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We are protecting endangered wildlife from poachers due to the conservation investment crisis caused by Covid-19. Help is desperately needed to help wildlife guards, local communities and the law enforcement workers’ bodies save it. Donate to help prevent the illegal wildlife industry here
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A global emergency is emerging amid the coronavirus pandemic.
The Independent recently revealed the potential scale of the crisis after tourism collapsed and philanthropic donations plummeted, impacting the livelihoods of hundreds of frontline rangers and the thousands of other people who work in and around conservation.
Nearly a third of environmentalists fear that the pandemic could increase threats to species and habitats, as well as increase poaching due to reduced police and tourist presence, as well as increased reliance on hunting through vulnerable local communities, the MBZ Conservation Fund reported.
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It highlights the urgency of our Stop The Illegal Wildlife Trade campaign, which it presented through The Independent’s largest shareholder, Evgeny Lebedev, to call for a foreign effort to combat the illegal wildlife trade, one of the greatest threats to long-term biodiversity.
Reports of a worldwide build-up in poaching: 3 critically endangered giant ibises have recently been poisoned in Cambodia (1 to 2% of the general population); At least four tigers and six leopards have died since closing in India. In Uganda, Rafiki, the rare and beloved silverback mountain gorilla, has collateral damage for hunters looking for smaller animals.
Here, we take a look at some of the endangered species facing the greatest threats to our global fitness crisis.
Nine rhinos have been poached in South Africa since the closure, Rhino 911 reports conservation, fearing the numbers will be higher. Across the border, Rhino Conservation Botswana reported the murder of six rhinos.
Rhinos are vulnerable to poachers for their horn, sought for their decoration and for being crushed in classical medicine.
Half a million rhinos roamed Africa and Asia at the beginning of the last century, but only 29,000 remain in the wild. Three species of rhinos, black, javan and sumatra, are critically endangered.
In Africa, the western black rhino has become extinct in the wild. The two northern white rhinos are held 24 hours a day in a Kenyan reserve.
Cathy Dean, executive director of Save The Rhino, told The Independent that the full effects of the poaching pandemic on rhino populations were still being evaluated.
“There have been incidents of rhino poaching, but apart from Botswana, it has been silent, probably due to the restriction of movement within and between countries, and perhaps because criminal gangs have discovered another illicit income bureaucracy,” Dean said.
“For example, we believe south Africa’s alcohol and tobacco blockade bans are to blame for reducing poaching, as criminal gangs have discovered less harmful tactics to make money preparing moonlight and tobacco smuggling.”
The crisis is worsening due to economic losses due to the general lack of tourism in Africa this year and a decrease in philanthropic donations in the face of a global recession.
From only seven conservation sites in Kenya supported by Save The Rhino, the projected deficit for 2020 was more than $2 million. Ms. Dean said, “If those conservatories go bankrupt and they can no longer handle and protect their wildlife, we will lose that habitat.”
“It will switch to agriculture and settle down. Hundreds of thousands of acres will be lost to wildlife and this will have an effect on conservation efforts forever.”
Environmentalists are sounding the alarm for the elephants. In June, a shocking six-elephant bloodbath took place in a day at the Wizard National Park in Ethiopia. (Ten elephants were killed in the East African country in 2019).
Two elephants were reportedly electrocuted through poachers in Champua in Odisha state, India, the same month.
An estimated 415,000 elephants remain in Africa, with species vulnerable due to poaching. Numbers continue to decline in parts of Central and Eastern Africa. Between 2007 and 2014, an average of 55 elephants were killed every day in Africa, mainly for their high-value tusks.
Less than 50,000 Asian elephants in the wild and the species is classified as endangered. Their numbers have fallen by 50% in the last three generations.
Positive steps have been taken for elephants, adding the strengthening of frontline guards’ ions and strengthening anti-poaching legislation in Africa. China’s significant resolution to ban the ivory industry in 2017 has also led to a drop in demand.
The pandemic jeopardizes all profits. Dr. Max Graham, founder of the foreign conservation charity Space for Giants, told The Independent: “There is a build-up of illegal activities in areas, basically in poaching of wild animal meat, an indicator of reducing law enforcement and eyes on the ground.”
“We are involved in the opportunity for foreign traffickers’ unions to be clear.
