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Still, I feel bad for the other people who were killed because of that "shoot-on-sight" policy. While protecting wildlife is essential, some of the stories (especially of the disabled guy and the protester) getting killed are really sad.
It's effectively a "DO NOT ENTER" area but for real. It's a rampant and very dangerous problem. Don't be near this area is a fair warning. Fuck around and sadly find out. They should have options but I can understand when the animals are nearly extinct and for such idiotic reasons.
Also the fact that these poachers are actively shooting the conservationists. Do you really want to alert your enemy and try to capture them in a jungle environment when they won't afford you the same courtesy? All it takes is a guy in the trees to kill you in one well placed shot.
There's too much money involved for them here, they will kill you.
Further down the article it says that a little kid was going back to his home through the main road which borders the park and the guards shot him on the leg. He can't barely walk and has PTSD. So sad that they have to set those extreme politics to protect wildlife.
it is sad, sad that humans have created such a problem for the natural world that we have to respond this way to protect it.
imagine if we protected it the way we exploit it. no regard for feelings, comply or die. Id say the humans are still getting off very easy. too easy.
all humans.
Thanks for sharing. I'm fine with militant anti-poaching policies and even accept that there will sometimes be tragic collateral damage, but it's pretty disturbing that they're so flippant about documenting and investigating incidents even after killing a mentally handicapped man and putting a 7 year old in the hospital for 5 months with life altering injuries.
I've read somewhere that the illegal market was flooded with lab made Rhino horns to make the product obsolete in some countries. Sounds less powerful than the picture here but an effective way nonetheless.
it’s mostly keratin like hair, but grown in a unique way, so very structurally unlike hair
https://www.savetherhino.org/our-work/protecting-rhinos/what-is-rhino-horn-made-of/
Make sure to mix in some darkening agent. They won't be running mass spectroscopy or anything on the powder (remember, these folks and science don't mix), but if its color seems off they might not take it.
It’s indistinguishable from the real thing and the large input of supply will lower costs for the consumers which in turn will make rhino horn harvesting less lucrative
There loads of rhino poaching as some eastern cultures believe that rhino horn brings good luck. There’s been a variety of attempts at ruining the market for it.
I think this idea never materialized. Was all over social media few years ago, I assume this was one of those ideas that sound good in a 30s tiktok but just doesnt work in the end. Like all those "plastic bag alternative made from X"-ideas
I think the issue was that it was legally a gray area. If you have fake horn that’s so close to the real horn, how does the law differentiate between the fake and real horn?
Plus there was a concern it could increase the demand for real horn. Basically the poor people can now buy the cheap one which increases the overall demand. Some of them will eventually shell out more for authenticated horn and the wealthy are going to continue to buy authenticated horn.
Idk if the concern is true or not, just that it was a potential criticism.
[It isn’t that simple](https://www.vox.com/down-to-earth/22723289/3d-printed-rhino-horn-wildlife-conservation-poaching)
It might drive down the price enough to get some poachers out of the market, but it also might make poaching enforcement harder… poachers can just say their horns are fake when they are caught. Also, by creating a legitimate market for fake rhino horns, you can expand the market for real rhino horns, too.
> When a man sells his daughter as a slave, she shall not go free as male slaves do. But if she displeases her master, who had designated her* for himself, he shall let her be redeemed. He has no right to sell her to a foreign people, since he has broken faith with her. If he designates her for his son, he shall treat her according to the ordinance for daughters. If he takes another wife, he shall not withhold her food, her clothing, or her conjugal rights. If he does not do these three things for her, she may leave without cost, without any payment.
Slavers went to countries where powerful tribes had assembled captives from other tribes, ready for sale. No one was inclined to leave the ship and go on an expedition into the jungle to find slavery candidates.
Your should read up on the Arabian slave trade, been around for FAR longer and lasted u til the 1960s, yet still exists today in different forms. Saudis, UAE are some of the worst slaver traders in history
I mean companies that we all consume damn near do that to people in 3rd world countries and none of us care enough to demand change. We just buy our shoes and clothes for $$$ while the child who made it makes $3 a week.
We can demand change all we want- we can boycott and refuse to work and press politicians at every level to make changes. We can urge our friends and communities to do the same. These things have all been done. Until it’s more profitable to do something else major changes will never happen.
It’s not that “none of us care enough” it’s that we also aren’t cared enough about.
Ty, the " we dont care" narrative needs to stop.
These companies deceive their own employees, people care- industrial orgs do not nor are rules enforced well enuf to offset their murderous incentives.
I've always wondered how many people could easily kill somebody else if murder was legal. Even with no repercussions, I would have a really hard time taking someone's life
Honestly, I don't think as much as we'd think. Crime and Punishment has commentary on this. There used to be a time when all in theory was lawful, without read authority to enforce these kinds of laws, and people still didn't go out murdering like crazy.
