Preventing Poaching

Poaching is a worldwide problem that is getting worse by

the day. Just today, already two rhinos and apes have been either shot,
darted, tracked down by dogs, trapped, or poisoned.
Moreover, another species being hunted down is the African
Elephant, standing at 4 metres tall, weighing up to 6,048 kilograms,
and is critically endangered. From 1980 to 1990, their population was
more than halved, from 1.3 million African elephants to only about
600,000. But even before that, from 1973 to 1989, the population
dropped by more than 85%.
In fact, the elephants are not the only ones getting poached in
their home country. In Mozambique alone, African elephants, lions,
greater kudus, elands, impalas, duikers, reedbucks, bushbucks,
bushpigs, warthogs, chacma baboons, and greater cane rats are all
being pushed to extinction. You also might think this is another world
away from yours, but this is a worldwide problem. There is illegal
hunting in every country including America.
In the United the states, Black bears, Bighorn sheep, sharks, deer,
and wild pigs are all poached, forcing them to become less in numbers.
Though the list is limited, every country in the world should work to
rid poaching for good. All the animals in the world should be given the
chance to replenish like they did before humanity existed and we
should aid them.
Earth is 71% water and 95% of all the water on earth is ocean. The
ocean is also suffering problems, like overfishing, and for most of the
islands and places on the coast, fish is all they have for food. The fleet
of fishing businesses, companies, and fisherman are 2.5 times more
vast than what the ocean can sustainably support.
What we are doing to the ocean is far worse than what we are
doing to the rainforest, yet the situations are much alike; for example:
we are destroying habitats for many different types of animals, we are
creating gaps in ecosystems, we are taking their habitats and life and
using it at our expense. As we kill more habitats, we are not only
affecting their world, but ours as well as 3+ billion of our people rely
on fish as a major source of protein.
There is an animal that is being killed off, an animal that you
probably didnt know was being hunted. Turtles. There are many
different reasons these animals are being poached, for example, their
eggs, their shell, their meat, and their calipee (a green body fat used as
the main ingredient in turtle soup). They have been roaming the
worlds ocean for 100 million years, eating jellyfish (the one animal that
are the reason for some people in the world to not get in the water),
and share a vital and integral role in the marine ecosystem. Even if we
did not invade and poach them, they already have a hard time
surviving infancy, as they are a food source for hungry seagulls, crabs,
and other fish. Though we poach them, there are other reasons why we
are causing a problem for them. As we fish with TNT, we destroy coral
reefs, the home to them and many other species. They are either killed
in the explosion, forced to survive in open ocean or migrate to another
coral reef. Both of the latter are making them easy targets for tiger
sharks, one of the apex predators in the ocean. An estimate made by
researchers say that 30,000 green sea turtles are poached a year in Baja,
California and that more than 50,000 marine turtles of different species
are taken a year in Southeast Asia and South Pacific. Furthermore, olive
ridley, Kemps ridley, loggerhead, green, and leatherback sea turtles all
get incidentally caught in shrimp traps and, being marine mammals,
drown.
There are many alternatives for poaching. Many people only
poach to earn money for their family or themselves, and, if given an
option, probably would stop poaching altogether. As poaching is
illegal, many poachers have to go out at night, risking getting bitten by
bugs or other animals and even at night poaching is not completely
invisible to park rangers. There are programs all over the world to give
these people another choice.
One is called Mushie Mushie, a mushroom farming program
that helps poachers along the way to grow a safe, very legal,
mushroom farm. Though poaching is illegal and kills the environment,
these poachers should get another chance to get access to a sustainable
source of money. In order to transform our environment, these
poachers should get another chance at a better life. Then, who knows?
Maybe poaching might grow. Or maybe it might all stop.

CREDIT TO:
http://wwf.panda.org/
http://www.unep.org/documents/itw/ITW_fact_sheet.pdf