“There are still significant illegal markets for ivory in Vietnam, Myanmar and Laos, which move to China. To feed these markets, industry unions would possibly take credit for the decline in elephant habitat safety in Africa, along with society’s developing economic difficulties, to increase their demand for ivory.
The world’s most trafficked mammal has attracted global attention after being known as a possible link in the coronavirus.
The 8 species of pangolins are prohibited in foreign industry according to the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora (CITES).
According to WildAid, around 200,000 pangolins are trapped in the wild year in Africa and Asia. Poachers focus on pangolins for meat, a delicacy in portions of Asia, and scales of keratin, an element of classical Chinese medicine (MTC).
Professor Ray Jansen, chair of the African Pangolin Working Group, recorded 97 tonnes of pangolin scales leaving Africa in 2019, however, this volume has fallen to about 30 tonnes since the pandemic. The number of live pangolins intercepted through the agreement has also decreased: from 43 pangolins in 2019 to 12, so this year.
He told The Independent: “The closure of borders and the closure of boarding ports, as well as inhibitions of other people’s movements across borders and within countries, have led to abundant relief in the trafficking of pangolin scales and other pangolins. products based on it.”
However, it does not believe that poaching has declined and that portions of pangolin have been stored in countries such as the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Nigeria and Vietnam.
“When we open and the seas are complete of shipments again, I think we will see movements of illicit pangolin products next year,” Dr. Jansen said. “I think it’s going to be a lot to put a few tons of pangolin flakes between Nike sneakers.”
He added: “I don’t think he’s gone, I just think he’s waiting for the scenes of the world industry to get back to normal. In fact, I hope I’m wrong.”
Jaguars are indexed as “almost threatened” on the International Union for Conservation of Nature Red List, their prestige would possibly increase to “vulnerable” due to recent concerned trends.
Around 173,000 jaguars remain in the wild today, having eliminated 40% of its history in Latin America and now extinct in Uruguay and El Salvador.
Some 18,000 jaguars were killed every year until 1973, when CITES intervention particularly reduced the fur industry. In 2010, it emerged that the illegal jaguar portion industry expanded due to demand for jewellery, meat and medicines. Between 2012 and 2018, more than 800 jaguars were killed by their portions and sent to China, according to a June study.
Habitat fragmentation and common forest fires, deliberately caused through logging of land through farmers and herders, pose an increasing risk to jaguars, who are also retaliated against when they technify livestock.
Dr. Esteban Payan, Jaguar Regional Director for South America for Panthera, the global wild cat conservation organization, told The Independent that there was an increase in poaching in Colombia of Covid-19’s lockdown.
“There are four or five reports a year, however, in early July we had reports of seven dead jaguars,” he said.
Dr. Payan said poachers would likely be emboldened due to a lack of NGO staff in the soil quarantine, despite the fact that about 90% of national park guards were still on patrol.
“We do not believe that the killings are motivated by the illegal trade, but discontent with ranchers and farmers who locate jaguars on their land and retaliate. There may also be more accidental encounters among other people who encounter jaguars while hunting at age 40, or others who stopped with relatives in the camp.
The illegal industry in jaguar portions is an emerging trend and efforts to get a clearer picture of the crisis have been hampered by the pandemic.
“Bolivia is a traffic center where poachers will be left with jaguar skulls and tusks for traders in the illegal trade. During the pandemic, we saw a build-up in Bolivia, because it happens, but because we have eyes or ears.”
Giraffes, called the “forgotten megafauna,” were quietly extinguished and the pandemic has symptoms of expanding unrest.
In Uganda, seven dead giraffes were discovered in a matter of days in Murchison National Park, to the Uganda Conservation Foundation.
According to Giraffe Conservation, giraffe populations have declined by 40% over the past 3 decades, leaving another 68,000 people in the wild facing threats such as poaching and habitat loss. Their prestige increased to “vulnerable” on the Red List in 2016 and some subspecies are now considered “critically endangered.”
David O’Connor, president of Save Giraffes Now, noted that giraffe conservation projects are decades of other species at risk. The discovery that there are 4 different species was made only 4 years ago.
Details of the number of giraffes being poached may be difficult to estimate due to an asymmetrical surveillance system.
“We know that illegal poaching occurs in some spaces more than in others and that some species of giraffes are in danger,” Dr. O’Connor told The Independent.
“However, there are many unknowns about the dynamics of giraffe poaching, as there is no monitoring of elephants in Africa, for example.”
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