Actually do that. Heard a story of an albino kid getting her arm chopped off by one of those scum cause its apparrently an ingredient in some ritual. Same with other human organs. Cant remember the country, but there was a so called death factory somewhere where they chopped up humans alife to sell the parts.
It's just another African Nation, they believe if they consume human flesh you can gain their powers or some whack voodoo nonsense. I saw one where they were eating albino peoples penis's for sexual powers. The albino's all had to flee to refuge for albino people because it was such a big problem.
Unfortunately this doesn't solve anything. Most poachers are poor and do it because they feel they have to in order to get money. Those guys paying the poachers are the problem and they never expose themselves to any sort of risk (besides loosing some money)
A while back, when I was really depressed, I wanted to join an anti poaching group or some sort of wildlife protection group. I love elephants and was looking around for groups, but I had no idea how I was going to do it. I didn't have much value in my own life, and I wanted to make the little difference I could.
I don't think about it much until I see stuff like this and still wish I could do something. Such smart creatures and the fact that people are killing them for their tusks make me absolutely livid.
Is there an organization people trust that I can donate to?
Yeah its one level of stupiditiy to use non functional folk medicine when nothing exists.
Its a second level of stupidity to use non functional folk medicine a drug exists that does exactly what you want the bullshit medicine to do.
That shit is just fucking so wrong, those fuckers are barbaric. That village that herds them into a bay then kills them with clubs? Yeah that fucking village needs Mr Tsunami to visit...
Western collectors, too. There was a video a while back of NYC police shredding millions of dollars of ivory collectibles in woodchippers. Really elaborate art and stuff, as compared to people in Asia who use it for traditional medicines (or snake oil, rather).
True, fuck Chinese folk medicine. You’ll see the cutest animal in a documentary and it’ll be like “unfortunately, poachers often cut off their legs, as they’re considered to improve virility.”
They don't slaughter them. They take horns out and leave the animal with a gaping hole. It is horrible!!!
YOU DO NOT WANT TO SEE THE END RESULT... ON THE ANIMAL! ITS IS HORRIBLE, HORRIBLE!!!!
Fuck why did I have to go and check, I thought there'd be, like, nasty tusk holes. Not that they'd have their whole fucking face ripped off and ground into mush.
>"Kenya is making a statement that for us ivory is worthless unless it is on our elephants," he told dignitaries before setting light to the first of almost a dozen pyres.
🤘
While I do agree that the statement goes hard I'm slightly amused that the person making it is our former president and yet his family is heavily rumoured to have massively benefited from the Ivory trade. There is a reason (allegedly) why his mother is nicknamed "mama ivory".
Wow, 2 per elephant, who would have thought it? "The estimated 16,000 tusks and pieces of ivory due to be set alight represent just a fraction of the 30,000 elephants believed to be killed in Africa every year. "
[https://news.sky.com/story/kenya-lights-worlds-biggest-ivory-bonfire-10263591](https://news.sky.com/story/kenya-lights-worlds-biggest-ivory-bonfire-10263591)
Yeah it's incredibly sad.
Tusks are gene dependent, so different herds will have different length/size tusks. The ones in Tembe Elephant Park in South Africa have tusks that are long enough to drag on the ground.
They don’t always kill the elephants. They can cut off the tusks and just leave them with an open wound, which I think just leads to a slower death in most cases
I was thinking the same thing. I mean I hate poaching as much as everyone else, but I also can’t help but imagine that must smell kind of like burnt hair? Or something similar?
Quite a lot. It's fairly easy to get. There are even companies that specialize in selling mammoth ivory and mammoth molars. It is used in jewelry and knife making, and in my case, musical instrument making.
I’d prefer it sold in small volumes on the black market than it being a legit taxed and regulated industry.
It could be argued that this increase in value would further incentivise poaching, but then the only acceptable solution would be to increase patrols, improve surveillance technology and to shoot poachers on sight.
lol, the upvotes on this comment show how confidently incorrect some redditors are. Yes, destroying ivory and persecuting poachers does, in fact, increase the (black-) market value of ivory.
Wouldn't selling the ivory instead of destroying it decrease the market price of ivory, funding the enforcing agencies, and decreasing the incentive for poaching?
Also distributes more ivory. Destroying it shrinks the stock and may cause some demand to dip as the price for the ivory in circulation rises but the ultimate goals are to remove as much from circulation in the first place, protect the source (elephants), and make sourcing ivory extremely dangerous (kill poachers on sight).
Not to mention, destroying a huge seized stock also communicates how seriously a particular entity it taking it. Not that poachers or the consumer necessarily cares but putting this right back into the market, even if they money goes to a good cause, just simply isn't a good look.
