http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3334816/S-African-judge-lifts-domestic-ban-rhino-horn-trade.html
"A South African judge on Thursday lifted a domestic ban on trade in rhino horns, alarming conservationists who described it as an 'extremely dangerous move' that could worsen a poaching crisis.
"The government said it planned to appeal against the ruling, which was delivered in the Pretoria High Court after two South African game breeders fought a legal battle to overturn the moratorium.
"... 'Lifting the ban is an extremely dangerous move,' Jason Bell, director of International Fund for Animal Welfare (IFAW) in South Africa, told AFP.
'It is setting an unnecessary precedent by allowing domestic trading of horns even though the horns won't be allowed to leave the country.
'If the international ban is lifted, history has shown that poaching and illicit trade will increase dramatically.
'The rhino population will disappear in two to three years if the Chinese consumption continues at the rate that it is today.'
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I have no words. I have never heard of such reckless judicial insanity. Its utterly mad. He may as well decreed a rhino genocide.
The problem I keep seeing is that so many of our planet's most unique animals are on the continent with the least ecological sense or grasp of consequences.
We continue to see rare animals being harvested by the most vulgar of opportunists so they can then waste the money on stupid shit that is gone in a year just for some baubles.
And as a result, the entire planet must bear the willful extinction of one of our precious, unique creatures for the remaining eternity of the universe.
All so Sayeed can have a new CD changer in his 1998 Subaru that he will sell in a year for some other trinket.
Utter madness.
>>2005701
There's something I don't get. I saw a guy on TV many years ago shooting rhinos with tranquilizer darts and cutting the horn off in their sleep. This was meant to discourage poaching.
My question is that if the only part of the rhino that is worth killing it for is the horn, then why don't poachers or government agents or whatever use tranquilizers? I mean tranquilizers mean more rhinos which means more horns which means more money. It could be legalized so people could get their rhino horns and rhinos could be protected. It seems like a win-win situation here.
>>2005701
This is why I hate pretty much all Asians. The Africans never really killed that many rhinos (or other animals to the point to mass extinction) as much as fucking gooks have. The goddamn zipper-heads will kill anything if shoving a part of it up their ass has a chance of "lessening the effect" of their cold. Hopefully they grow out of it like the colonial Brits and other Europeans did.
Japs are best friend tho
>>2005703
The tranqs would be expensive. And they'd have to bandage and care for the wound when they cut the horn off. Also expensive. The whole thing is really fucked up, anyway. In the end they're still harming an animal, taking it's defense away, for money.
It's pretty clear by now we aren't going to kill a single human even if it means saving an entire species.
kiss the rhino goodbye.
>>2005703
Right. Ok, this is all I can really tell you, because I can find reason in insanity no better than I can find logic in the cognitive functions of a house fly.
The best I can speculate is that you entirely sound perspective, while completely lucid, would require these fuckwits to have the ability to think beyond the next five minutes of life past this moment in time.
When they wipe them out, and they will, they will actually puzzle over why it happened. They will understand they are all gone and there is no money left to be made; that much they will grasp.
But what they wont understand is why their sense of entitlement isn't being met by the world. They will most likely blame the rhinos for not breeding enough, and be angry at the now extinct species for not being there to harvest. Then they will feel cheated and outraged.
But only for about five minutes. Because with this sort of behavior, you cant really expect them to be angry about a thought lasting longer than their attention span.
This is one of the marks of utter stupidity of the most dangerous kind. An enormous amount of dysfunctional human behavior can be attributed to a persons inability to actually incorporate past experiences as memory.
So people will do stupid shit, witness a consequence, and because they are so fucking stupid, dismiss both the new information and attached feeling, and because they dont really remember it in any meaningful way or context, do the same damn stupid thing again and again.
Its like goldfish memory. The fish remembers nothing, so it can never learn.
If a creature is equally bad at grasping linear time, the concept of a future and consequences, it can do something stupid, then do the same damn stupid thing again with absolutely no anticipation of the same damn consequences it just witness earlier.
>>2005713
... Sorry for ranting, but thats as clearly as I can put it. Africa is not known for being the cradle of reason and planning. The environment has produced a people who survive by quick decisions. Unfortunately, this rather obstructs any ability to value any thought of anything more than five minutes away from the present.
>>2005711
Very well said.
>>2005711
Who are you talking about when you say "we"? Humans as collective, western intervention, or...?
Some African countries have shoot-to-kill policy on poachers. Hard to say if it's wise as it must escalate the arms race, and in an environment like Africa the poachers may even be better organized.
