https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elephant_hunting_in_Chad
http://wwf.panda.org/what_we_do/endangered_species/elephants/african_elephants/afelephants_threats/
Questions:
1. What is something important, meaningful, and big events that happened currently regarding our environment?
2. Did anything bad happen to the animals like elephant and rhinos when people expanded their farms and lands into wild animals' habitats.
Connections:
We just started learning about the modern world. So this blog will talk about some of the most important event that happened currently. Lots of environmental issues happened currently in our modern world, so I would like to find out something controversial that happened in the past few years.
New Knowledge:
- African Elephants and rhinos were killed and hunted in enormous amount due to illegal trade of ivory and horns. Tens of thousands of elephants are killed every year in Africa. Lots of Elephant and Rhino species are endangered and some are already extinct due to poaching. The ivory and horns are used in medication, decorations, furnitures, utensils, jewelry, and other objects.
- Huge consumer demands drive the killing of these large land mammoths. Vietnam is identified as the largest consumer of rhino horns and China as the largest consumer of Elephant ivory.
- It is also caused by huge poverty in the African nations, as population grew, agriculture lands are mostly used up, the people who are unemployed turned to these hunts to earn money, just to get themselves the basic subsistence.
- "Insufficient and weak anti-poaching capacity, weak law enforcement and corruption" hindered actions to protect the elephants so they can breed more youths and sustain its own population.
- The weak law enforcements are also partially caused by government lacking money.
- A significant number of wardens and law enforcers, people who protect animals like elephant and rhino, are also targeted, killed, injured, or threatened by the poachers.
- Most of the poaching activities are carried out around or inside African national parks, such as Zakouma National Park in Chad. The organized and well-equiped poachers entered the national parks/reservations freely and kill elephant and rhino in herds to build up their storage of ivory and horns.
- In Chad, a Africa country, the reported number of Elephants decreased from 150,000 in 1980's to 2000 due to intense poaching.
- "One of the worst massacre took place in 14-15 March 2013 when 89 elephants, including 33 females and 15 calves, were slaughtered by poachers near the town of Gamba."