
Poaching behind worst African elephant losses in 25 years - upen
http://sciencebulletin.org/archives/5677.html
======
majani
Don't know why this is on HN, but as a Kenyan I'll say this: the Kenyan
elephant situation is absolutely hopeless. It has been well documented since
the 70s that the head honcho in poaching was the then president's wife, and
the current president's mother(same woman though) [1]. For obvious reasons,
this means absolutely nothing will ever be done about poaching in Kenya. If
you like Kenya's elephants, best to just go see them before they become
extinct, and don't waste any money on charities that claim to be solving this
problem. I am not being cynical at all. 3rd world politics is just that
depressing and hopeless. Feudalism disguised with democracy paint.

[1] [http://mavulture.com/political-corruption/mother-of-the-
nati...](http://mavulture.com/political-corruption/mother-of-the-nation-who-
led-plunder-of-beloved-motherland/)

~~~
zardo
Maybe the most humane thing to do is to euthanize the remaining wild
elephants. At least they wouldn't have to die by bleeding out after their
faces are hacked off.

~~~
cpursley
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Hunter_(2011_Australian_fi...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Hunter_\(2011_Australian_film\))

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M_Grey
Call me cold, but this strikes me as a situation that can be managed by
altering the risk:reward landscape of poaching. Shoot people on sight who are
poaching, and greatly increase the number of game wardens.

~~~
Bud
This is a good strategy. I think it'd be even more effective if large bounties
were offered for the body parts of poachers. Macabre, yet, somehow fitting.

~~~
cglace
Sounds like you should run for president of the Philippines.

~~~
M_Grey
That seems more than a little unfair. If you're in the middle of a protect
nature preserve in the African bush, with the tools of your trade, you're not
a victim. This isn't a case of mistaken identity, or just being in the wrong
place, or pissing off the wrong people.

~~~
cglace
You don't see any way that giving incentives to people for killing poachers
without a trial could go wrong?

~~~
M_Grey
I can't imagine any human endeavor that lacks the potential to go wrong, but I
also don't think that's a reason not to try anything, ever.

~~~
cglace
I believe extrajudicial killings have a bit more than "the potential" to go
wrong.

~~~
M_Grey
It's a pretty limited use case, unless you think that people tend to wander
the African bush with chainsaws and elephant guns just because... reasons?
You'd have to quite literally go well out of your way and leave civilization
behind to be targeted.

Maybe you can tell me what exactly you suspect would go wrong in this limited
scenario?

~~~
cglace
Well the person I responded to said we should offer rewards for murdering
poachers. So the incentive would be to go out and murder people and plant
chainsaws/rifles on them.

You wouldn't really even have to "go out in the bush" to kill them. You could
kill someone and claim they were out there poaching.

~~~
M_Grey
Well, that's another person with their own ideas that have nothing at all to
do with mine. Bounty programs on human lives is a terrible idea. Still, the
fact that you've now decided to respond, not to me, but someone else by way of
me tells me that you've run out of sensible objections and are grasping at
straws.

I also think you're underestimating just how far out in the middle of nowhere
we're talking about here, and how rough the area is. If you want to kill
someone and get away with it, there are much _much_ easier ways to make that
happen in rural Africa.

~~~
cglace
"Well, that's another person with their own ideas that have nothing at all to
do with mine. Bounty programs on human lives is a terrible idea. Still, the
fact that you've now decided to respond, not to me, but someone else by way of
me tells me that you've run out of sensible objections and are grasping at
straws."

I have no clue what you are talking about. You initially responded to me [0].
You are very confused.

Anyway, I still think proximity to civilization should not be the main
justification for extrajudicial executions. Thats just like my opinion man.

"I also think you're underestimating just how far out in the middle of nowhere
we're talking about here, and how rough the area is. If you want to kill
someone and get away with it, there are much much easier ways to make that
happen in rural Africa."

I didn't mean kill someone and get away with it. I mean, if person x wants to
kill person y to get payout z. That is why I responded to the initial
commenter. Without a trial you can claim anyone was anywhere doing anything.
You don't have to go to the bush. You can drive 2 miles out of town and kill
them. But I obviously don't even know what your position is and honestly don't
care so I may be "grasping at straws".

[0]
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12586019](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12586019)

------
olegious
My thought has always been that poaching is a economic problem and requires an
economic solution.

