You guys should consider donating to the International Anti-Poaching Foundation[0][1] which fights these poachers. The founder, Damien Mander[2], is an Australian ex spec-ops sniper who is using his military experience to train the park rangers since they, unlike the poachers, tend to be poorly equipped and trained as well as understaffed.

There is also the David Sheldrick Wildlife Trust[3][4] which takes care of elephant and rhino orphans (most of them are orphans due to poaching). For $50 a year, you can become a sponsor of a particular animal and they'll send you photos and updates about how your sponsored animal is doing. You can for example sponsor these cuties [5][6]. It's a good gift.

You should also check out http://reddit.com/r/babyelephantgifs for a daily dose of elephant gifs.

[0] http://www.iapf.org/

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_Anti-Poaching_Fo...

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Damien_Mander

[3] http://www.sheldrickwildlifetrust.org/

[4] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Sheldrick_Wildlife_Trust

[5] http://www.sheldrickwildlifetrust.org/asp/orphan_profile.asp...

[6] https://www.instagram.com/p/BZz6S-fFBQL/?taken-by=dswt

As a child in the early 90s I was given the "gift" of an adopted whale. I did get updates about my whale, where it was an what it was doing. The data was likely all junk but it was an interesting gift for a kid interested in oceans. The gift then went sour. My name/address had obviously been put on a list. Other organizations started sending me mail containing pictures of dead and abused animals, not images for children. It took years for this to stop. I fear a modern version: waking up to see every website I visit flanked by ads full of crying puppies. Instead, I donate cash to local animal centers.

I donated 100 to each

May your code be forever bugfree.

Interesting blessing . Bugs may be reason someone is employed as the code needs to be maintained.

+1

> You guys should consider donating to the International Anti-Poaching Foundation which fights these poachers.

The people in the video capturing calves are not poachers - they are Parks and Wildlife rangers. The sale to zoos are entirely legal in both countries, but might be contravening CITES rules.

Donated 50 to each. Thanks for sharing!

Out of curiosity, are these organizations literally fighting poachers? I.e. we're saying that an elephant's life is more valuable than a human's?

That's an interesting moral question.

Yes, they are. The countries that have a shoot on sight policy for poachers tend to have very low poaching rates.

> That's an interesting moral question.

It's not actually. The poaching groups are connected to the likes of Boko Haram http://www.nationalgeographic.com/tracking-ivory/article.htm.... So it's two birds with one stone really.

Also the poachers kill anti-poachers regularly

https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2017/apr/25/two-wild...

https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2017/aug/17/leading-...

That's not the question at all. The question is whether we should let humans hunt species to extinction.

--

https://www.smithsonianmag.com/science-nature/fight-against-...

"Between 2010 and 2012, ivory hunters shot down an astonishing 100,000 elephants across Africa—more than 60 percent of central Africa’s elephant population has been lost during the ten-year period beginning in 2002—according to the U.S. National Academy of Sciences."

http://www.bagheera.com/inthewild/van_anim_elephant.htm

"Demand for ivory, combined with habitat loss from human settlement, has led to a dramatic decline in elephant populations in the last few decades. In 1930, there were between 5 and 10 million African elephants. By 1979, there were 1.3 million.

In 1989, when they were added to the international list of the most endangered species, there were about 600,000 remaining, less than one percent of their original number.

Asian elephants were never as abundant as their African cousins, and today they are even more endangered than African elephants. At the turn of the century, there were an estimated 200,000 Asian elephants. Today there are probably no more than 35,000 to 40,000 left in the wild."

--

So, we ask the question: Why save endangered species?

http://www.bbc.com/earth/story/20150715-why-save-an-endanger...

1) We like them, 2) The biosphere provides trillions of dollars to the global economy, 3) Loss of species impacts ecological systems and puts us at risk as we depend on them for survival.

> "...The question is whether we should let humans hunt species to extinction."

Why is this the question? Why is "extinction" so important? The fate of most species is extinction anyway.