>>2005713
why. see image
>>2005711
easy to say that, you're not the one who'd pull the trigger. before you start beating your chest, think real hard on what exactly is entailed. give this a bit of thought and maybe you'll understand what's wrong with the conscious decision to elevate non-humans over humans. our laws are human-centric because this is the only thing that allows our societies to function. devaluing a human life arbitrarily -- for any reason -- weakens the pretty fragile machinations that hold us all together in a more or less civil manner.
for the record, i'd consider myself a conservationist. just not at the expense of human life. poachers are obviously somewhat different. if they fire on park rangers obviously their lives are forfeit, but poaching on its own doesn't seem like a crime worthy of death in itself, if that's what you were implying.
it's a shitty thing, but it's also pretty unreasonable to try to sentence a human to death for it, even for critically endangered species. throw the book at them, sure, but killing them isn't the right answer.
>>2005701
Capitalism will surely destroy this world until there's nothing left.
>>2005730
Because one can scan it faster instead of having to plow through a block of text to pick keywords to evaluate relevance. Space-Return gives a break, and it adapts to browser size, So if you are full screen, it looks like long strings, and if you have reduced the window size, then it appears more like the traditional blocks you are used to.
If I chain long sentences together and someone is using a reduced size window, it would look like a huge block of endless text.
Bright, multi- resolution computer screens do not lend themselves to trying futilely to render magazine or book style margins and spacing for fast reading to most. What you screen capped is not necessarily the way everyone else sees it, and since I am verbose, I space it more to give peoples eyes a break, and make it easier to scan.
You do basically the same thing, separating three sentences into independent blocks. If I reduce my window to half screen, it also shapes your text into small, comfortable blocks. If I dont, I too see long strings.
Typed submissions normally are double spaced also for the ease of the reader for lengthy text; term papers, manuscripts, screenplays etc.
>>2005701
Well this has made me fucking angry.
>>2005827
Guess again fag
>>2005703
Vet student here
Tranqs are not only expensive, but also controlled substances. But the real issue is that it's not as simple as "just use a tranquilizer gun." There are loads of other logistical reasons why you wouldn't do that.
Each dart has to be individually prepared according to the weight of the animal or risk overdose and death. A darted animal does not instantaneously pass out, but will run for 2-10 minutes and potentially escape the poachers only to pass out where it can't be helped and die. An animal that has been anesthetized may have adverse reactions to the drug and die anyway. Unless the poachers stayed with the animal until it recovered it would probably die anyway. And if the chase lasted more than a couple minutes it could stress the animal to the point where it would die anyway.
It's not realistic.
>>2007008
So in practice, this whole thing is likely cover to ramp up harvests at any means using the tranquilizer as public cover?
Is that how I should interpret this? The ethics of poachers are not known to be balanced, pro-animal standards.
We have standards in the US for at least some animal harvesting, for things like fur and food. There are breaches, of course, but the industry does at least make an effort.
I have trouble imagining the same is true for a country like South Africa.
>>2005703
Something else to consider is that tranqs only give you so much time, so you have to work very fast and hard. In that aspect, it is much easier to kill the animal and not worry about it waking up half way through the hack-sawing
>>2005703
Horns are their natural defense against things that would want to fuck with em
>>2007294
What? No.
The lift is likely because there's a group of people who believe regulated ivory trading is the only way to stop the black market. I tend to agree with them.
I've been to South Africa. For the most part, they have their shit together on animals. They realize it's the only reason anyone visits their shithole. Poachers are shot to kill. This won't affect how poachers are dealt with.
>>2008381
There's better ways to handle legalization. You can provide licenses to certain breeders and only they can provide tusks, but even that would drive up the price and encourage poaching.
Rhino horns are not valid medically, but that is one of the main drivers in the market. It's a load of bullshit killing the species. Of course the horns traded legally inside of South Africa will have a final destination outside of South Africa. There is no purpose for their trade outside of what amounts to voodoo. It's a good idea to shut it all down.
Fuck man this makes me so angry. Fucking rhino horns don't even do anything medicinally. Fuck.
>>2008387
You know that there is no way to remove that superstition overnight. It's the same as religion, you just got to make it irrelevant, and it will dilute and eventually forgotten. That's a long process and I don't know if China is doing much about it. I don't know if the following is correct but it would be pretty interesting that TCM even survived the revolution.
>In 1942, Mao had ordered the government to banish all superstitious and shamanic beliefs from the Yanan region and to create public health villages. However, in the years between 1953 and 1959, well before the Cultural Revolution was launched, Mao reversed his anti-Chinese medicine stance. Chinese medicine was used as a symbol for China and considered a national treasure by the government.
