De Snaring Programme
Posted by webmaster in 
Illegal poaching of many endangered animals is still reality in Africa despite efforts by conservationists and African countries’ governments. In yester years, many poachers hunted for trade in game trophies. Today, a significant number of people poach for bush meat trade because many African countries are running out of food.
teamwithsnares
There is very small number of animals that aren’t of interest to poachers with Elephants marked as “favorite victim” of poachers. A large number of them is killed every year because of precious ivory and well developed ivory black market. But thankfully so, elephant number despite this merciless hunt has steady growth since the bloody 1980s and 199os.
Valuable ivory is the main reason for their merciless poaching and ivory black market is literally blooming. Some say that solution would be establishing legal ivory trade but that could easily backfire and cause double danger. It’s very difficult situation indeed because currently there’s no good enough alternative that would stop the ivory trade since there’s a lot of money in stake.
snaredantelope
Rhinos (black and white) are also target of many poachers because of their valuable horn and some other by-products and are facing same problems as elephants do. Black rhino is especially endangered since the number of black rhinos decreased since 1980 by more than 80 %.
One of possible solutions could be orientation to tourism industry which has lot of potential and would include employment opportunities to help poaching communities fend for their families. However, tourism isn’t fully developed in many countries, making poaching acceptable common alternative especially to communities in wildlife areas.
In Kenya for instance, over 1,000 wire snares were removed from various ranches across the country in 8 de-snaring operations carried out by Africa Network for Animal Welfare in collaboration with the Kenya Wildlife Services in 2-year period. During the de-snaring operations, 53 dead animals still in snares were found and 13 poachers arrested some with all kinds of wildlife that included Dik diks, giraffe, zebra etc.
At this moment there’s not a chance that poaching will stop and elephants, rhinos, and many other animals will be mercilessly hunted. Black market is too strong and countries must but explore acceptable alternatives that would satisfy their population providing them food and jobs.
snarevictim
My guess is that Africa as long as it remains poor will be subject of many controversies and black market oasis, not only for poachers but for many other illegal businesses.