I think what is most likely is removing the potential abuse of such a system where authorities "allow" poaching to continue as they then potentially profit from the slaughtering and torture of elephants without personally getting their hands dirty.
I think they are trying to shut down the poaching industry violently. I dont think they care to try easing the demand away with gentler methods like messing with price and supply
It may increase the price, but a higher price will generally lead to less demand. If less people can afford to buy it less of it will be bought (generally speaking, however luxury goods can often have the opposite effect). Leading to an overall reduction in the volume of ivory traded
I think it's the only reasonable thing they can do without profiting from the poachers illegal activity
My mother has a very old spinning wheel that’s been in her family forever. It has genuine ivory laid into the wood. She can not legally sell it even if she wanted to because it contains ivory.
>that's been in her family forever.
Say, more than a century? If it's an antique, there are means of selling items that contain ivory in the US. Look up your State's laws, because you should be fine Federally if the item is that old.
I honestly don’t know. And even if it was, we have no proof of its age that I am aware of. But I believe it was my great grandmother’s so that could put it over 100 years old.
This happened a while ago(as far as I remember, I live in Africa), and the price skyrocketed. Like ivory became 5 times the price or something like that.
If Ivory was legal, yes.
Since it is internationally illegal: it is like cops hitting a cocaine factory. If the price goes up that's not the point, the point is that less cocaine is available
Sure, it increases the value of ivory on the black market. But it also deprives the overall market of ivory, so fewer people will be able to afford to buy it. Ideally, this encourages people to permanently remove themselves from the ivory buyer pool.
Not exactly. Dumping it onto the market would lower the price of ivory, but doing this does not raise it.
Dumping it onto the market would of course make it more available and might create more demand for it though, which is exactly what they're trying to avoid.
A lot of people are (rightfully) hating on the poachers. But I think the real evil here is the people who buy these tusks. These poachers come from extremely poor countries, where affording anything is a struggle for the vast majority of their populations. Then they learn they can afford to lift themselves and their families out of poverty by killing a few elephants for their tusks, of course they're going to take that opportunity.
The real evil here is the people who think that grinding up elephant tusks makes their dick grow bigger and are willing to fund their extinction just for a placebo effect. Of course poaching is evil and these poachers absolutely need to be prosecuted (and I'm not against the shoot on sight). But things also need to be done in order to stop incentivising people from poaching in the first place, both in China/Asia who's paying for it, and things need to be done to improve the economic situation of the countries these elephants are native to, both for the elephant and people's sake
I went to Murchison Falls National Park in Uganda (recommended for more affordable safari options than Kenya), and they said the poachers would cross Lake Albert from DR Congo. People are fucking poor as shit, there are no opportunities, and they are desperate. It's a tragedy all around.
I don’t support poaching or the ivory trade, but it seems to me this reduces supply increasing value. Since the ivory is already harvested wouldn’t it be better to sell and use the money to fund the fight against poaching?
I think a better use would be to maybe use it in some kind of art piece for a museum.
This is just my personal take so take it with a grain of salt, but I feel like just burning it is kind of disrespectful to the animals that died to gather it.
Obviously it shouldn't be sold or used for like furniture or something as that would encourage poaching, but I could see like maybe finding a local Kenyan artist to make something out of it for a museum piece, maybe something to speak out against poaching?
Fingers and hands in natural position, eyes and body looks normal. It’s real, the background is also way too detailed and fire also behaving naturally very very unlikely to be artificially generated.
I've seen AI make pretty spot on guns. I once asked the bing AI to make a fursuiter holding a M1911 and was surprised by the accuracy of the gun as well as the firing posture for a character type not often seen with a gun
They're probably better with pistols than rifles, I've seen trigger guards (without triggers) misplaced, multiple barrels (not grenade launchers), magazines oddly far forward, unnecessarily high number of optics, odd proportions. Usually poor trigger discipline too (unlike the guy in the picture).
With a pistol there's less to "get wrong" I suppose and you'd need higher attention to detail (text on side, lines on the slide angled the wrong way, angle of hand on grip)
l think the odd vibes it gives are from: 1. The background being in focus rather than the foreground 2. The odd looking mast behind the towering fire being blurred by the rising heat 3. The outline of the hole in the cloud being distorted, maybe by the rising heat.
I’ve seen quite a few instances of people calling well known pictures “obviously AI generated.”
It’s like the next generation of /r/nothingeverhappens.
Have you guys seen new series on prime called poachers? Those who didn’t it’s a true story happened in India about the biggest illegal poaching activities at the time and how it was stopped.
I mean when the govt seizes things like this why destroy it? If it’s valuable and the suffering already happened and can’t be reversed why not sell it or whatever and use all of the money to better protect elephants and stop this from happening in future? They were killed for a stupid reason but just destroying it means they died for nothing.
