Black Rhinos and Politics

Politics and saving the black rhino go hand in hand for a number of reasons. The primary reason is simply funding. Funding allows for more protection of the black rhino, habitat loss prevention, and creating jobs in poverty stricken areas. Usually governments that receive lots of money from eco-tourism, such as South Africa, tend to spend more funds on wildlife protection but other countries, such as the Democratic Republic of the Congo, do not receive any tourism and do not allocate funds to protection of wildlife.

The reason why most poachers poach is not because they a greedy sadists but it is because they don’t have jobs and need to feed their family. To eliminate or mitigate this issue governments are attempting to help out local economies so that they will refrain from poaching activities. Poverty is a very difficult thing to fix however more funds are being used to improve the infrastructure of local economies instead of using money for direct rhino protection.

A new issue has appeared regarding whether or not rhino horns should be legalized. This issue that is facing politicians is similar to the issue of whether or not marijuana should be legalized or not. Similarities range from controlled distribution, legalized farming, and a reduction in prices due to the fact that it is illegal. The glaring difference between legalization of rhino horn and legalization of marijuana is that there are a finite numbers of rhinos and they can’t be “grown” as quickly as marijuana.

Politics are an integral part of rhino conservation but people all over the world are still able to help the black rhino. Organizations like the World Wildlife Fund use money donated to them to help save vulnerable, endangered and critically endangered animals all over the world.

  

New Methods For Counter Poaching

An article in the Journal of Applied Ecology came out last month entitled “Real-time anti-poaching tags could help preventimminent species extinctions”. The article opens up with the fact that many large exotic animals are on their way to extinction. For example some researchers believe that the elephant and the black rhino will go extinct by 2020. The article goes on to list an innovative, fast response system that will help catch poachers. This new system is an electronic tag that will be placed in the animal. This tag will give real-time information such as heartbeat, location, and possibly even have a camera and microphone attachment to it. This method will be more effective than previous tags because previous tags just showed the animal’s location on a GPS. The old GPS was rife with problems one of which was sleeping animals were misinterpreted as being dead.

         This new tracking system will be a fantastic poaching deterrent. Most incidents of poaching involve the poachers escaping, but with the new electronic tags it will be almost impossible for the poacher to escape. This is because if the animals heart rate stops there will be an alert to park rangers who will come to investigate and catch the poachers. Many national parks use helicopters so finding poachers will be a breeze if alerted to their presence. The article suggests the use of unmannedaircraft (drones) to investigate an alert before sending in park rangers especially if the park lacks helicopters. This alert will happen in less than ten seconds so poachers will be unable to forcibly remove the device before the alarm is triggered. With a high chance of the apprehension of poachers, poaching should decrease significantly and bringing back the population of will be more likely.

         The issue with this solution is that a considerable amount of black rhinos will need to be tagged in order for this new system to be effective. The issue is mitigated by the fact that the black rhino is critically endangered so there isn’t too many that need to be tagged, but never the less there are at least 4800 of them. This new type of anti-poaching will work better on animals that are critically endangered rather than animals that are just simply endangered. 

O'Donoghue, P., & Rutz, C. (2015). Real‐time anti‐poaching tags could help prevent imminent species extinctions. Journal of Applied Ecology.

Jacques Cousteau- The Modern Conservationist

In this blog we will be leaving the terrestrial world and diving into the world of the great Jacques Cousteau. Born in France 1910, Jacques Cousteau and never became a formally trained scientist but had a fascination with the ocean and marine life. Cousteau was one of the great ocean explorers of his time and created the iconic and groundbreaking documentary series, The Undersea World of Jacques Cousteau. He popularized the sport of scuba diving, co-invented the aqua lung, and is the inspiration for many underwater entertainment series such as the narrator from SpongeBob. 

What makes Jacques Cousteau important to rhinos? Jacques Cousteau was one of the great conservationist, and environmentalist of his age, being one of the first people to protect the ocean. He spent many hours under the waves and realized the beauty and importance of the marine world, which prompted him to become one of its guardians. Because of his popular documentaries he was able to help pass a moratorium on commercial whaling and even stop the dumping of nuclear waste into the ocean.

He along with many conservationists of that time, such as Jane Goodall and Rachel Carson, helped enforce the idea that humans cannot just ignore nature and believe that the actions of man will not affect man. Before the great conservationists wildlife was exploited to near extinction, one may look at the American buffalo, the North Atlantic Right whale and the Black rhinoceros as prime examples of what went on in the pre-conservation era. It may seem that Jacques Cousteau has nothing to do with the Black rhino but without the help Jacques Cousteau and his peers we would likely see a more polluted ocean, and an emptier savannah.