[Poachers cont'd]:
These Kenyan poachers are well-known for their brutal tactics and ruthlessness. For instance, they have been known to cut down an entire herd of elephants with machine guns, including the babies, in order to greedily profit from ivory. Illegal hunters have just about completely destroyed the white rhino, and have left only around 3500 black rhinos [in the early '90s] in the wild. There are no doubt much fewer if any in 2009. They sometimes use chainsaws to remove horns or tusks from these magnificent creatures, often while rhinos or pachyderms are still alive. Poacher-bandits have been known to rob and murder US tourists, and are suspected of murdering conservationists Joy Adamson (of "Born Free" fame) during the early '80s, George Adamson (Joy's ex-husband) in 1988, and Diane Fosse ("Gorillas In The Mist") as well.
It may be next to impossible to stop the poaching of fur-bearing animals, but there may be a way to save the 250,000 some-odd remaining elephants and 3500 some-odd rhinos [both as of the early '90s] still alive in the wild. If it is possible to surgically remove tusks (an elephant's molars) or rhinos' horn(s) without seriously harming or killing the beasts, that may deter poachers from indiscriminately slaying these creatures. Also, if the punishment fit the crime; or, if the poachers were perhaps subject to the same cruel fates that they impose upon elephants and other creatures, that might supply an incentive for illegal hunters to stop killing off the last of certain rare and endangered species (especially fur-bearing animals). Likewise, if people in the U.S. and elsewhere covet and buy jewelry and objects d'art made from ivory (scrimshaw) and/or rhino horns, not to mention fur, and incentive is supplied for poachers to cruelly slaughter rare, threatened and endangered animals of all kind. (to be cont'd)
[The original version of this essay first appeared in Eastern Connecticut State University's Campus Lantern student newspaper in the early '90s and as part of my unpublished manuscript "In Mediocrity We Trust... In Debt We Die" And Other Essays]
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