Revelations: Wildlife War

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Trophy hunters reflected in eye of dead zebra, Equus quagga, Okavanga Delta, Botswana by Franz Lantling
Trophy hunters reflected in eye of dead zebra, Equus quagga, Okavanga Delta, Botswana  Photo by Franz Lantling

Africa is centre of a ‘wildlife war’ that the world is losing

“The northern white rhino is heading the way of the dinosaurs. With only five left on Earth – three in Kenya, one in America, and one in the Czech Republic – extinction is now inevitable. It survived for millions of years, but could not survive mankind.

This is just one subspecies, but soon the planet’s remaining 28,500 rhinos could be under threat from the illegal wildlife trade. Worth up to £12bn a year, it has joined drugs, arms and human trafficking as one of the world’s biggest crime rackets. Ground zero in this “wildlife war” is Africa, and the conservationists are losing as animals are slaughtered on an industrial scale to meet demand for horn and ivory in newly affluent Asian countries.

Urgent solutions will be debated this week in Kasane, Botswana, as politicians and environmentalists gather for a follow-up to last year’s much-trumpeted London conference on the crisis…

More than a year later, however, when the Kasane summit reviews whether these commitments have been implemented, it seems likely that some will be found wanting. Despite a celebrity-led drive to raise awareness in China and Vietnam, where horn is coveted as an ingredient in traditional medicine or as a status symbol, a record 1,215 rhinos were killed last year in South Africa, 20% more than in 2013.

At least 220 chimpanzees, 106 orang-utans, 33 bonobos and 15 gorillas have been lost from the wild over the past 14 months, according to estimates by the Great Apes Survival Partnership. Elephants also remain under siege – at least 20,000 were poached annually from 2011 to 2013, according to the UN – although countries such as Kenya, Tanzania and Uganda have fought back with some measure of success over the past year.”

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  • Erin04

    This just makes me upset that humans are causing an animal population to go extinct for their own consumption and they are aware of it.  There needs to be laws in place for banning the hunting of these animals and needs to be enforced more harshly.  We need to do something before it is too late.  Unfortunately it has become an exchange that is affiliated with other illegal trafficking.  What can we do in the United States to get the issue out there?