I added an answer to this at the bottom of my comment.

Great article, thanks for sharing.

> "...1) We like them, 2) The biosphere provides trillions of dollars to the global economy, 3) Loss of species impacts ecological systems and puts us at risk as we depend on them for survival."

Is there a non-selfish reason, that is morally justifiable, for preventing species extinction?

Assuming humans did not exist, the main moral justification I see would be to prevent the unnecessary suffering of living beings. Of course suffering is a part of natural systems, but as living beings, we can identify with the discomfort of said suffering, and find it a moral imperative to limit suffering to only that which is necessary.

When natural systems can no longer sustain life, that life dies out. This can happen when there are no longer enough natural resources to support said life. But this does not necessarily happen quickly. The cause could be drought or famine or climate chane, resulting in lack of an environment suitable to life. This can cause the deterioration of a species to the point of disease, starvation, cannibalization, and other painful processes.

Let's take an example. Assume that some new disease affected a wolf population in a given area. Once those wolves died out, the lack of natural predators would cause other species (say, deer) to reproduce abundantly, and then overgraze, which would then affect the growth of forests, which then would affect the ecology sustaining a myriad of species that live in said forest. Assuming those species attempted to adapt by migration, they may be adversely affected by other species in a new region, or adversely affect those species themselves, setting off new chain reactions.

This is not a theory. This is a real problem affecting the northeast united states. Except it wasn't disease that killed off the wolves: it was humans.

Considering these arguments or normally made to people thinking of humanity first, non-selfish arguments wouldn't make much sense to use. Consider the audience of the argument.

How is to not jeopardize the ecological system a selfish reason?

Harmers are less valuable than victims, regardless of species. All consciousness should be respected.

So kill all leopards, lions, tigers, wolves etc.

It's a valid point, I do agree it's worth thinking about, I've heard of the movement before.

But it means you are very pro poacher though. Every animal they kill often saves hundreds.

Interesting outlook.

Depends why they're causing harm. Nothing is ever black and white.

    > Nothing is ever black and white.

This is true, but I feel like people claiming this often intend to imply that everything is exactly 50% gray which is also never the case.

Is an elephant’s life more valuable than a randomly selected human? Probably not.

Is an elephant’s life worth more than someone who poaches endangered animals? Probably.

Also, these poachers are usually armed and willing to kill for their poach. The best defense against an idiot with a WWII export AK variant is a smarter person with a much longer-range weapon.

> Is an elephant’s life more valuable than a randomly selected human? Probably not.

According to The Law of Scarcity isn't the life of an elephant more valuable than a human?

No? Scarcity alone isn’t enough to make something valuable.

The article indicates these elephants were taken legally. So, in this case, I'm pretty sure we aren't actually discussing poachers.

A few years ago I was on a trip in Tanzania, visiting Ngorongoro Crater. At one point, high up on the crater rim, the guide pulled the Land Rover to the side of the road to give a ride to a couple of uniformed "park rangers". They were dealing with "reports of poachers", and each was carrying an AK-47. It was unclear whether actual shooting was part of their remit; they were not talkative.

While in the Kruger National Park, our driver was speeding and caught by a pair of rangers. One approached the car to collect the fine (cash only), the other had an assault rifle at the ready.

Is it so interesting? I'm sure they would apprehend poachers without violence if they had any reason to believe the poachers wouldn't fight for their freedom.

It's a bit like asking whether a human life is more valuable than a sack of money when a bank robber goes down shooting. Either law enforcement has teeth or there are no laws.

I'll outright say it-an endangered animal's life is more valuable then a randomly selected human's. You could kill 10 or 100 humans for each of an endangered species and make no (net) difference in the ability of the human race to survive.

As if that's the only consideration. The survival of the race? Turn that around you can justify just about anything, like killing <human group here> because you believe it's better for 'survival'.

I think the moral takeaway is not that the lives of these people is worth less than that of an animal. It's that they are breaking knowingly and are often murderers themselves.

