Africa is famous for its amazing and diverse wildlife. It is the ultimate wildlife safari destination for travelers and wildlife enthusiasts. Poaching can be described as killing animals without any legal permit, just to obtain valuable items like ivory and fur. The governments of African nations are facing the intense challenge of controlling poaching goons.
Poaching has endangered several species:
Poaching and illegal hunting are two main reasons that have pushed some of the rarest species on the verge of extinction. In Africa, illegal poachers victimize animals like lions, tigers, black rhinoceros, white rhinoceros and elephants. A large number of elephants are killed every year for the ivory poachers get from their tusks. The tusks are sold at high prices. There was a time when elephants were found in large numbers in Kenya and Tanzania. Due to the activities of illegal poachers, the number of elephants in these two countries has decreased astonishingly. Cote d’Ivore got its name from the abundance of big tusked elephants but now there are almost no elephants left there. In the last hundred years, the number of elephants have gone down from a couple of millions to just a meager 450,000-700,000. In 2012, an approximate 668 rhinoceros died in South Africa due to poaching. Between 2007 and 2011, rhino poaching increased by 3000% in South Africa.
A popular superstition, promoting poaching in these areas, is that the horn of the rhinoceros can be used to make life fostering medicine. This is just a misconception because science has proved that there is no medicinal value the horn of a rhinoceros. Poaching is now being conducted by well-organized and resourceful groups of criminals and terrorists. It has become very difficult for the regional governments to curb and control this crime. Big amounts of bribes are given to the police and government officials to help the poachers. To stop this vicious crime, different regional and provincial governments of Africa need to join hands and tackle this matter together.
Poaching affects the nature adversely:
The Mother Nature has created diverse species to maintain the balance the environment and thus life on earth. Reckless poaching has endangered many species of tigers, rhinoceros and elephants, along with hundreds of other species. Some of the endangered species are now extinct. Not only animals depend on plants for food, but also the plants need animals for getting nutrients. When the cycle of nature is broken, due to scarcity or abundance of plants or animals, it creates an imbalance in the entire environment, posing threat to life on the earth.
Here is Inforgraphic on this subject, courtesy superscholar.org/africa/