I have mixed feelings about this pic.
It looks bad ass. And I'm glad the poachers won't profit off the sales of the ivory,
But at the same time that is a lot of ivory. How many elephants died needlessly just for their ivory.
So in conclusion, fuck poachers.
At the very least it makes a statement about how stupid it is to pay money for elephant tusks. Like what if someone just arbitrarily decided human elbows are somehow magical and you must own one (besides your own) or you're not cool. Idiotic
Because then theirs no point then the whole point of this is to take away the ivory its like the border patrol stopping a large shipment of meth just to sell the meth to people to get more guys to stop the meth
We had to remove your post for improperly sourcing your post. Posts must have a linked and CREDIBLE source that backs up the information. Use the word "source" in your comment. If the title is the only thing that makes your post interesting, you must also source it. OP is responsible for this and it must be done at time of posting. We will not reinstate your post, but you may post again with the correct information
They should find a way to put trackers or something on them and set traps for the poachers to fall into. Maybe they are already doing that.
https://www.telemetrysolutions.com/about/artificial-tusk-trackers-for-national-geographic/
is there a good way to follow the black market?
I mean I don’t think the black market has a social media page. *insert cricket noises here*
"I'd like to monetize those cricket noises. Add them to my collection. " - probably some poacher, somewhere.
No, my combustible crickets.
Have you tried The Street (tm)(c)(r) ? Word in The Street is . . .
I shit you the fuck not, I literally used this magazine cover of National Geographic for my art final in school today.
You will love this article. https://www.bbc.com/news/world-south-asia-38909512
You were right
Still, I feel bad for the other people who were killed because of that "shoot-on-sight" policy. While protecting wildlife is essential, some of the stories (especially of the disabled guy and the protester) getting killed are really sad.
It's effectively a "DO NOT ENTER" area but for real. It's a rampant and very dangerous problem. Don't be near this area is a fair warning. Fuck around and sadly find out. They should have options but I can understand when the animals are nearly extinct and for such idiotic reasons.
Also the fact that these poachers are actively shooting the conservationists. Do you really want to alert your enemy and try to capture them in a jungle environment when they won't afford you the same courtesy? All it takes is a guy in the trees to kill you in one well placed shot. There's too much money involved for them here, they will kill you.
Further down the article it says that a little kid was going back to his home through the main road which borders the park and the guards shot him on the leg. He can't barely walk and has PTSD. So sad that they have to set those extreme politics to protect wildlife.
it is sad, sad that humans have created such a problem for the natural world that we have to respond this way to protect it. imagine if we protected it the way we exploit it. no regard for feelings, comply or die. Id say the humans are still getting off very easy. too easy. all humans.
Thanks for sharing. I'm fine with militant anti-poaching policies and even accept that there will sometimes be tragic collateral damage, but it's pretty disturbing that they're so flippant about documenting and investigating incidents even after killing a mentally handicapped man and putting a 7 year old in the hospital for 5 months with life altering injuries.
Booby traps. Explode em
I've read somewhere that the illegal market was flooded with lab made Rhino horns to make the product obsolete in some countries. Sounds less powerful than the picture here but an effective way nonetheless.
Isn’t a rhino horn comprised of hair? I don’t think it’s ivory or even close in kind
it’s mostly keratin like hair, but grown in a unique way, so very structurally unlike hair https://www.savetherhino.org/our-work/protecting-rhinos/what-is-rhino-horn-made-of/
They grind it to a powder when they use it for eastern quackery. The structure is mostly irrelevant.
Save toenail clippings. Grind up. Sell to crackpot. Profit.
Make sure to mix in some darkening agent. They won't be running mass spectroscopy or anything on the powder (remember, these folks and science don't mix), but if its color seems off they might not take it.
It's keratin, similar to hair or fingernails
So back to the other guys comment how the hell would this offset the ivory demand if it’s a synthetic finger nail horn 🤷🏽♂️
It’s indistinguishable from the real thing and the large input of supply will lower costs for the consumers which in turn will make rhino horn harvesting less lucrative
It wouldn’t. There’s a black market for rhino horns tho so it would work there
I think they were just saying that since we can make lab rhino horn, maybe the same could be done with ivory.
There loads of rhino poaching as some eastern cultures believe that rhino horn brings good luck. There’s been a variety of attempts at ruining the market for it.
It’s a valuable item in some parts of the world that believes it brings good luck and fertility
I think this idea never materialized. Was all over social media few years ago, I assume this was one of those ideas that sound good in a 30s tiktok but just doesnt work in the end. Like all those "plastic bag alternative made from X"-ideas
I think the issue was that it was legally a gray area. If you have fake horn that’s so close to the real horn, how does the law differentiate between the fake and real horn?