So if you could choose between saving the lives of five elephants, or preventing the Las Vegas shooting, you'd choose the elephants? That seems to be what you're saying.

I don't know if that's what they are saying, but I would say that. Tragic though the Vegas shooting was, humans aren't an endangered species.

Don't get me wrong, I happily hunt and fish. I clean and process dead animals with great frequency. The difference, in this case, is that elephants are truly at risk of extinction.

Elephant's don't go around shooting humans....

If they could, would they?

Does it matter?

Do the same rules not apply in almost all countries when someone commits armed robbery of priceless artifacts with military grade weapons?

The question is whether it's okay to shoot first at a gang of heavily armed criminals, or whether you have to attempt an arrest first.

Yes, you have to attempt an arrest first. Poaching is not a capital crime.

I think Kenya is one place where poaching is a capital crime. They issued a shoot to kill order some years ago. It made the news and I'm not sure of the efficacy of such programs.

Importantly, this isn't poaching. This was lawful collection of elephants. Morality aside, this does provide funding for cash- strapped nations and some of that funding goes to protection of stressed animal populations.

> Morality aside

Yeah let's not do that.

I'm not comfortable attempting to force my morality on other people and other cultures, and I think it detracts from our ability to be objective.

I personally dislike zoos and don't visit them. At the same time, I'm not comfortable telling you how you should feel.

Bank robbery is not a capital crime either but cops shoot as soon as they see an armed gang. Isn't this a good comparison?

Eh, play stupid games, win stupid prizes.

From those specific "humans"? Definitely yes. Humans like those, who harm other creatures just to make profit, deserve to die.

I'd highly recommend watching "Blackfish" for some insight into this sort of phenomenon with a more domestic spin (spoiler, it's about SeaWorld's acquisition of and treatment of their Orcas).

I'd actually recommend against it due to its "domestic spin", as well as its bias, questionable editing, and questionable experts.

I wonder if legalizing the sale of elephants, rhino horns, etc. (but still protecting the ones in the wild) would lead to a sort of positive version of the https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cobra_effect

After all, if you can make tons of money selling rhino horns (but know you’ll get shot if you kill an existing rhino to do it), people might start putting a lot of money into rhino farms, which could be good for the global population size.

No. People weren't "farming" them before laws cracked down on it. Laws cracked down on it precisely because of how people were going about getting ivory.

Besides, we're not aiming for pure population count... imagine the shitty quality of life an "ivory farm elephant" would have? And after they take the horn or tusk, what then? Meat?

People weren’t farming because there was a plentiful natural supply that was easy to get at. The costs of acquiring “free range” elephant is already so high that if you allowed people the cheaper option of farming elephants, it would probably be viable.

You don’t have to kill an elephant (or rhino) to take their tusks. Presumably their quality of life would be no worse than that of e.g. cows.

Rhino horn for example regrows at about 9cm per year, which is worth very roughly $2000-$15000 (I'm unsure about recent prices).

So they can be farmed and have decent lives. The trick is that if the price is high they're still going to get poached. If the price is low then it'll be too costly to feed them and it won't be worth it in the first place.

Another idea: legalize fraud in the narrow case of selling fake endangered animal parts. Let a big corporation manufacture fake ivory at scale, and mail it to whomever wants to try to pass it off as the real thing.

No way. The food investment would be massive, by the time you'd have nurtured your first elephant to the point of growing big tusks it would be a massive target for violent theft, back to square one.

Even if there were a billion Rhinos, killing them for their horns should never be acceptable.

Why? We kill over 50 billion other animals a year for their body parts.

Yes and we shouldn't kill those animals either. We shouldn't be killing any animals, for food or otherwise.

I think they are just getting them where and while the getting is good, and the one being stomped by a boot wasn't about to get out of the cart or something.

If it's legal and is good money -- what are you going to do? Get it to be little money, or illegal and too much trouble. If reducing this phenomenon is your goal, that is.

