Effects Of Wildlife Poaching

Wildlife Poaching: The global aftermath

The word “death” may surprise people; however, what is even more surprising, and shocking of course, is that the death toll of rhinoceros in South Africa has now reached a record of 1020, a number greater than the record in 2013 and triple the number four years ago (Bukhardt, 2014)! People may fall off their seats if they would be seeing this: according to Kathleen Gobush (n.d.), the population of African elephants has declined from a number of 1.3 million to 600 individuals from 1979 to 1987, an astonishing span of eight years! Here is another stunning fact: a recent United Nations report suggests that by the mid-2020s, gorillas may disappear from large parts of the Congo Basin (World Wildlife Fund,

Even big nations with highly established economies seriously threaten the existence of these wild animals. According to Kasnoff (2014), throughout the world, there exists an increased demand for endangered tiger parts. Kasnoff (2014) stated that the countries involved in the worsening tiger trade are China, Japan, South Korea, Taiwan, Great Britain, and the United States, countries belonging to the First World. For example, the Zoological Society of London have noted that in 1990, at least 1900 kg of tiger bone, or an equivalent of 400 to 500 tigers, were exported from Taiwan to Japan (Kasnoff, 2014). Also, according to Kasnoff (2014), the South Korean immigration statistics reported that South Korea imported 3994 kilograms (8787 pounds) of tiger bones from Indonesia between the years 1970 and 1993. In Taiwan, a bowl of tiger penis soup, a virility booster, currently costs $320 and a pair of tiger eyes, believed to fight epilepsy and malaria, can be bought for $170; In Seoul, the powdered tiger humerus bone, noted for its medical properties against ulcers, rheumatism, and typhoid, currently brings up to $1450 per pound (Kasnoff, 2014). The illegal trade of tiger parts for medicinal use wasn’t limited to Asia only. Recently, a World Wildlife Fund investigation in England showed that half of the shops in London, Birmingham, Manchester, and

The selling of illegal animal products globally is somewhere in the high millions if not billions (animalpoaching, 2012). Animalpoaching (2012) further elaborated that poaching does not only harm a single species of wild animals, but also affects other wildlife that depends on the endangered animal. Animalpoaching (2012) said that having a non-natural food chain link added into the wildlife’s food chain is a big problem for animals that rely on the illegally-hunted animals to eat or to produce offspring with; this is why even though these animals have been in the world for thousands of years, one day, they would be critically endangered and unfortunately