murkas war on endangered species.

[Douger]

Here some of #1's !!! policy at work.
Idiots.One little thing murka would actually be # 1 at( because of technology and infrastructure) but can't because of your masters Big Dick Contest with Fidel.Fidel won. Get over yourselves.
Rare Crocs Once Owned by Fidel Castro Give Birth in Sweden - Hispanically Speaking News

 

[waltky]

The BBC's Gabriel Gatehouse reports on the threat to elephants in Kenya...

African elephant poaching threatens wildlife future
14 January 2013 - Three elephant corpses lay piled on top of one another under the scorching Kenyan sun.

In their terror, the elephants must have sought safety in numbers - in vain: a thick trail of blackened blood traced their final moments. In December, nine elephants were killed outside the Tsavo National Park, in south-eastern Kenya. This month, a family of 12 was gunned down in the same area. In both cases, the elephants' faces had been hacked off to remove the tusks. The rest was left to the maggots and the flies. "That is a big number for one single incident," said Samuel Takore of the Kenya Wildlife Service (KWS). "We have not had such an incident in recent years, I think dating back to before I joined the service."

Mr Takore joined in the 1980s, and his observations corroborate a wider pattern: across Africa, elephant poaching is now at its highest for 20 years. During the 1980s, more than half of Africa's elephants are estimated to have been wiped out, mostly by poachers hunting for ivory. But in January 1990, countries around the world signed up to an international ban on the trade in ivory. Global demand dwindled in the face of a worldwide public awareness campaign. Elephant populations began to swell again. But in recent years, those advances have been reversed.

An Asian appetite for ivory, seen here in Hong Kong, has fuelled poaching in Africa

China to blame?

An estimated 25,000 elephants were killed in 2011. The figures for 2012 are still being collated, but they will almost certainly be higher still. Campaigners are pointing the finger of blame at China. "China is the main buyer of ivory in the world," said Dr Esmond Martin, a conservationist and researcher who has spent decades tracking the movement of illegal ivory around the world. He has recently returned from Nigeria, where he conducted a visual survey of ivory on sale in the city of Lagos. His findings are startling. Dr Martin and his colleagues counted more than 14,000 items of worked and raw ivory in one location, the Lekki Market in Lagos. The last survey, conducted at the same market in 2002, counted about 4,000 items, representing a three-fold increase in a decade.

According to the findings of the investigation, which has been shared exclusively with the BBC, Nigeria is at the centre of a booming trade in illegal African ivory. In 2011, the Nigerian government introduced strict legislation to clamp down on the ivory trade, making it illegal to display, advertise, buy or sell ivory. And yet, says Dr Martin, Lagos has now become the largest retail market for illegal ivory in Africa. "There's ivory moving all the way from East Africa, from Kenya into Nigera," he said. "Nigerians are exporting tusks to China. Neighbouring countries are exporting a lot of worked ivory items (to Nigeria). "So it's a major entrepot for everything from tusks coming in, tusks going out, worked ivory going in, worked ivory going out, worked ivory being made."

Paramilitary poacher hunters

See also:

S African woman gored by rhino after posing for photo
15 January 2013 : A 24-year-old woman was seriously injured by a rhino moments after posing for a photograph with it, South Africa's Beeld newspaper reports.

Chantal Beyer suffered injuries to her shoulder, lungs and ribs after being gored at the Aloe Ridge Hotel and Game Reserve, some 40km from Johannesburg.

Chantal Beyer posed with her husband Sven Fouche beside the rhinos moments before one of them attacked her

Ms Beyer, a student from West Rand, was with her husband and several other people on a game drive in the reserve. She is said to be in a serious but stable condition in hospital. South Africa is home to some three-quarters of the world's rhinoceros population of about 28,000 animals.

But the country has seen a substantial rise in poaching in the past year amid a reported growing demand for rhino horn in parts of Asia where it is believed to have medicinal powers.

BBC News - S African woman gored by rhino after posing for photo

 

[Mr. H.]

Ah hell. For a moment there I thought Douger was back LOL.

 

[LordBrownTrout]

What happened to douger? Did the south american rebels get to him?

 

[Mr. H.]

What happened to douger? Did the south american rebels get to him?

Some questions are probably left unasked.

 

[waltky]

Poachers beware...

Operation Succeeds at Cracking Down on Illegal Wildlife Trade
February 18, 2013 — An international crackdown on wildlife crimes involving countries in Asia, Africa and the United States is claiming a significant victory. Chinese authorities say they took the lead in a broad effort to curb wildlife poaching.

A cross-border crackdown on wildlife crimes has resulted in hundreds of arrests and seizures of banned wildlife specimens, marking the first international effort led by China to reduce illicit trade in endangered species. Between January 6 and February 5, the United States and countries in Africa and Asia cooperated in the operation code-named COBRA that specifically tried to dismantle wildlife crime syndicates. Steven Galster is director of the Bangkok-based Freeland Foundation, an anti-trafficking organization that supported operation Cobra with research and information on wildlife crime it had collected over several years. “China came out and actually was the government that proposed a joint operation,” he noted.

During the operation officials seized some 6,500 kilograms of elephant ivory, 2,600 live snakes, 22 rhino horns, and 1,500 kilograms of shatoosh, made from the down hair of an estimated 10,000 Tibetan antelopes. China’s Foreign Ministry spokesperson Hong Lei spoke about the success of the operation in a briefing with reporters Monday. He said the Chinese government is paying great attention to the protection of wildlife, including elephants. Hong Lei said while some people turn a blind eye to China’s efforts, the operation yielded significant results.

Kenya Wildlife Service says poaching activities have increased to the highest ever recorded loss in a single year in 2012, as price, demand of ivory in South-East Asian countries increase.

Demand from China has resulted in a huge increase in illegal wildlife poaching of endangered species in Africa. In 2011 an estimated 44 tons of illegal ivory was seized world wide, representing the deaths of thousands of elephants. Earlier this month the country of Gabon announced that poachers had killed 11,000 elephants there since 2004. Similarly, African wild rhinos used to number in the hundreds of thousands; there are less than 30,000 alive today. Asian and African governments have been making efforts to link police, customs and wildlife officers from around the world to better combat smuggling and poaching networks. The latest operation involved law enforcement personnel from Africa’s Lusaka Agreement Task Force, Thailand, India, Vietnam, Indonesia and China.

While Operation Cobra targeted poachers, Steven Galster says China’s government is also trying to reduce demand from Chinese buyers. “They’re targeting folks that are going overseas, naturally those that are going to go work in Africa,” he said. The illegal wildlife trade totals $8 billion to $10 billion annually, drawing poachers and smugglers to profit from the killing of endangered species. With Chinese investment and trade with Africa soaring, sustaining the impact of Operation Cobra will be the next challenge for Asian and African nations.

Source