The reason why elephants are being killed is because they're worth more dead
than alive to the poacher and likely the local community or otherwise the
local community would do more to protect the animals from poachers. What if
there was a fund that paid local communities for each live elephant? The
community now has an incentive to prevent poaching.

I suppose some of the foreseeable side effects could be the community
preventing elephant migration in order to increase the local numbers, but
these types of details could be worked out.

~~~
Havoc
>My thought has always been that poaching is a economic problem and requires
an economic solution.

Sure. Problem is the economic problem is...well Africa sized. You're not going
to fix that any time soon. Plus Asia sized as well...a fair amount of the
drive is coming from there esp on the rhino poaching side.

------
JKCalhoun
I'm an idiot here, so allow me this uninformed suggestion:

Could the elephant's tusks be removed and replaced with false tusks? I'm
assuming there would be some way to replace them the way an implant is used to
replace a tooth in a human.

If the prosthetic tusk were obvious (a bright color for example) it would
signal to the would-be poacher, "No ivory here."

The tusks removed would be destroyed.

~~~
sliverstorm
Any scheme like this results in poachers killing the elephant so they don't
wind up wasting time tracking it again later.

I think this was discovered when they poisoned rhino horns (ground rhino horn
is a traditional oral medicine) and marked them with bright color to identify
them as poisoned. Poachers killed the marked rhinos and left the horns.

~~~
thaumasiotes
This suggests the obvious approach of poisoning the horn _without_ dying it.
Did anyone try that?

~~~
LeifCarrotson
How would that help? No one would know it was poisoned until the rhino was
dead. The poachers wouldn't even find out until people stopped buying rhino
horn because it was killing uneducated, superstitious people thousands of
miles away - which is to say, far far too late.

The loss of the rhino and the elephant would be tragic, but those people who
consume it do not deserve to die - they don't understand what they're doing or
what they're causing, and they are worth more than rhinos.

Edit, since I can't respond to your comment: There is already an information
battle to convince people that traffic in and using rhino horn is not possibly
good for them. If they will not believe scientists telling them that, they
won't believe it's poisoned. Nothing short of a mass market and culture shift
is likely to change their beliefs. Telling them it's poisoned would certainly
have too many misses and too little reach to be acceptable.

~~~
thaumasiotes
> How would that help? No one would know it was poisoned until the rhino was
> dead. The poachers wouldn't even find out until people stopped buying rhino
> horn because it was killing uneducated, superstitious people thousands of
> miles away.

You would tell them. How do people currently know that rubbing alcohol has
been poisoned?

> Edit, since I can't respond to your comment: There is already an information
> battle to convince people that traffic in and using rhino horn is not
> possibly good for them. If they will not believe scientists telling them
> that, they won't believe it's poisoned. Nothing short of a mass market and
> culture shift is likely to change their beliefs. Telling them it's poisoned
> would certainly have too many misses and too little reach to be acceptable.

1\. Yes, you can respond to any comment on its own page.

2\. Yes, if the horns are actually poisoned, people will learn that they're
poisoned. The feedback loop here is quite short: you announce that you've
poisoned the rhino horns, people scoff, say "they'd never have the guts", and
eat the horns, and then a lot of those people die. Word will get around.

If they're not poisoned, then of course people won't believe that, but it's
hard to blame them for accurately not believing your self-serving lies.

------
jna_sh
There's a state sponsored hackathon series coming up, to create solutions to
tackle the demand of ivory and other illicitly poached animal goods. Worth
contributing to if you care about this cause:
[http://www.zoohackathon.com/](http://www.zoohackathon.com/)

------
cyberferret
I read another article recently that had a picture of a huge pile of illegally
poached tusks being burnt in a large pyre.

I wondered about the logic of doing this. Wouldn't destroying a large number
of tusks just increase the scarcity and thus the value, thus incentivising
more poachers to kill more elephants?

Burning the tusks wouldn't bring the elephants back to life. I would have
thought instead that suddenly flooding the market with tons of cheap ivory
would kill the value and reduce profit for distributors. Then again, it would
probably spur demand when people see the increase in availability?!?

No easy answer, but at the crux of it, we have to remove the almighty Dollar
(oh, ok - Schilling) from the whole equation somehow.

------
blisterpeanuts
Probably there will be no more elephants in 25 years, except for small numbers
in zoos and wildlife sanctuaries in developed countries.

At the rate it is going, African wildlife will largely disappear even as the
human population explodes. Already there are over 1.2 billion humans on the
continent, and not enough food, not enough stability or prosperity. Bush meat
is popular and can be bought anywhere, which of course means people are
hunting and eating protected species.

There are a couple hundred thousand chimpanzees left in Africa; there were
once millions. There are maybe 20,000 lions, down from half a million. There
were once millions of African elephants; now they're down to half a million
and still dropping. Many other species are facing similar fates.

We humans are like a blight on this planet. Maybe we should quickly develop
extraterrestrial colonization technologies, get the population off world, and
preserve the Earth as a giant animal sanctuary.

------
partycoder
The problem is that Chinese use Ivory figures as traditional gifts, and they
will not ban them, just in the same way the Spanish won't ban bullfighting.
This increases the cost of ivory, which places a high reward for elephant
tusks, which translates into their death sentence.

Likewise high end pianos, billiard balls, and such, make use of ivory.

According to surveys, the majority Chinese believe that elephant tusks grow
back in the same way nails do, and they do not know that elephants need to be
killed in the process.

At least there are studies to make use of synthetic ivory. Now, the use of
ivory itself doesn't respond to any actual need other than a cultural one.
Many materials that are cheaper can replace ivory in most use cases.