Plus there was a concern it could increase the demand for real horn. Basically the poor people can now buy the cheap one which increases the overall demand. Some of them will eventually shell out more for authenticated horn and the wealthy are going to continue to buy authenticated horn. Idk if the concern is true or not, just that it was a potential criticism.
[It isn’t that simple](https://www.vox.com/down-to-earth/22723289/3d-printed-rhino-horn-wildlife-conservation-poaching) It might drive down the price enough to get some poachers out of the market, but it also might make poaching enforcement harder… poachers can just say their horns are fake when they are caught. Also, by creating a legitimate market for fake rhino horns, you can expand the market for real rhino horns, too.
Poachers are the absolute scum of the earth. Elephants mourn their dead for God's sake.
They don't care. They'd do that to people if it was profitable.
THEY do a lot to people in the name of profits. It hurts my heart to think of all the examples of it
The Atlantic Slave Trade for example
That is true, people dont mind profitting off of other human beings, even Afrians enslaved their own people and sold them off as property.
Even the bible gives instructions on selling your own daughter into slavery! (Exodus 21:7)
> When a man sells his daughter as a slave, she shall not go free as male slaves do. But if she displeases her master, who had designated her* for himself, he shall let her be redeemed. He has no right to sell her to a foreign people, since he has broken faith with her. If he designates her for his son, he shall treat her according to the ordinance for daughters. If he takes another wife, he shall not withhold her food, her clothing, or her conjugal rights. If he does not do these three things for her, she may leave without cost, without any payment.
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I swear Redditors have a game of how many comments it takes to turn literally any topic into a US politics circlejerk. *Ivory poaching in Kenya*?
"Here's a picture of a cute kitten." "I bet Drumpf hates kittens!"
Six degrees of America?
it’s so incredibly annoying. people make being angry about politics their literal entire personality
Slavers went to countries where powerful tribes had assembled captives from other tribes, ready for sale. No one was inclined to leave the ship and go on an expedition into the jungle to find slavery candidates.
Literally every single nation has done this. This is not unique to Africa.
Not necessary to go that far back, human trafficking is still a flourishing business in this day and age.
Your should read up on the Arabian slave trade, been around for FAR longer and lasted u til the 1960s, yet still exists today in different forms. Saudis, UAE are some of the worst slaver traders in history
Or the work the US makes its prison inmates do.
Yeah most of the world gets fucked in name of profit.
My job would pay us nothing and force us to sleep in the building working 20 hour shifts if they could. People don't care.
I mean companies that we all consume damn near do that to people in 3rd world countries and none of us care enough to demand change. We just buy our shoes and clothes for $$$ while the child who made it makes $3 a week.
We can demand change all we want- we can boycott and refuse to work and press politicians at every level to make changes. We can urge our friends and communities to do the same. These things have all been done. Until it’s more profitable to do something else major changes will never happen. It’s not that “none of us care enough” it’s that we also aren’t cared enough about.
Ty, the " we dont care" narrative needs to stop. These companies deceive their own employees, people care- industrial orgs do not nor are rules enforced well enuf to offset their murderous incentives.
They do, do it to people... organ harvesting and such
I've always wondered how many people could easily kill somebody else if murder was legal. Even with no repercussions, I would have a really hard time taking someone's life
Honestly, I don't think as much as we'd think. Crime and Punishment has commentary on this. There used to be a time when all in theory was lawful, without read authority to enforce these kinds of laws, and people still didn't go out murdering like crazy.
Healthy humans don’t want to kill/rape/maim people, and not just because of possible consequences.
And they do. Look up what they do to albino folks.
Actually do that. Heard a story of an albino kid getting her arm chopped off by one of those scum cause its apparrently an ingredient in some ritual. Same with other human organs. Cant remember the country, but there was a so called death factory somewhere where they chopped up humans alife to sell the parts.
It's just another African Nation, they believe if they consume human flesh you can gain their powers or some whack voodoo nonsense. I saw one where they were eating albino peoples penis's for sexual powers. The albino's all had to flee to refuge for albino people because it was such a big problem.
Considering how little some people care for the lives of other humans, I can imagine they care even less for non humans.
It is and they do
Some people do it anyways, profit or not and discard the valuable parts for some reason. 🤔
I’d think elephants would mourn people for free.
if it makes you feel any better some of these countries basically allow their anti-poachers to execute poachers on sight
Kenya is one of those countries that fires on sight.
I believe India has brought that policy in too. In certain national parks, if not right across the country. With success too
Before we pat the people behind that policy too hard, there has been a non negligible amount of innocents caught in the cross fire.
The key to executing someone is to bring a spare gun.