There are zoos all over the world with animals from africa.

I'm against all zoos personally, but who cares if they are for chinese zoos?

Britain has a bunch of zoos with elephants, rhinos and all kinds of animals from africa. Is it bad because it is for the chinese?

NPR Planet Money did an episode about how zoos acquire animals. I recommend listening to it:

http://www.npr.org/sections/money/2016/09/09/493295430/episo...

To put it in a nutshell, they are not allowed to buy and sell animals. Aquariums can trade animals with other aquariums but no money should change hands. Zoos depend solely on goodwill, as even trade is banned. So when an animal is born in a zoo, if they don't need it or cannot keep it, they donate it to another zoo who needs it. And if a zoo needs an animals, they put the word out that they require one and some other zoo donates them one of theirs.

Many of the African-origin animals in well established zoos are the result of captive breeding programs run in cooperation with hundreds of international zoos. The rest are animals taken from the wild due to injury or environmental circumstance, who were then unable to be returned to the wild for some reason.

China is building cities at a tremendous rate, and many of those cities are building zoos. The existing captive breeding programs and animal-swap programs are simply not capable of supplying those new zoos with the larger animals with slow breeding rates. In any case, going out to poach animals from the wild is cheaper.

It's not bad because Chinese, but bad because it's going faster than the existing systems can handle.

The article mentions imports to the US, Cuba and Mexico as well.

Maybe this is about China or young elephants.

Every one of us continues to be cruel and complicit, multiple times a day in the the torture and killing of several living beings.

There are a few degrees of seperation from the actual act but each of us, personally, are the direct reason it happens to a specific other living being.

Look inside you and at your life before you judge others. For cruelty isn't just what is in sight.

WHY? Why do people have to be such assholes? Jesus.

Ah, China, you know, it is the modern day and age and you cannot get what we here in the west got the way we got it. Sorry.

Edit: Oh, getting some downvotes, just saying that it is a bit hypocritically to go to a western zoo (not saying you all are) and watch elephants probably acquired in a similar fashion.

> we did something wrong in the past so other people are allowed to do it in the present

Not sure on your logic here.

That said, I can understand the frustration at the hypocrisy.

Perhaps the developed world could recognize the unfairness of the situation and help Chinese zoos with care standards and loans/donations of elephants from zoos that have them.

I agree very much with that, same as with polluting industries etc.

Which is what in this particular case? Elephants for zoos? I'm against zoos but the way these Chinese zoos are going about this is extremely cruel. It's very likely that these elephants will die when separated from their families. And the conditions they will be living in are alarming.

https://www.thedodo.com/baby-elephants-zimbabwe-zoos-9847784...

How did the west acquire their elephants?

As families. Not condoning it, but these young elephants are pretty likely to die.

Ah. So if China were to capture entire families of elephants, you'd be ok with it?

I'm just trying to determine where the line is.

I went to a zoo a couple months ago. The elephants' tusks were cut, presumably so that the elephants wouldn't be able to impale each other. That was a bit too sad for me to want to go back to zoos anymore.

> Ah. So if China were to capture entire families of elephants, you'd be ok with it?

Ok? No. It would be slightly less terrible though. And if the elephants had "ok" living conditions, not like cages where they can't move.

> I'm just trying to determine where the line is.

Like with most things, there isn't really one.

> I went to a zoo a couple months ago. The elephants' tusks were cut, presumably so that the elephants wouldn't be able to impale each other. That was a bit too sad for me to want to go back to zoos anymore.

I don't go to zoos and I wish they were closed.

I go to zoos somewhat frequently, mostly the National Zoo in D.C. and Omaha zoo, both well-regarded. Neither or them cut the tusks of their elephants. I wouldn't expect any zoo would cut the tusk to prevent them from harming one another, because elephants are perfectly capable of killing each other without the tusks. There are a couple reasons why you might have seen that, aside from animal cruelty.

