Who is killing the Whites Trying to Stop the African/Asian Illegal Ivory Trade?

Posted by DanielS on Tuesday, 20 February 2018 12:18.

New Observer, “Who is killing the Whites Trying to Stop the African/Asian Illegal Ivory Trade?”, 8 Feb 2018:

The vicious murder of anti-elephant poaching activist Esmond Martin in Kenya last weekend is the second murder of a high-profile white anti-ivory trade activist in Africa, coming as it does only five months after the shooting assassination of Tanzanian-based Wayne Lotter.

Martin, who was stabbed to death at his home in Nairobi, Kenya, was famous for his decades-long activism to save Africa’s elephant population from the uncaring rampage of African poachers who supply the Far East with illegal ivory.

Esmond Martin and his beloved elephants.

According to statistics issued by his affiliated organization, Save the Elephants (STE), without urgent action to save their species, elephants could be gone from the wild within a single generation.

According to STE, 100,000 elephants in Africa were killed for their ivory in just three years between the years 2010 and 2012.

In 1979 there were 1.3 million elephants, but current estimates that there are just between 419,000 and 650,000 African elephants left alive—and overall, their numbers are still “catastrophically declining.

Martin, a UK national by birth, was one of STE’s most famous activists, and the world’s leading ivory trade expert. STE said in a statement that his surveys “shone a powerful spotlight on the wildlife markets around the world that are sucking ivory, rhino horn and countless other African species into their maw.

“By charting the scale of these markets and tracking fluctuations with rigour and consistency, he provided a solid foundation for action to close them down. On Friday he was in our office, excited to see the Laotian translation of his latest report into Laos’ growing trade, and eager to discuss how it could be used to greatest effect,” the statement continued.

“Conservation has lost an important figure, elephants have lost a great champion and the shock of Esmond’s death will be felt around the world.”

Wayne Lotter was a South African- wildlife conservationist who was the co-founder and president of conservation organisation the PAMS (Protected Area Management Solutions) Foundation.

Lotter’s organization was involved in funding the National and Transnational Serious Crimes Investigation Unit in Tanzania which pursued a number of high-profile ivory traffickers, and regularly received death threats.

His most high-profile success was in 2015 when his intelligence work left to the the arrest of a Chinese woman, Yang Feng Glan, known as the “Queen of Ivory” who ran a $2.6m ivory smuggling ring along with a large number of Chinese nationals living in Africa.

Lotter was shot dead on August 16, 2017 while travelling in a taxi in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania, in what was clearly a targeted assassination.

[...]

The poaching problem in Africa is being exacerbated by that continents’ explosive population growth, STE has also admitted.

“Human population growth is a reality that conservationists must reckon with. Africa’s human population is expected to nearly double by the year 2050,” STE said in a Facebook post on June 8, 2017.

This African population growth is caused primarily by Western “foreign aid” which lowers the infant mortality rate in Africa but which is incapable to getting the larger African population to provide work or even continue to feed itself.

As a result, the lure of easy-money criminal activities—such as poaching on behalf of the Asian market—is a natural “fall-back” position to survive (this is, along with a genetically-based low IQ, one of the major factors which underpins high African criminal rates in America and Europe).

The murders of the two high-profile white anti-ivory trade activists Martin and Lotter are the most outwardly obvious results of this deep criminality.

The primary causes of the decimation the African elephant population are therefore the disproportionate African birth rate, and the continuing demand for ivory in the Far East. Until both these problems are addressed, the issue is not going to go away, and can only end with the extermination of elephants—and indeed all wildlife—in Africa.

Tags: Activism, Conservatism, Pervasive Ecology, Population

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Posted by Last male Northern White Rhino dies on Wed, 21 Mar 2018 18:23 | #

nationalgeographic.com, 21 Mar 2018:

After Last Male’s Death, Is the Northern White Rhino Doomed?

Two females remain at the conservancy in Kenya.

The World’s Last White Male Rhino Dies as Human “Civilization” Expands and Outbreeds Animal Habitat

Conservationists were expecting the death of Sudan, the world’s last remaining male northern white rhinoceros. But when he died on Monday night, the news was met with international dismay.

The 45-year-old male rhino had been living under armed guard at the Ol Pejeta Conservancy in Kenya. Earlier this month, Sudan developed an infection on his back right leg. He had already been suffering from age-related complications, and the infection worsened his condition.

Now, only two female northern white rhinos remain at the conservancy—the last of their kind on Earth.

Sudan’s death is largely seen as the final signature on the species’ death warrant.

Is All Hope Lost?

There was a major conservation push to help Sudan produce an offspring. In one last ditch effort to raise money for the rhino’s care, conservationists created a Tinder profile for Sudan.

Documenting Sudan and the species decline was a major project for National Geographic photographer Ami Vitale.

“Today, we are witnessing the extinction of a species that had survived for millions of years but could not survive mankind,” Vitale wrote in an Instagram post sharing the news.

Vitale was with Sudan when the rhino was transferred from a zoo in the Czech Republic to the Kenya reserve in 2009. It was thought that the African climate and having more room to roam would stimulate the rhinos to breed.

Because he is past reproductive age and the two females are unable to produce offspring naturally, scientists were attempting to breed a new rhino in a lab.

Sex cells were harvested from the living northern white rhinos, and scientists are hoping to use IVF to impregnate southern white rhino surrogates. The technology to pull this off is still being perfected.

“There’s no guarantee that [IVF] will work,” says Philip Muruthi, vice president of species protection at the African Wildlife Foundation. And he adds that it’s extremely expensive and could cost more than $9 million.

“This is a bitter lesson of species conservation,” says Muruthi. He notes that, while protection is costly, “the costs of recovery are even higher.”

Rhinos In Africa

In 2014, there were only seven of the sub species on the planet—all in zoos. By the summer of 2015, the number had dwindled to four; a few months later there were only three.

But when the northern white rhino population began to decline, it was lightning fast.

In Sudan’s last days, rangers at Ol Pejeta kept the three rhinos under 24/7 armed guard. Despite the species precipitous conservation status, the animals face an intense threat from poaching.

Like elephants, rhinos in Africa are aggressively hunted for their lucrative horns and skin.

In 2013, another rhino subspecies, the western black rhino, was declared extinct. The eastern black rhino, numbering around a thousand, could be the next rhino species facing extinction.

Conservationists are continuing to focus on saving this species in addition to the southern white rhino, a species numbering around 20,000.