The World Daily
Poachers taking advantage of Coronavirus crisis threaten the balance of wildlife

Armed guards watch over Fatu, one of the world's last remaining northern White Rhinos, in Kenya last year. Photo:REX

 

Poachers taking advantage of Coronavirus crisis threaten the balance of wildlife

 

By Patryk Krych | The World Daily | JULY 15th 2020

 

A series of severe spikes in poaching have all been reported around Pakistan, India, Nepal, Uganda, as well as many other African countries. The numbers only grow in brutality as time goes by, with many wildlife protection authorities having been reassigned to help stifle COVID cases.

The situation has been noted as dire in Botswana, with at least 10% of the country’s 500 rhino population entirely wiped out since March time, when the quarantine regulations first began to be imposed with increased strictness in the midst of the pandemic. “It’s a bloody calamity. It’s an absolute crisis,” said Map Ives of Rhino Conservation Botswana on the situation.

“Species are being wiped out by organised trade networks,” said project director of not-for-profit The Habitats Trust, Trisha Ghose. “New poaching techniques are emerging faster than we can respond to them.”

Ghose warned of a 151% increase in poaching incidents reported in certain parts of India. Due to the abrupt halt to tourism caused by the imposition of quarantine in the face of the COVID-19 pandemic, a large number of wildlife protection programmes had also lost their primary sources of funding. Many conservationists and rangers have seen a curb in their ability to monitor poaching hot spots with their previous ability due to the lockdown restrictions.

A National Geographic wildlife watch published some harrowing news on the situation in Uganda, in the country’s North-Western region. The worst incidents occur in the largest protected area in all of Uganda: In Murchison Falls National Park. The poachers are prone to using various traps, primarily cheap wire snares, as well as “deadly steel traps, repurposed from old car parts,” Dina Fine Maron of National Geographic wrote. These traps were described to have been powerful enough to snap an animal’s legs off, pinning them to the ground until they die of blood loss, dehydration, or of starvation.

“With staff not sure of whether they will continue getting salary without tourism, I think the morale and zeal to combat poaching went low,” said Charles Tumwesigye, the Uganda Wildlife Authority’s (UWA) deputy director of field operations. Thus far in 2020, the agency has recorded 367 different poaching incidents within the country’s parks between the months of February and May. Tumwesigye mentioned that this was double the amount recorded within the same period back in 2019.

“Poaching levels have gone up so much,” said Dr Gladys Kalema-Zikusoka, founder of Conservation Through Public Health, who warns of the dangers to apes in East Africa. “Normally poachers would not go near the gorillas because they fear getting caught.”

Funds to pay for vital wildlife-protection projects that have been falling through recently started to be collected, following the launch of a campaign that called for an assimilation of international efforts to assist in clamping down on the illegal trade and poaching of wild animals. Proprietor Evgeny Lebedev was responsible for the launch of the campaign.

Dr Max Graham, founder and CEO of Space for Giants, a charity organisation working with the campaign efforts, said: “The international community must work together to eradicate the factors that allow the illegal trade of wildlife to perpetuate and help protect the world’s wildlife. Otherwise, we are just at the beginning of an ecological emergency.”

In Pakistan and Nepal, where the situation has also drastically worsened, it’s been reported by authorities that six musk deer were discovered to have been dead in the Sagarmatha National Park, thought to be related to further poaching cases.

 

By Patryk Krych | © The World Daily 2020

 

 

Categories:
Environment
Tags:
AfricaAsiaPoachersWildlife