Hong Kong is a modern city where there are a lot of people with ancient distorted beliefs that tiger bones and other animal body parts have magic powers. Hong Kong is also the largest market for illegal ivory in the world, and this is to blame for the slaughter of elephants to meet demands from customers principally from Mainland China!
All the ivory from the poaching is being used to make so-called art objects, jewelry and other unnecessary products. Ivory has never been a useful material in any kind of construction work and plastics and other materials often replace it. The piano industry stopped using ivory as a key covering material in the 1970s.
The horns of rhinoceroses are useless, but there are many backward Asian people who have a completely ludicrous belief that there is magic in the horns, and these degenerates are a major threat to rhinoceros populations. All of the artwork and junk medicine in China is not worth the life of a single elephant or rhinoceros!
It is a pathetic sight to see wildlife workers trying to take care of all the orphan elephants and rhinoceroses in Africa after sadistic Bushmen have slaughtered the parent animals. It is even more alarming and depressing to know that no strong stand is being taken against the poachers. Incompetent people are failing to use modern technology and weapons to stop the slaughter of endangered animals. With today’s surveillance equipment, the poachers could be stopped before they kill animals.
The links of the Chinese poaching cartels and other syndicates are well known. It has been thoroughly exposed how these criminal cartels pay off impoverished Bushmen to slaughter elephants and rhinoceroses. It has also been documented how corrupted many countries in Africa are. After all of this exposure, it is hard to comprehend why law enforcement agencies have allowed these degenerates to continue killing endangered animals decade after decade.
The only reason the poaching cartels can exist is because of the corrupted governments of the world. The communists have infiltrated all of the nations and not enough is being done to protect endangered wild animals.
The statistics are staggering, and everyone should read them. It is everybody’s job to stop the senseless slaughter that is being carried out by degenerates who have never become civilized!
The ruthless and sadistic crimes of poachers have been well documented. In October of 2013, poachers poisoned 300 African elephants in Hwange National Park in Zimbabwe. The fact that this mass killing was in a National Park, a place where elephants are supposed to be safe, shows how corrupted the country of Zimbabwe is.
Because of poaching, it is estimated that African Elephants may become extinct in 25-50 years in the wild. In 2012, The New York Times reported that there was a large surge of ivory poaching with 70% of all illegal ivory going to China! Wildlife officials say they are now working to cut off the “Chinese Connection” along with other buyers of ivory; they state that they are monitoring the origin of ivory to stop the senseless slaughter of African Elephants.
In spite of ivory bans in 1989, elephant numbers have continued to decline. The statistics are staggering. African elephants have experienced a 60-70% decline in population in two decades, 1979-2002. In Central Africa 13,607 elephants have been poached in 2012 alone. In East Africa, 8,515 elephants have been poached in 2012 alone. Illegal poaching for African Elephants increased greatly in 2008 and relates to the increase in price for local black-market ivory with increased findings of illegal ivory headed for China. Estimates of 25,000 to 35,000 African Elephants were killed for their tusks in 2012.
The population of endangered rhinoceros, inhabiting the greater part of sub-Saharan Africa, was estimated to have been about 100,000 in 1960 and has now dwindled to 4000 with poaching the main cause of the decline. The commercial poaching of white and black rhinoceros increased in South Africa from 12 rhinos killed in 2004 to 946 killed in 2013. Rhino horns are being bought up by increasing numbers of Vietnamese people.
The facts and statistics are indisputable and are available to everyone. Eastern Asia has become ground zero for the poaching cartels of the world. When the exchange restrictions were lifted from Japan after World War II, in the 1960s, it began importing huge amounts of (unworked) ivory.
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This caused a lot of forest elephants of Africa and Asia to be slaughtered for their “hard” ivory that was preferred by the Japanese for the production of “hankos”, or name seals. Prior to this time, most name seals had been made from wood with an ivory tip, carved with the signature. Increased prosperity in the Japanese economy brought about “solid ivory” hankos in mass production.
China’s increased involvement of working its way into many projects in Africa and the purchase of natural resources has sent up a red flag of warning that China is poaching animal body parts from Africa. Chinese nationals working in Africa have been caught smuggling ivory in many African countries, with at least 10 arrested at Kenyan airports in 2009. The Chinese cartels and other poaching syndicates of Asia are the most destructive of the syndicates because they buy and ship huge payloads of ivory at a time.
There has been a lot of wasted jargon voiced between various political organizations such as “CITES” and leaders of different African countries without any substantial and lasting results. There is too much corruption and criminality in too many countries of Africa to even deal with them in a reasonable way.
Zimbabwe and some other African countries have stated that they have to keep selling ivory to make money to survive. This kind of excuse destroys any kind of negotiations to protect endangered wild animals. As long as African countries can fall back on the excuses of poverty, all attempts to stop poaching will fail in Africa!
The corrupted government of Zimbabwe argued that the ivory trade would fund “conservation efforts”, but revenues were instead returned to the central treasury. Its elephant census was accused of double counting elephants crossing its border with Botswana by building artificial water holes. The ivory trade was also wildly out of control within its borders, with Zimbabwe’s National Army (ZNA) involved in poaching in Gonarezhou National Park and other areas. More sinister was the alleged murder of a number of whistle blowers, including a Capt. Nleya, who claimed the ZNA was involved in rhino and elephant poaching in Mozambique. Nleya was found hanged at his army barracks near Hwang National Park. The death was reported as a suicide by the army, but declared a murder by a magistrate. Nleya’s widow was reportedly later threatened by anonymous telephone calls.
Too many impoverished Africans want to cash in their wildlife to the highest bidder with no regards for protecting endangered animals. Every time the economy is squeezed, and every time there is a brush-fire war, these Africans always resort to killing elephants for ivory and exploiting other animals. Instead of practicing birth control and curbing their runaway population and being conservative, these people always take out their frustration on the animals!
Southern African countries have continued to try to get international ivory trade. Led by Zimbabwe’s President Mugabe, they have had some success through CITES. Mugabe himself has been accused of bartering huge amounts of ivory for weapons with China, breaking his country’s commitment to CITES. What this proves is that the political organizations that have supposedly set up ivory bans have allowed concessions to be made where poaching is continued in many quarters.
In 1986 and 1987 huge stockpiles of illegal ivory were discovered in Singapore and were determined to be from poached elephants in Africa. The stockpiles were owned by international criminals; these same smugglers were involved in many other crimes of poaching. Well-known traders such as Wang and Poon were afforded amnesty by the corrupted organization “CITES” of which the country of Zimbabwe was a member.
The government of the United States is squandering huge sums of money on wars and aid to other countries, but it is not doing nearly enough to protect endangered wild animals. The most logical way to protect elephants and rhinoceroses from poachers is to relocate these animals in refuges here in America and other regions away from the poaching cartels that have infiltrated refuges in Africa and Asia.
It is not enough to simply try to “re-educate” degenerates who have delusional distorted beliefs about wild animals and conservation. The statistics prove that these people are beyond rehabilitation. The rule of enforced laws must be implemented to save endangered wild animals.
--Marlin O. Wallace |