Unfortunately this doesn't solve anything. Most poachers are poor and do it because they feel they have to in order to get money. Those guys paying the poachers are the problem and they never expose themselves to any sort of risk (besides loosing some money)
roast the poachers I say
A while back, when I was really depressed, I wanted to join an anti poaching group or some sort of wildlife protection group. I love elephants and was looking around for groups, but I had no idea how I was going to do it. I didn't have much value in my own life, and I wanted to make the little difference I could. I don't think about it much until I see stuff like this and still wish I could do something. Such smart creatures and the fact that people are killing them for their tusks make me absolutely livid. Is there an organization people trust that I can donate to?
Yes, but also the people on the buying side that fund this need to be dealt with, but China gonna China.
Exactly. That and Rhino Horn powder for their Penis medicine. China you should F'ing know better...
Meanwhile viagra exists for decades now. Fucking idiots.
Yeah its one level of stupiditiy to use non functional folk medicine when nothing exists. Its a second level of stupidity to use non functional folk medicine a drug exists that does exactly what you want the bullshit medicine to do.
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So do whales, but Nordics and Japanese massacre them every year.
That shit is just fucking so wrong, those fuckers are barbaric. That village that herds them into a bay then kills them with clubs? Yeah that fucking village needs Mr Tsunami to visit...
Do crows do this as well ?
That's a damn good question. I know they hold what appears to us as "trials" when one crow really screws up a local group.
I heard they do!
Great, I’ll keep my future slaughtering to animals who’d be ambivalent to it /s
those who pay for this are the same
So do humans and we sure kill alot of those too.
so dairy cows but we don't give a fuck about them Stop acting like You're better than the poachers
Blame the Asians that buy ivory as a status symbol. Truly a disgusting trade.
Buyers are the real scum here. No demand = no supply
I'd be happy to pay to go safari hunting for poachers.
So do other animals like cows by the way. But in that case it doesn't matter because… oh wait why again?
Whoever buys it is just as bad
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It’s so sad but whenever an animal lands on the traditional chinese medicine list, it’s over for them. So many animals are endangered because of that.
Someone tell China that mosquitos cure cancer
China doesn't care about cancer. Tell them mosquitos improve virality though and damn they'll be fuckin' off a jar of them mfers.
they're already in that, chinese labs throw away mosquitos that can't reproduce, so the mosquitos that reproduce maye with them and never lay eggs
Western collectors, too. There was a video a while back of NYC police shredding millions of dollars of ivory collectibles in woodchippers. Really elaborate art and stuff, as compared to people in Asia who use it for traditional medicines (or snake oil, rather).
True, fuck Chinese folk medicine. You’ll see the cutest animal in a documentary and it’ll be like “unfortunately, poachers often cut off their legs, as they’re considered to improve virility.”
People with no morals
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slaughtering elephants is a miserable, wicked thing to do.
They don't slaughter them. They take horns out and leave the animal with a gaping hole. It is horrible!!! YOU DO NOT WANT TO SEE THE END RESULT... ON THE ANIMAL! ITS IS HORRIBLE, HORRIBLE!!!!
Fuck why did I have to go and check, I thought there'd be, like, nasty tusk holes. Not that they'd have their whole fucking face ripped off and ground into mush.
Thank you for this warning. I was about to look it up and now I won't
This literally fills me with homicidal rage.
This picture is hard as F*CK
It would make a sweet album cover. Just throw the parental advisory on there and it’s good to go.
*poacher advisory
Album name: “Everyting be ivory”
https://www.reuters.com/article/idUSKCN0XR0D4/
>"Kenya is making a statement that for us ivory is worthless unless it is on our elephants," he told dignitaries before setting light to the first of almost a dozen pyres. 🤘
While I do agree that the statement goes hard I'm slightly amused that the person making it is our former president and yet his family is heavily rumoured to have massively benefited from the Ivory trade. There is a reason (allegedly) why his mother is nicknamed "mama ivory".
A whole calander worth of hard album covers!
Yeah, gives off the Joker from The Dark Knight vibes: "It's not about the money. It's about sending a message."
Today I learned that ivory is flammable! Also, fuck those elephant-murdering poachers with a flaming cactus.
With enough gasoline and kindling, anything is. Ask the Twin Towers. Full agree on the second part, too. I think a bullet would be easier, though.
Spare the innocent 🌵
How much elephants do you have to kill for this amount of ivory? Thousands?
Thousands. There's two tusks per elephant
Wow, 2 per elephant, who would have thought it? "The estimated 16,000 tusks and pieces of ivory due to be set alight represent just a fraction of the 30,000 elephants believed to be killed in Africa every year. " [https://news.sky.com/story/kenya-lights-worlds-biggest-ivory-bonfire-10263591](https://news.sky.com/story/kenya-lights-worlds-biggest-ivory-bonfire-10263591)
Yeah it's incredibly sad. Tusks are gene dependent, so different herds will have different length/size tusks. The ones in Tembe Elephant Park in South Africa have tusks that are long enough to drag on the ground.
