Poaching Essay

Poaching has been defined as the illegal hunting and capturing of wild animals. Until the 20th century poaching mostly consisted of game and fish being taken by impoverished peasants. Over the years poaching has become a serious threat to wildlife in Africa. The Black Rhino, African Elephant, Lion, Mountain Gorilla, and Grevy’s Zebra. If any one species gets wiped out it will completely disrupt the food chain. The Black Rhino population has gone down 97.6 percent since the 1960’s and up to 35,000 elephants were killed last year. Poaching has put these beautiful animals in endangerment. Endangered animals are slaughtered for a single body part like tusks, pelts, or bones. These parts are sold illegally for large sums of money. At the rate these

One thing these organizations have failed to do is completely stop it and capture the people doing it. The World Wildlife Foundation (WWF) was founded in 1961 to focus on Africa’s unique conservation needs. In the year 1967 a woman named Dian Fossey set up an expedition to study mountain gorillas. While doing the research she noticed the population declining and in the 1970’s officially made the species protected (WWF, 2016). In the late 1980’s and early 90’s the demand for elephant tusk went up tremendously. The population declined so much that the species was named most endangered. To help protect the elephants, since the numbers were declining, the WWF opened up another conservation. This allowed the elephants to get their population numbers back to where they were originally. Even though the conservations allowed the elephants to rebuild their population, it still didn’t prevent

But like anything it has flaws. The WWF is trying to protect wildlife, conserve land, educate the public, and provide livelihood alternatives. WWF protects the wildlife by equipping and training scouts to use GPS, satellite phones, and all-terrain vehicles to help safeguard the animals. With the anti-poaching efforts in place, the land is broken up into corridors, which allows the animals to move from one national park to the other. The World Wildlife Foundation has teamed up with many other anti-poaching organizations to help educate the public on the endangerment we are placing on these beautiful creatures. I stand with the WWF and any other foundation trying to prevent and end poaching. I think they have educated the public well on the declining numbers and why the animals are being poached, but they don’t mention how to stop poaching. The message to the public is to unite and stand against poaching. A voice is powerful. But in this situation, in order for it to get better, it is going to take more than people standing up for the animals. There needs to be some fight back and right now the conservationist are focusing more on how to rebuild the numbers rather than stopping the hunters. We know how the poachers kill the animals. They use various high powered technology like helicopters, grenade launchers, AK-47’s, and night vision goggles that make them hard to detect. Elephants don’t see very well at