WHY CAN'T WE STOP POACHING?

This morning Sky News had an article on Elephant poaching, stating how out of hand it has gotten and that we need to raise awareness of the poaching issues going on in Africa. It's hard to deny that we have a big issue going on here, something devastating is happing and it is likely that in years to come our children and grandchildren will only know animals such as a rhino from photographs and zoos. 

Across Africa each year it is estimated that between 20,000 - 25,000 elephants are poached for their tusks. Animals brutally hacked to pieces in order to make trinkets and ornaments. 

In Southern Africa alone around 300 rhinos have been poached in just the five months of this year. Often they are not killed straight out for fear that a gunshot will be heard, but instead darted and cut to pieces whilst still alive, left to bleed to death. Calves are not spared. And if the rhino's horn has already been cut back (in the effort to stop poachers) they are killed anyway, just so the poachers don't have to track it again. Besides, it is worth so much that even the smallest piece is worth taking

But you already know this, don't you? Everyone knows. So why are we still pretending that by putting up pictures on the TV, or Princes making a speech in the plush comfort of their palace is going to make any difference? Yes, raising awareness is good but what really needs to happen is for all these little charities that beg money to save their precious wildlife to suck up their pride, club together and DO something about it. Because lets be honest, as long as they work as individual companies nothing is going to change. Yes, they can pour money into the country and hope that someone does something. Or they could put all their efforts together, all their money together and pay for local people to protect their wildlife - teach them the value of an animal alive over the value of it's death. Send people out to Vietnam and China and prove to them that rhino horn won't cure their mother's cancer, that it isn't worth the death of magnificent animals for a hangover cure. 

In some places they've got it right. On Shamwari Game Reserve in South Africa (where I studied for my FGASA Level 1) they have a highly organised Anti Poaching Unit (APU) in which armed guards patrol the reserve throughout the night every night. Any small suspicion and they are there as soon as possible, ready to face whatever and whoever might be out there. As far as I am aware there have been no recent poaching incidents. 

But not everywhere can afford this, and it only works in places where animals are fenced into a reserve. What can happen for those out completely in the wild? Must we fence them in, just to keep them safe? I don't know the answer, but I wish I did. Because I am terrified to live in a world where these animals don't exist in the wild. There is nothing more tragic than a species existing only in a zoo.  

White Rhino - Shamwari Game Reserve 

If you want to check out more about this I have had an interesting article sent to me since posting this blog talking about which organisations are actually doing something, and which raise money that seems to go nowhere: http://www.tourismupdate.co.za/Contents/Editions/June13/How_To.html