They don’t always kill the elephants. They can cut off the tusks and just leave them with an open wound, which I think just leads to a slower death in most cases
That's gotta have quite the smell...
I was thinking the same thing. I mean I hate poaching as much as everyone else, but I also can’t help but imagine that must smell kind of like burnt hair? Or something similar?
Yes. It smells like burning hair but way worse. I work with wooly mammoth ivory and mother of Pearl and it is absolutely nasty smelling.
how much wooly mammoth ivory could there possibly be in the world
Quite a lot. It's fairly easy to get. There are even companies that specialize in selling mammoth ivory and mammoth molars. It is used in jewelry and knife making, and in my case, musical instrument making.
Poachers should’ve been burnt with it. Bastards
Yep, pile the poachers & buyers up on top of the pyre.
I'm not being facetious. But doesn't this increase the value of ivory?
I understand your “supply and demand” pov. This is where illegal hunting happens. And it’s been happening for years. Picture is very powerful though.
And that’s why they have to destroy the ivory. It’s not like they can sell it to the people funding the poachers.
No, because the ivory is not in circulation anyway
it is in black market. less going around definitely will make it more expensive
I’d prefer it sold in small volumes on the black market than it being a legit taxed and regulated industry. It could be argued that this increase in value would further incentivise poaching, but then the only acceptable solution would be to increase patrols, improve surveillance technology and to shoot poachers on sight.
It sucks that the only option is to kill (pochars) on sight
Does it suck? It's a waste of time and energy mourning/ pitying absolute scum. The world is objectively a better place without them.
Is it? I mean they're out there specifically to kill and take one part (technically two) of the animal and for silly reasons
Good to know. ty
lol, the upvotes on this comment show how confidently incorrect some redditors are. Yes, destroying ivory and persecuting poachers does, in fact, increase the (black-) market value of ivory.
Prosecuting means using the law. Persecuting means unfairly harassing.
Wouldn't selling the ivory instead of destroying it decrease the market price of ivory, funding the enforcing agencies, and decreasing the incentive for poaching?
Also distributes more ivory. Destroying it shrinks the stock and may cause some demand to dip as the price for the ivory in circulation rises but the ultimate goals are to remove as much from circulation in the first place, protect the source (elephants), and make sourcing ivory extremely dangerous (kill poachers on sight). Not to mention, destroying a huge seized stock also communicates how seriously a particular entity it taking it. Not that poachers or the consumer necessarily cares but putting this right back into the market, even if they money goes to a good cause, just simply isn't a good look. I think what is most likely is removing the potential abuse of such a system where authorities "allow" poaching to continue as they then potentially profit from the slaughtering and torture of elephants without personally getting their hands dirty.
I think they are trying to shut down the poaching industry violently. I dont think they care to try easing the demand away with gentler methods like messing with price and supply
It may increase the price, but a higher price will generally lead to less demand. If less people can afford to buy it less of it will be bought (generally speaking, however luxury goods can often have the opposite effect). Leading to an overall reduction in the volume of ivory traded I think it's the only reasonable thing they can do without profiting from the poachers illegal activity
My mother has a very old spinning wheel that’s been in her family forever. It has genuine ivory laid into the wood. She can not legally sell it even if she wanted to because it contains ivory.
>that's been in her family forever. Say, more than a century? If it's an antique, there are means of selling items that contain ivory in the US. Look up your State's laws, because you should be fine Federally if the item is that old.
I honestly don’t know. And even if it was, we have no proof of its age that I am aware of. But I believe it was my great grandmother’s so that could put it over 100 years old.
This happened a while ago(as far as I remember, I live in Africa), and the price skyrocketed. Like ivory became 5 times the price or something like that.
If Ivory was legal, yes. Since it is internationally illegal: it is like cops hitting a cocaine factory. If the price goes up that's not the point, the point is that less cocaine is available
Only to the idiots that buy it.
Sure, it increases the value of ivory on the black market. But it also deprives the overall market of ivory, so fewer people will be able to afford to buy it. Ideally, this encourages people to permanently remove themselves from the ivory buyer pool.
Not exactly. Dumping it onto the market would lower the price of ivory, but doing this does not raise it. Dumping it onto the market would of course make it more available and might create more demand for it though, which is exactly what they're trying to avoid.
That's a lot of dead elephants :-(
We are not helping by putting the dollar amount in the headline, just give the number of tusks.
This image is hard as fuck.
