Poaching: The Cause Of Human Extinction

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The human race has a seemingly impossible challenge before them. While many focus on huge social issues such as terrorism and world hunger, which are completely valid and important issues, many have forgotten about the state of humanity’s neighbors within our very planet. Earth is in the midst of its sixth great extinction, keyed as the Holocene Extinction after the current epoch the planet is in. The Holocene Extinction, starting between 9,000 and 13,000 years ago, is the most recent since the Cretaceous-Tertiary mass extinction, during which the dinosaurs were wiped out (Heymann, Chibante and Brooks). Such knowledge of our current ongoing mass extinction event is not well known among the common populace. The simple fact is that the human …show more content…

Governments across the globe must work together as an international coalition to stop poaching and illegal trade of endangered animals worldwide.
Long past are the days when poaching was simply commoners hunting on owned property. Poaching is now one of the biggest causes of modern extinction. Today’s poaching does not only consist of animal poaching alone. Modern poaching includes the standard killing or theft of endangered animals as well as supplying exotic bird markets, illegal fishing or over-fishing, illegal harvesting of timber and exotic plants, and acquiring laboratory animals for Western pharmaceutical companies (Lemieux and Clarke). Hunting in itself is not inherently an evil thing, as many rural communities survive off of hunted meats and other “bush meat”. In ancient Eastern Asia, hunting was a lifestyle that was sustained by local communities that did not have economies reliant on mass trade. The aboriginal people would hunt largely for personal consumption, both for meat and use of body parts of all of their prey for various medicinal …show more content…

CITES, or the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora, is an international agreement between governments to ensure international trade of wild animals and plants does not threaten the survival of those species. According to its website, it was first conceived in 1973 and “accords varying degrees of protection to more than 35,000 species of animals and plants, whether they are traded as live specimens, fur coats or dried herbs.” Nature reserves and parks in Asia are not performing satisfactory in their protection of the animals within their grounds. With inadequately patrolled borders, poachers and other criminals sneak in and lay out trap lines and hunt in the only places where these animals are thought to be protected. Hidden away from the outside world, these parks are emptying of their most important residents. Locations in between countries that may have laws specific to poaching are ripe with crime. These so called “border towns” are empty of law enforcement or regulators of any sort. Here, sellers and buyers of endangered products are free to go about their business with no fear of consequence. In the year 2003, 581 leopard skins and 31 tiger skins were seized on the China–Nepal border (Nijman and Shepherd). Even what laws are in place are not enough to deter these

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