Poaching is a major worldwide problem that is reducing animal populations and pushing many species to extinction. Elephants, rhinos, lions and many other African species are being heavily poached, with elephant populations dropping by over 85% in some areas. Poaching is also occurring in other areas like the United States, where black bears, bighorn sheep, sharks, deer, and wild pigs are being illegally hunted. The ocean is also being severely damaged by overfishing, with fishing fleets over 2.5 times larger than what the oceans can sustain. Sea turtle populations are also being threatened by poaching of their eggs, meat and shells. Many poachers engage in illegal hunting out of financial necessity to support their
Poaching is a major worldwide problem that is reducing animal populations and pushing many species to extinction. Elephants, rhinos, lions and many other African species are being heavily poached, with elephant populations dropping by over 85% in some areas. Poaching is also occurring in other areas like the United States, where black bears, bighorn sheep, sharks, deer, and wild pigs are being illegally hunted. The ocean is also being severely damaged by overfishing, with fishing fleets over 2.5 times larger than what the oceans can sustain. Sea turtle populations are also being threatened by poaching of their eggs, meat and shells. Many poachers engage in illegal hunting out of financial necessity to support their
Poaching is a major worldwide problem that is reducing animal populations and pushing many species to extinction. Elephants, rhinos, lions and many other African species are being heavily poached, with elephant populations dropping by over 85% in some areas. Poaching is also occurring in other areas like the United States, where black bears, bighorn sheep, sharks, deer, and wild pigs are being illegally hunted. The ocean is also being severely damaged by overfishing, with fishing fleets over 2.5 times larger than what the oceans can sustain. Sea turtle populations are also being threatened by poaching of their eggs, meat and shells. Many poachers engage in illegal hunting out of financial necessity to support their
Poaching is a major worldwide problem that is reducing animal populations and pushing many species to extinction. Elephants, rhinos, lions and many other African species are being heavily poached, with elephant populations dropping by over 85% in some areas. Poaching is also occurring in other areas like the United States, where black bears, bighorn sheep, sharks, deer, and wild pigs are being illegally hunted. The ocean is also being severely damaged by overfishing, with fishing fleets over 2.5 times larger than what the oceans can sustain. Sea turtle populations are also being threatened by poaching of their eggs, meat and shells. Many poachers engage in illegal hunting out of financial necessity to support their
Poaching is a worldwide problem that is getting worse by
the day. Just today, already two rhinos and apes have been either shot, darted, tracked down by dogs, trapped, or poisoned. Moreover, another species being hunted down is the African Elephant, standing at 4 metres tall, weighing up to 6,048 kilograms, and is critically endangered. From 1980 to 1990, their population was more than halved, from 1.3 million African elephants to only about 600,000. But even before that, from 1973 to 1989, the population dropped by more than 85%. In fact, the elephants are not the only ones getting poached in their home country. In Mozambique alone, African elephants, lions, greater kudus, elands, impalas, duikers, reedbucks, bushbucks, bushpigs, warthogs, chacma baboons, and greater cane rats are all being pushed to extinction. You also might think this is another world away from yours, but this is a worldwide problem. There is illegal hunting in every country including America. In the United the states, Black bears, Bighorn sheep, sharks, deer, and wild pigs are all poached, forcing them to become less in numbers. Though the list is limited, every country in the world should work to rid poaching for good. All the animals in the world should be given the chance to replenish like they did before humanity existed and we should aid them. Earth is 71% water and 95% of all the water on earth is ocean. The ocean is also suffering problems, like overfishing, and for most of the islands and places on the coast, fish is all they have for food. The fleet of fishing businesses, companies, and fisherman are 2.5 times more vast than what the ocean can sustainably support. What we are doing to the ocean is far worse than what we are doing to the rainforest, yet the situations are much alike; for example: we are destroying habitats for many different types of animals, we are creating gaps in ecosystems, we are taking their habitats and life and using it at our expense. As we kill more habitats, we are not only affecting their world, but ours as well as 3+ billion of our people rely on fish as a major source of protein. There is an animal that is being killed off, an animal that you probably didnt know was being hunted. Turtles. There are many different reasons these animals are being poached, for example, their eggs, their shell, their meat, and their calipee (a green body fat used as the main ingredient in turtle soup). They have been roaming the worlds ocean for 100 million years, eating jellyfish (the one animal that are the reason for some people in the world to not get in the water), and share a vital and integral role in the marine ecosystem. Even if we did not invade and poach them, they already have a hard time surviving infancy, as they are a food source for hungry seagulls, crabs, and other fish. Though we poach them, there are other reasons why we are causing a problem for them. As we fish with TNT, we destroy coral reefs, the home to them and many other species. They are either killed in the explosion, forced to survive in open ocean or migrate to another coral reef. Both of the latter are making them easy targets for tiger sharks, one of the apex predators in the ocean. An estimate made by researchers say that 30,000 green sea turtles are poached a year in Baja, California and that more than 50,000 marine turtles of different species are taken a year in Southeast Asia and South Pacific. Furthermore, olive ridley, Kemps ridley, loggerhead, green, and leatherback sea turtles all get incidentally caught in shrimp traps and, being marine mammals, drown. There are many alternatives for poaching. Many people only poach to earn money for their family or themselves, and, if given an option, probably would stop poaching altogether. As poaching is illegal, many poachers have to go out at night, risking getting bitten by bugs or other animals and even at night poaching is not completely invisible to park rangers. There are programs all over the world to give these people another choice. One is called Mushie Mushie, a mushroom farming program that helps poachers along the way to grow a safe, very legal, mushroom farm. Though poaching is illegal and kills the environment, these poachers should get another chance to get access to a sustainable source of money. In order to transform our environment, these poachers should get another chance at a better life. Then, who knows? Maybe poaching might grow. Or maybe it might all stop.
CREDIT TO: http://wwf.panda.org/ http://www.unep.org/documents/itw/ITW_fact_sheet.pdf