~~~
gozur88
If ivory is a Veblen good, efforts to raise the price might actually stimulate
demand instead of reducing it.

------
emptybits
I know this is politically naive but I'll say it.

Self-declared police nations (like USA & UK & France & their allies) are so
quick to intervene in Not Their Country when issues like oil or political
alliances are at stake. So can we see the same level of committment (e.g.
military intervention) when large scale extinction events or environmental
devastation are at stake?

Soldiers lives are precious. So this is easy for me to say, but would we
really be putting much at stake to drop a peacekeeping (read: anti-poacher)
presence into Kenya?

------
melling
Wonder if this is related to the rise of China's economy.

~~~
anexprogrammer
I thought China had brought in a total ban (finally) on both import and sale
last year. Obviously there's still smuggling, but I'd hoped the ban would have
a noticeably positive effect.

~~~
undersuit
>but I'd hoped the ban would have a noticeably positive effect.

The US bans and controls the sale of a lot of drugs, all we've got 50 years
later is another out of control government department.

------
Maarten88
I was in Tanzania last summer and saw elephants in one of these parks where
poaching is a big problem. We were lucky to see them; it was beautiful.

Our guides told us that natural selection causes elephants there to grow ever
smaller tusks, making them less attractive to poaching. That seemed somewhat
hopeful to me: maybe evolution will happen fast enough so they can re-bounce
in numbers after they produce no ivory anymore.

~~~
cyberferret
Or else the smaller tusks will mean poachers kill _more_ elephants each hunt
to meet their ivory tonnage criteria?!? Could be a double edged sword.

I heard on a podcast recently that the main cause of elephant deaths in the
1920's and 1930's was.... the manufacturing of billiard balls. Apparently it
took roughly 2 elephants worth of tusks to manufacture one set of ivory
billiard/snooker balls. Astounding - whereas a piano keyboard would usually
only take up less than 1/2 a tusk because they used laminated sheets of ivory.

At least we can be thankful that the modern plastics industry was born out of
the need to create 'artificial ivory' billiard balls which exhibited the same
bounce and noise properties. Although one could argue that modern plastics are
a whole ecological blight in their own right...

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SticksAndBreaks
Lets look at africa, then look at medieval japan. Two cultures, two times
limited ressources (wilderness - forrests). One time, the allmend ressources
are managed and tight self-controll is established over society - even during
times of warfare and strife. Why does this not work in africa?

~~~
undersuit
Medieval Japan didn't have many opportunities to engage in global trade. Oh
and what happened to their feudal system once they were exposed to
international products?

~~~
SticksAndBreaks
Eh, they transfered it into a cooperate-feudal system, where your feudal Lord
is your cooperations CEO?

------
nradov
The Foundation for Wildlife and Habitat Conservation - Zambia is doing some
great work on promoting alternatives to poaching. Your donations will do a lot
of good there.

[http://fwhc.net/](http://fwhc.net/)

------
savagej
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R8g-lugXGBQ](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R8g-lugXGBQ)

------
ceor4
I really wish ivory wasn't confiscated and burnt, but rather was infused with
poison and released to continue to its eventual destination.

