Poaching Archive
NPR Rhino Preview
NPR’s series this week on rhino poaching is probably worth paying attention to. Here’s some background before listening today to All Things Considered: Be cautious. John Burnett’s terrible reporting for NPR on elephant poaching not too long ago set me ablaze. He fouled up the numbers completely, came from the wrong perspectives and reduced a [...]
Elephant in a Texas Circus
Posted by jimheck in Arts and Culture, Big Game, Ecology, Poaching on May 7, 2013
It’s likely there is a greater percentage of Chinese who wish to end the ivory trade and save elephants than there are Texans who believe in evolution. Think about that, please. Yesterday, the Chinese actress Li Bingbing – who has 20 million followers and counting on her social media – made a highly public visit [...]
Terese & Goliath
The widely publicized elephant poaching is mostly gross exaggeration when compared to the corporate poaching that nearly extirpated them in the 1980s but nonetheless a terrifying example of how mens’ wars exploit the natural world. I’ve written before how the current elephant poaching is being sensationalized by the media as something much larger than it [...]
Apocalypse Masks Extinctions
The media hysteria about the increase in elephant poaching will not help solve the situation, not until facts are presented straight and the public realigns its reaction. Newsweek’s article published tomorrow, disseminated this weekend by the Daily Beast, is the perfect example. Margot Kaiser’s lengthy article might be considered detailed if it were not rife [...]
David? Debby?
Posted by jimheck in Environment, Kenya, Poaching, War on January 25, 2013
Yesterday’s prickly article in Science that there aren’t as many species going extinct as you thought might be because we’re using drones to nuke rhino poachers. The journal Science is no teenage blog. The rigors of getting published in magazines of this caliber are legend, and the author, Dr. Nigel Stork, comes well credentialed. He’s [...]
Animal Lover
Hillary Clinton’s anti-poaching campaign isn’t much about saving elephants. Five days ago Clinton began a relentless assault on poaching in Africa, each day calling for increased anti-poaching efforts. Yesterday in Australia she veered the topic away from the more weighty subject of Australia’s role in the world to antipoaching, as America’s acting ambassador in Nairobi [...]
NPR White Elephant
Posted by jimheck in Big Game, Poaching, Politics, Wildlife Management, Wildlife Research on October 26, 2012
NPR’s reporting yesterday on elephant poaching in East Africa disappointed those of us who know East Africa and cherish its wildlife. In addition to simple inaccuracies, my main criticism was that the two stories filed by John Burnett were grossly narrow, cherry picking scandalous components while ignoring an essential bigger picture for cheap and trivial [...]
Greyed Out Bird
I am a loving pet owner. But I would never imprison a wild animal and then call it a pet. African Grey Parrots belong in the wild, not in a cage. The majority of African Greys kept in the United States may have actually been born in captivity. In a sense they were manufactured to [...]
Elephant Friends or Human Foes?
The Times article about escalating elephant poaching rebroadcast by NPR this morning needs more discussion, especially if you’re a sympathetic American. Jeffrey Gettleman described in exquisite detail typical of his outstanding reporting the rapid increase in elephant poaching in remote places like The Congo. It was an excellent piece of journalism, mainly because Gettleman pulled [...]
Death Becomes Them
Posted by jimheck in Ecology, Economy, Environment, Poaching on September 4, 2012
There are many different kinds of poaching and some I actually sympathize with. But a particular type of child poaching in Kenya is uniquely tragic. Poaching is hardly confined to Africa. The legendary boar poachers in my childhood home of Arkansas, or deer poachers in my neighboring state of Wisconsin have fed grand literature as [...]
The Discriminate Marketing of Death
Posted by jimheck in Big Game, Economy, Environment, Poaching on June 21, 2012
Today Tanzanian officials confirmed that a pesticide banned in the US but still produced by an US agrochemical giant is killing elephants and people in East Africa. The pesticide Aldicarb, responsible for a wave of child deaths in California in 1985, is banned from use in the U.S. and 60 other countries, but the EPA [...]
Tusks For Terrorists
Posted by jimheck in Corruption, Poaching, Politics on June 18, 2012
Until recently Republican obstructionism in Congress hurt few but us Americans. Now, it’s seriously hurting Kenya and harming Somali peace while supporting al-Shabaab! This is a no brainer. Kenya Wildlife Service (KWS) director, Julius Kipng’etich, told the Senate foreign relations committee last week that Senate Bill 1483 (if it became law) would drastically reduce elephant [...]
Rhino RipOffs
Posted by jimheck in Big Game, Corruption, Poaching on June 14, 2012
Despite my better reasoning I can sympathize with poachers just trying to survive. But when rangers and other paid officials participate in the crimes, my blood boils. Several weeks ago Serengeti officials admitted that two of the Moru area’s 31 black rhinos had been killed by poachers… in April! We probably wouldn’t even have learned [...]
Public Auction To Murder Rhino
Posted by jimheck in Big Game, Big Game Hunting, Poaching, South Africa, Wildlife Management on January 17, 2012
If you believe in culling, does that mean it’s OK to invite casual sportsmen into national parks to hunt big animals for a fee? I don’t think so, but South African officials do. There are two related but very different stories here: the first is the growing number of scandals in the South African government; [...]