Why Kill Poachers Kill Elephants?

Elephants, rhinoceros, gorillas and tigers are sacred animals to African and Asian countries. The result of illegal poaching and hunting has left these animals, not far from extinction. There was a time when African elephants roamed the entire African continent. There was an estimated amount of nearly 7-10 million elephants that existed in the 1930’s. Today that number has dropped drastically to around 300,000 individual elephants; these creatures are still declining at a rapid rate because of hunting and poaching. In the 1980’s Africa lost half of their elephants due to poaching. Elephants are mainly killed for their ivory, which is a hard creamy-white substance composing the main part of the tusk. Poachers kill elephants because of their

Rhinos are important grazers; they consume a large amount of vegetation. By eating a large amount of vegetation this helps shape the African landscape (Okori, 2015). Because rhinos do this it affects other animal’s way of living, rhinos benefits other animals by keeping a healthy balance in the ecosystem. Because of vigorous conservation and anti-poaching efforts and an international ban on the trade in rhino horn, some African populations are now stable or increasing (Okori, 2015). In the past 21 years (1993-2014) lion populations have declined 42%. Only 20,000 lions remain (Pratt, 2015). The killing of Cecil the lion one of Zimbabwe’s most loved wild animals really struck people’s attention that hunting and poaching animals has gotten out of hand. Lions are poached for their bones. Not only are lions being hunted, tigers, leopards, and many other “big cats” are being poached for their bones, skin and claws. In Laos and Vietnam cultures grind the bones into a paste and add other herbs to the bones. The Chinese also use the bones in the ancient Chinese median. Lions are a very important part to the ecosystem. The plays a large role in the food chain, lions help regulate numbers of the more dominate herbivore species, such as zebra, guzzle, and buffalo. Without lions to control more dominate species, these species out-compete other animals, causing their extinction and reducing biodiversity (Pratt, 2015). However if animals are not hunted or poached in Africa there would be a large increase in the animal population. For example carnivores, big cats, such as lions, leopards, cheetahs, jaguars, and cougars would attack varies animals in the wild like elephants, giraffe, zebras, buffalo, gazelle, and many other small animals. If big cats attack all of these smaller animals, they won’t be able to reproduce quickly enough, causing the animals population to drop. This may result in the big cats growing hungry over