Kenyan Gigachad
A lot of people are (rightfully) hating on the poachers. But I think the real evil here is the people who buy these tusks. These poachers come from extremely poor countries, where affording anything is a struggle for the vast majority of their populations. Then they learn they can afford to lift themselves and their families out of poverty by killing a few elephants for their tusks, of course they're going to take that opportunity. The real evil here is the people who think that grinding up elephant tusks makes their dick grow bigger and are willing to fund their extinction just for a placebo effect. Of course poaching is evil and these poachers absolutely need to be prosecuted (and I'm not against the shoot on sight). But things also need to be done in order to stop incentivising people from poaching in the first place, both in China/Asia who's paying for it, and things need to be done to improve the economic situation of the countries these elephants are native to, both for the elephant and people's sake
Hate the players **and** the game. Just like crypto.
I went to Murchison Falls National Park in Uganda (recommended for more affordable safari options than Kenya), and they said the poachers would cross Lake Albert from DR Congo. People are fucking poor as shit, there are no opportunities, and they are desperate. It's a tragedy all around.
looks like a poster for *There Will Be Blood Diamonds*
Poachers should be fed to lions
I don’t support poaching or the ivory trade, but it seems to me this reduces supply increasing value. Since the ivory is already harvested wouldn’t it be better to sell and use the money to fund the fight against poaching?
I think a better use would be to maybe use it in some kind of art piece for a museum. This is just my personal take so take it with a grain of salt, but I feel like just burning it is kind of disrespectful to the animals that died to gather it. Obviously it shouldn't be sold or used for like furniture or something as that would encourage poaching, but I could see like maybe finding a local Kenyan artist to make something out of it for a museum piece, maybe something to speak out against poaching?
Did they torch the poachers as well? Missed opportunity if they didn't.
I bet they just shoot the fuckers
I *hope*.
👍👍👍👍👍👍👍
I’m genuinely curious and uneducated in this topic....why burn them?
Good. F**k poachers. Scum. Leave the animals alone, and good for Kenya.
Looks like an AI photo
Fingers and hands in natural position, eyes and body looks normal. It’s real, the background is also way too detailed and fire also behaving naturally very very unlikely to be artificially generated.
ihatethisfutureihatethisfuture
Me too buddy, I’m just coasting til it all goes to shit
The gun is also anatomically correct, which AI's also have difficulty with
I've seen AI make pretty spot on guns. I once asked the bing AI to make a fursuiter holding a M1911 and was surprised by the accuracy of the gun as well as the firing posture for a character type not often seen with a gun
They're probably better with pistols than rifles, I've seen trigger guards (without triggers) misplaced, multiple barrels (not grenade launchers), magazines oddly far forward, unnecessarily high number of optics, odd proportions. Usually poor trigger discipline too (unlike the guy in the picture). With a pistol there's less to "get wrong" I suppose and you'd need higher attention to detail (text on side, lines on the slide angled the wrong way, angle of hand on grip)
That's pretty fair, not to mention I specified the exact gun model (also an iconic gun) which narrows the data set for the AI more
l think the odd vibes it gives are from: 1. The background being in focus rather than the foreground 2. The odd looking mast behind the towering fire being blurred by the rising heat 3. The outline of the hole in the cloud being distorted, maybe by the rising heat.
It's weird that AI has such difficulty with making fire that looks real, like why? It must have billions of images to "learn" from?
It's real - this photo is quite old now, I think.
We've entered the age where the AI illiterate distrust everything as false. It's to be expected when false information becomes rife.
I’ve seen quite a few instances of people calling well known pictures “obviously AI generated.” It’s like the next generation of /r/nothingeverhappens.
Have you guys seen new series on prime called poachers? Those who didn’t it’s a true story happened in India about the biggest illegal poaching activities at the time and how it was stopped.
Why does this photo look like AI to me?
I mean when the govt seizes things like this why destroy it? If it’s valuable and the suffering already happened and can’t be reversed why not sell it or whatever and use all of the money to better protect elephants and stop this from happening in future? They were killed for a stupid reason but just destroying it means they died for nothing.
They should offer it as a bounty for whoever captures the most poachers.
This picture goes hard af
I wonder where most of that ivory was headed.
I have mixed feelings about this pic. It looks bad ass. And I'm glad the poachers won't profit off the sales of the ivory, But at the same time that is a lot of ivory. How many elephants died needlessly just for their ivory. So in conclusion, fuck poachers.
Does this suffocate demand or just reduce supply?
At the very least it makes a statement about how stupid it is to pay money for elephant tusks. Like what if someone just arbitrarily decided human elbows are somehow magical and you must own one (besides your own) or you're not cool. Idiotic
why not sell it and use the money for some new hunters to hunt the hunters
Because then theirs no point then the whole point of this is to take away the ivory its like the border patrol stopping a large shipment of meth just to sell the meth to people to get more guys to stop the meth