Poaching is a Problem

I'm choosing the topic of poaching as my one blog on animlas. The article I’m choosing to blog about is from Kenya. It is named “Elephant Poachers Go Hi-Tech to Stay Ahead of Rangers.” I found the article on allafrica.com. The article is about people who are poaching elephants and rhinos for ivory from the elephant’s tusks and the rhino for their horns. There are four major African countries that are the main focus of the problem, but the source to the article declined to name them, because while they’re the major problem, all of Africa is having the problem. According to sources in the article, in 2007 there were 47 elephants that died and in 2008 it rose to 145 elephants. In 2009 the number of dead elephants was 216 and now in 2010 that numbered has been surpassed before the year is even over. In South Africa, there were 122 rhinos counted dead last year and this year they’ve lost 210 and it’s only October. A charity in South Africa is really trying to draw attention to this problem; they’ve even enlisted the help of American rapper 50 Cent to create global awareness. The ironic part of this poaching problem is that it is INCREASING now that we have more technology than ever to stop it! The crime is now even being considered as organized crime so that the punishments can be harsher.

I chose this article because I am an animal lover, I may not have ever had an elephant or rhino, but to me any animal is precious. I think that animal poaching is a huge problem everywhere. In Africa it’s elephants and rhinos, in Iowa it's deer and pheasants and everywhere has an animal they can say is poached. People don’t like to follow the rules and have no sense of what they are actually doing, everyone is just focused on themselves instead of the world as whole, which can be blamed for global warming and things like that. They are endangering the species by poaching simply because they think they can get away with it because there aren’t enough rangers to patrol every herd of elephants and rhinos or every acre of hunting ground. I’m not sure on regulations, but I think that buying ivory and rhino horns should be illegal, if it isn't already, especially if we know that it’s coming from poached animals. What is so important about the ivory and rhino horns that can’t be made artificially or from some other source? These are such beautiful animals and they only live in Africa and their numbers just keep decreasing. It’s a shame that so many African countries are controlled by insurgents who use things like ivory and rhino horns to fund their evil.