This is shocking. Poachers Kill Rhino in Brazen Attack at French Zoo:
On Tuesday morning keepers at Thoiry Zoo, in the suburbs west of Paris, found the body of Vince, a four-year-old white rhino, in his enclosure with wounds to his head and one of his horns likely hacked off by a chainsaw, the zoo said in a statement on its Facebook page. His second horn was partially cut off, suggesting that the culprits may have been interrupted or were using defective equipment after they killed the rare animal on Monday night.
The act was carried out “despite the presence of five members of the zoological staff living on site and surveillance cameras,” the zoo said. “The entire staff is extremely shocked.”
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Tuesday’s gruesome event follows an attack on rhinos at an orphanage in South Africa, home to 70 percent of the remaining 21,000 white rhinos. Armed poachers broke into the Findimvelo Thula Thula Rhino Orphanage on February 22 and removed the horns of two 18-month-old rhinos, Impu and Gugu, after tying up staff members. One rhino was killed, and the other was later euthanized.
A clear and solid case for re-instituting Western colonialism in Africa with the added benefit of blocking the Chinese from monopolizing the natural resources of the region. It would re-institute a degree of prosperity for the natives employed in efficiently run resource extraction industries and give great sport to white and native park rangers who would be authorized to immediately shoot all poachers on sight.
Colonial rule would also give us the opportunity to introduce birth control drugs into native foodstuffs and avert the pain and suffering that the current African population explosion will encounter when it reaches its inevitable Malthusian limits.
Perhaps that might make sense rationally (well, at least in material terms), but apparently there are enough people in the world who’d rather be dirt poor than be lorded over by a different tribe, let alone people of different skin tones…
colonialism is a non-starter.
i think re: the animal trade, you need to target the chinese in various ways. there is already a counter-culture against this stuff among some young chinese. hitting the demand side is the only way to change this. the $ is too good for poachers from poor countries.
On clamping down on the demand side, which I do think is the way to go, it’s worth noting that China is far from the only recipient of poached rhino horn; a substantial proportion goes to Vietnam and some other SE Asian countries.
The efforts on restricting imports of elephant ivory have had some success, to the extent that there is now a burgeoning trade in prospecting for mammoth remains as they emerge from the melting permafrost. Scientists don’t seem to mind the mammoth ivory being taken, so long as they get notified of finds of the remains for sampling and dating. The remains of the Ust’-Ishim individual were found by one such Russian mammoth ivory prospector.
We need to hit the supply side, not just the demand side. Just start farming rhinos and flood the market with legal horn – they grow back anyway. Same as pot.
How hard would it be to undercut the entire market with an enormous amount of high quality fakes, filled with PCR amplified rhino DNA?
How is the authenticity proven after the point of an actual physical rhino horn? It’s not as if most of the sales come from a person shaving off slices.
Can someone explain to me why we can’t just breed rhinos specifically for their horns, instead of just hoping that the demand will disappear on its own? Our current policy seems to make the long-term survival of these animals less likely.
Also, how exactly would colonialism help stop poaching in France and other developed nations?
@Jonathan Gress-Wright:
“For other animals, missing social cues can cause problems. For many years, zookeepers had trouble breeding the white rhinoceros. Though they were often exhibited in male-female pairs, the animals rarely reproduced. In the wild, the white rhino lives in small herds; it turns out that a male needs to interact with a number of females in order to be properly aroused. Much of the difficulty breeding white rhinos disappeared as zoos began to keep them in larger groups.”
Why is Captive Breeding So Had?
> the $ is too good for poachers from poor countries
What are poachers from poor countries doing in France? Who let them in?
“What are poachers from poor countries doing in France? Who let them in?”
The government of France which is ruled by its elites.
“there are enough people in the world who’d rather be dirt poor than be lorded over by a different tribe, let alone people of different skin tones…”
In the case of sub-Saharan Africa they’d soon change their tune if we stopped feeding them.
Do you know how many tons of bricks of cash the USG distributed in Iraq and Afghanistan in order to buy off people with “development”?
None of that mattered in the end. Some people would rather be poor than be told how to live by outsiders, even those who are well-intentioned and well-meaning.