Showing posts with label elephant. Show all posts
Showing posts with label elephant. Show all posts

Saturday, 27 August 2022

Lone tusker takes on 14 lionesses and wins

Astonishing and difficult to see but it is nature. Thankfully the size of the elephant and its thick hide protects it even from a marauding pride of lions. This is not a particularly large elephant but large enough to survive this attack. He walks into the river which helps to shed the attackers but he turns back to attack the primary attacking lion which allows more lions to rejoin the attack. Anyway, the elephant wins. But sometimes young elephants are brought down by a pride of lions. It can be done.

RELATED: Lions and elephants revolt against poachers in South Africa.

Lions are not very fond of water as you can see. It stopped them attacking the elephant. 

RELATED: Are lions good swimmers? ‘Quite capable’ is the description.

RELATED: Do lions eat elephants?

You may have to click the play button twice to get the video to run. Google reduces the image quality automatically so it is not great but good enough.

Thursday, 3 July 2014

Thailand Don't Give a Damn about Wildlife

Thailand has been implicated in driving the endangered African elephant towards extinction by abjectly and callously failing to clamp down on illegal ivory sales.  The information comes from a report based upon monitoring by international wildlife specialists.

Research by Traffic, a conservation group, informs us that the number of carved ivory products on sale in Bangkok has almost tripled in the past 18 months.  This has happened despite promises by Thailand's former Prime Minister.  He said that the country would ban the ivory trade.  More hollow words from allegedly corrupt and irresponsible politicians.

Bangkok in Thailand is now confirmed as the capital of the Asian ivory trade and this despicable trade is driven by demand from China.  China has a lot of explaining to do because not only do they drive the trade in illegal ivory they also drive the trade in illegal tiger body parts and there is very little difference between the two because the outcome is the gradual extinction of wildlife species and in this case they are iconic species which the world cannot afford to lose in the wild.

A spokesman for Traffic says that Thailand's efforts to regulate local ivory markets have failed.  What efforts?  I don't think they are making efforts.  It seems to me that they enjoy the income that the business brings to the country.

The ivory trade in Thailand is out of control (or in control by politicians due to corruption?).  In Thailand the number of carved ivory products found for sale rose from 5,865 to 14,512 between January 2013 and May 2014.  The number of businesses selling ivory products rose from 61 to 105.

This shocking information arrives just before next weekend's meeting of CITES in Geneva.  This organisation should actually be working but it is manifestly failing across-the-board as far as I can see.

Apparently, Thailand is allowed to use the ivory from their domesticated elephants to make ivory trinkets but the maximum that the tasks from domesticated elephants in Thailand can produce in terms of ivory is 650 kg, whereas illegally poached and smuggled African ivory in Thailand over the past 6 years weighs in at 13 tonnes.

What can be conclude?  In my humble opinion there is no prospect of anything changing in Thailand due to inherent corruption and apathy about wildlife.  As I stated in the title, the people as expressed through their government (elected but a fragile democracy) don't give a dam about wildlife and would rather make money out of it.  Be prepared for the extinction of the African elephant in the wild in Africa.

Neighbouring Burma is a major player in tiger body part smuggling.

Monday, 16 June 2014

Kenyan Government Protects Poachers: What Happens to the Wild Cats?

Elephant Serengeti. Photo: Feans
Richard Leakey, one of the world's best known conservationists tells us that the Kenyan government is working with (yes, not against) poachers. This is a classic example of the well rehearsed dark-side of governments the world over which continues to have a catastrophic impact on wild species living in the wild.

Leakey refers to the ivory of elephants and the horns of rhino which feed the insatiable market in China but it could equally well be the bones of a lion from the plains of the Serengeti. The body parts of these glorious and increasingly precious species of popular wild animals are desired by many people. The more they are killed the rarer they become and in turn more desirable; one of the distortions of human existence.

Richard Leakey is the founder of the Kenya Wildlife Service. He says he is convinced that the Kenyan government knows who the criminals are.

The "last great wildlife species" are being slaughtered because of corruption in high places. Wasn't it ever thus but it won't change. We read these stories year-in-year-out and nothing changes in the long run, which tells me the end of poaching can only happen at the end of these species in the wild.

The reason why governments are involved in poaching themselves is because either (a) they are the poachers or (b) they get a skim-off from the profit of the poachers.

There may also be a link between wildlife trade, corruption and terrorism as the funds generated might be supporting terrorists groups says United States Trade Representative Michael Froman.

Leakey took an uncompromising stand against poaching in his role as the former head of the Kenya Wildlife Service. For example, he persuaded the then president of Kenya to burn their 12 ton ivory stock pile. They used to shoot at poachers on sight. Not anymore.

Leakey is the victim of a plane crash in 1993. He lost his legs. Was it sabotage? He has enemies. These criminals will stop at nothing. The money is big. The devastation to wildlife is also big.

It seems that Leakey doesn't know who the perpetrators are otherwise he would have gone to the police. Perhaps he knows that it is pointless because the police are corrupt as well.

John Scanlon of CITES states that the African elephants are under threat of extinction in the wild. Shocking isn't it? This is an iconic creature. The world just watches and waits for the inevitable. We are too wrapped up in our own mess i.e. the rise of Al Qaeda terrorism, which will affect us all even if it is thousands of miles away from people in the West.

Big business pays poor Africans a pittance compared to their profits to poison elephants and wild cat species. Most of the ivory (a better description is the tusks of an elephant) is shipped to China.
If we are honest the corruption almost certainly runs through every aspect of government; local and national, police and customs. It is so deeply entrenched it is impossible to stop and therefore it is impossible to stop the demise of the iconic wild species of Africa.

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