhino. We know it's not going to breed; they've been trying for 50 years and made one or two cows. So naturally this begs the question: why the fuck are we pretending so hard to care about this one giant mammal when it's already too late?
We don't actually care for, or need, this species. It is effectively already completely removed from nature, so it has no effect on its environment or other species. The only reason we're dicking around like this is guilt. Guilt that we abused our pets, and so we make a lame attempt to put a band-aid on it and say we're sorry, so that our parent or God or whatever moral authority you choose will forgive our sins.
But feeling guilty doesn't save lives, and it doesn't keep an environment healthy. So this process of burning the world, then giving it CPR when it can no longer crawl, does nothing to help the fauna of the planet. We're not actually helping. We're trying to make ourselves feel better. And this false compassion is fucking infuriating.
Sorry for the rant.
I was incredibly confused for a good 5 seconds.