Prized species such as sea cucumbers are increasingly being poached from Australian waters. But if foreign aid can give fishing crews alternative livelihoods, the problem could ease.
Women demonstrate in Kenya’s Great Rift Valley against the export of wild animals from the Maasai Mara National Park.
Reuters/Antony Gitonga
Ross Harvey, South African Institute of International Affairs
In the absence of trading ivory, other solutions have to be found to fund conservation and support communities living on the front line of the battle against poaching.
Markets and militarisation as responses to wildlife threats are dangerous because they often fail.
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Ross Harvey, South African Institute of International Affairs
The focus of CITES is not solely on the protection of species. It also promotes controlled trade that is not detrimental to the sustainability of wild species.
Rhino poaching in South Africa’s Kruger National Park has decreased this year but it has increased in other regions.
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South Sudan is a country where conflict is rife. This has had a knock-on effect on the country’s rich and varied fauna, and put conservation programmes in severe crisis.
Violence to protect rhinos in southern Africa’s peace parks is the complete opposite to what the parks were envisaged to stand for.
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There are very violent confrontations in southern Africa’s peace parks. This is partly due to a violent history dating back to the apartheid era that has never been adequately addressed.
Elephants form bonds from a very young age.
Shifra Goldenberg
Older matriarchs lead elephant society. But they’re also the primary targets of ivory poachers. When these socially critical individuals are killed, what happens to the rest of the group?
The translocation of rhinos can help conservation and build their populations.
Nikki le Roex
Conservationists are increasingly looking to translocating rhinos. This not only ensures their safety but also enables improvements to their genetic health.
People arguing that a ban on mammoth ivory would help save elephants from extinction are wrong. Here’s why.
Stuffed animals left by protesters block the doorway of River Bluff Dental clinic in Bloomington, Minnesota. Dentist Walter James Palmer, an American hunter, has been accused of killing the lion without a permit after paying $50,000 to two people who lured it out of Hwange National Park.
Reuters/David Bailey
The fact that people are still travelling thousands of miles to kill exotic animals and bring back trophies shows deeply rooted cultural problems in Western societies.
The debate around whether fences aid or curb poaching continues while units try hunt poachers.
John Hrusa/EPA
A company plans to flood the market with synthetic rhinoceros horn in an effort to slow poaching but these types of commercially driven conservation efforts are fraught with problems.
Elephants examine tusk of poached brethren.
Karl Ammann
Using DNA testing, researchers find that most elephant poaching is happening in two spots – crucial information to stopping the flow of ivory out of Africa.