1. They were rescued from another facility that cut the tusks.

2. The tusks weren't actually cut. You don't elaborate on what you mean by "cut," perhaps you mean you see the large base of tusks but very short and clearly cut by a saw or something. But if you just mean the tusks are very short or absent, that's actually somewhat common, especially in Asian elephants.

3. Depending on where this zoo is, the zoo could have been worried about poachers. There have been incidents where poachers have broken into zoos and killing elephants and rhinos for their ivory.

In response to your question about capturing elephants in the wild, my response is that the primary moral imperative here is the preservation of the species. If the limited capture of a small number of elephants was being done as part of a plan to reintroduce elephants to a region where they have gone extinct, I would be in favor of that. If these elephants were going to a respected zoo as part of a breeding program with goals to re-vitalize the species, I would be in favor of that. I would even consider arguments that taking a few elephants to a respected zoo for research or education purposes would be better for the long-term survival of the species, though I generally reject that idea because there are a sufficient number of elephants available for rescue that are not capable of entering/returning to the wild.

As an example, the African elephants at the Omaha zoo previously lived in a wildlife preserve in Swaziland. But a record drought threatened their survival. By moving the elephants to a zoo, they reduced the elephant population in the park, leaving enough resources for the other animals in the park to survive. http://www.omaha.com/living/zoo/year-later-elephants-have-ma...

> The elephants' tusks were cut, presumably so that the elephants wouldn't be able to impale each other.

It may be to prevent someone killing the animal for the ivory.

A French zoo had one of its rhinos killed for its horn: https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/animalia/wp/2017/03/09/a...

> The elephants' tusks were cut, presumably so that the elephants wouldn't be able to impale each other. That was a bit too sad for me to want to go back to zoos anymore.

Hint: the same is being done in mass animal production - pigs have their tails capped to prevent cannibalism from boredom, and chickens get "debeaked" (yeah it's an actual word). Male chicks actually get gassed or shredded alive (!) to death right after hatching because they're fairly useless for the meat production. Sows are often restricted in movement after giving birth so they cannot accidentally crush the piglets due to the litters being too large, and the conditions on transports to slaughterhouses... let's just say that's bordering on torture.

True. Also, it occurred to me just now that maybe the elephants' tusks were already cut before they arrived at the zoo, and the zoo was protecting them. So I don't know enough about it.

> Male chicks actually get gassed or shredded alive (!) to death right after hatching because they're fairly useless for the meat production.

This isn't true. Most male chicks are slaughtered as broilers, just like most female chicks. (In fact broilers were initially the males that were culled from the egg-laying females.)

Sadly that part is true. The actual method used to slaughter them is fairly humane (they're crushed to death almost instantly) but the male chicks do get killed since there's no economic benefit in raising them.

This isn't true for chickens raised for meat. If you buy a "broiler" chicken at the store, it's as likely to be male as female. (Actually probably slightly more likely to be male since they raise fewer to adulthood for breeding.)

It is (the video is disturbing) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-vgTLkE3uqk

This might indeed be the case for chickens raised for egg laying. The GP referred to raising chickens for meat. Males are definitely raised for meat (but slaughtered as juveniles, just like most females).

But yeah, that video is disturbing.

Sorry for the confusion - I summed up meat and egg production. However I believe that, same as with pigs/boars, male chicken meat isn't too desirable either, and you don't want male chickens fighting in the herd or impregnating the hens.

Broilers are slaughtered as juveniles so the meat is essentially indistinguishable.

To be clear, I'm not pro-factory farming or chicken cruelty. Just saying that when you buy a broiler chicken, it's about 50% likely to be a male.

Hmm. Did some more research. Seems that male chickens are discouraged for meat because they grow slower and need more food to gain the same net meat: https://web.archive.org/web/20131226071033/http://www.br.de/...

Might be possible that's a German uniqueness, can't tell about the US.

My understanding has always been that for broilers, the difference is minimal. And so farms raise both.

For older chickens, yes. The difference is important.