I think it depends on where you draw the line for the word "natural". If you include human behaviour, it is natural, but yes, otherwise it is typically known as "artificial selection" in this context.

I would draw the line differently, with artificial selection meaning intentional breeding activities.

Anything that's incidental to changes in the animal's environment, including increased predation or habitat destruction, would still count as natural selection. That includes cases where the predator is a particularly vicious species of great ape.

Exactly my point.

Natural selection is the process by which the traits that are most suited to surviving reality get passed down. That's all there is to it when you don't sugar-coat it

For so-called “traditional medicine”. Barbaric, yet zero sanctions, boycotts, or any economic consequences really. And once all the rhinos, tigers etc are gone and they can’t do it anymore, only then will they realize it never worked in the first place! :-(

> There's nothing natural about that.

What does natural mean then? It's not like they disappeared by some magical event or an asteroid falling on the face of the Earth.

Typically, "natural" means "not of human manufacture". That it's general meaning, and how it is meant in this case too.

That's not quite true. Natural selection is typically contrasted with artificial selection, in which individual traits are deliberately selected.

In the case of poaching, poachers are not intentionally trying to change the phenotype of the animal. They want to collect the horns/head/etc. The selection itself is an emergent side effect and, I would say, the natural result of a highly effective predator being introduced into the environment.

Yes, it is critical that we are pendantically correct in this matter. Alignment on the definition of natural selection is the only way to make sure we save the rest of the Rhinos.

Humanity is not natural apparently?

Humanity's existence is natural, but humanity's contemporary actions are—by definition—not natural. It is for this reason this very human word "natural" was invented: to distinguish some ("natural") activities from some ("artificial") human activities.

It is worth noting that the word natural is itself not "natural", the word is a human invention used to separate our own activities from others.

Humans using machine guns and grenades to mow down entire packs of rhinos and elephants in order to use chainsaws to remove horns and tusks from corpses?

Nope, that's not natural in my book.

Their point probably is that humans are a part of nature as well because we naturally evolved from animals, and that moved us to the very top of the food pyramid. Sometimes animals evolve bigger teeth to survive - and humans evolved bigger brains.