• DessertStorms@kbin.social
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    1 year ago

    Fuck poachers, don’t get me wrong, but fucking hell, I wish people had the same kind of energy when it came to billionaires, who are literally responsible for the deaths of millions of humans (by virtue of hoarding so many resources as well as creating and maintaining a system that relies on exploitation and suffering to benefit them and only them).

    If only society cared about oppressed and marginalised people as much as it does about cute animals.

    • Duamerthrax@lemmy.ml
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      1 year ago

      Society doesn’t care about cute or endangered animals. The rangers represent a minority.

      • DessertStorms@kbin.social
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        1 year ago

        Society doesn’t care about cure or endangered animals

        That’s bullshit.
        I’d agree that not enough people care, but significantly more people care about cute endangered animals than they do marginalised and oppressed human beings.

        It doesn’t take a study to see the difference in attitudes and engagement (though studies have been done, feel free to invest your own time looking them up).

        The fact that you’ve responded to me to focus on the animals but not on the people my comment is actually about is a perfect illustration of my point.

        • Duamerthrax@lemmy.ml
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          1 year ago

          The fact that you’ve responded to me to focus on the animals but not on the people my comment is actually about is a perfect illustration of my point.

          That’s all a narrative you created in your head. Besides, many of the same solutions that would protect endangered species would also protect marginalized people. You’re trying to make this into a Trolley Dilemmas for some reason. Who do you think are the ones buying dick powder made form Rhino horns?

        • TopShelfVanilla@sh.itjust.works
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          1 year ago

          Wow, watch me get down voted by all the redditors flooding the site. Wish they would take their bootlicking back where they came from if they enjoy the oppression so much

            • TopShelfVanilla@sh.itjust.works
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              1 year ago

              What opinion? The only reason any piece of gun legislation has ever passed is to keep minorities and poors from arming themselves against oppression. That’s fact. Reddit is a bootlicking hellscape of do nothing liberals who want dasy government and mommy corporate to keep them safe and busy.

          • pinkdrunkenelephants@sopuli.xyz
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            1 year ago

            My guy, it’s okay if you get downvoted here. This instance blocks brigading trolls so they’re likely legit.

            I’ve been downvoted here on like two comments so far and I really, really don’t care. You can manifest the same attitude within.

    • WhatAmLemmy@lemmy.world
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      1 year ago

      While I like the idea of every poacher being neutralised, I also understand that the “poach police” may intentionally/inadvertently kill innocents with their blanket immunity; plus many poachers may be poor af hired-guns that aren’t the actual source or root cause for the market, and may not dent the trade at all… Hope I’m wrong.

      • KoboldCoterie@pawb.social
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        1 year ago

        I also understand that the “poach police” may intentionally/inadvertently kill innocents with their blanket immunity;

        Is there any evidence that that has been happening? (This article is from 2017, and it mentions “more than 20” poachers being killed in 2015, but doesn’t mention any non-poachers being killed, which it seems it would have, given it’s talking about the downsides.)

        While I agree that taking the fight to the people financing the poaching, reducing the number of poachers - and providing a very clear disincentive for other “poor af” hired-guns to take up the mantle - could still help.

        Personally, I don’t think any implied sanctity of human life extends to people who are killing endangered animals for profit.

  • beefcat@beehaw.org
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    1 year ago

    I did not expect so many upvoted poacher sympathizers in this thread. I am disappointed.

    Poachers aren’t poor. They make assloads of money off their illegitimate trade. They have plenty of skills that could be put to profitable use elsewhere. They simply choose poaching because it is more profitable.

  • Durk@beehaw.org
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    1 year ago

    I mean, this is not really a solution. Poachers don’t do what they do because they’re greedy and hate animals, they do it because they’re poor and have often no other choice but to risk their lives to make a living, and they are probably getting something like 10$ per rhino horn. This is a systematic problem perpetually reinforced by the actual people we should be shooting: the millionaires who hire the poachers. They are the ones destroying the environment, exploiting animals and people and reselling those same rhino horns for ridiculous amounts of money on the black market.

    • HikingVet@lemmy.sdf.org
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      1 year ago

      Then they should be stealing from the rich. Not killing endangered species.

      And at ~ $20000 USD/kg for African and ~400000 USD/kg for Asian, and them not taking the meat. Its definitely for profit and not survival.

      • Radioactive Radio@lemm.ee
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        1 year ago

        It’s simple math, if you kill animals and get caught you get one maybe up to 10 years in prison. If you kill/steal from a millionaire you get lifetime of troubles and jail and possibly put your family in danger too.

        • HikingVet@lemmy.sdf.org
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          1 year ago

          Well, it appears trying to kill an Asian Rhino in India is much more dangerous than robbing the rich.

          Or did you miss the part that they are killing the poachers?

    • Marzepansion@programming.dev
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      1 year ago

      we should be shooting: the millionaires who hire the poachers

      Damn, I was looking forward to eating them. :(

      But you’re entirely right. Obviously the poachers do the hunting, but there are people rich enough out there that put a price on rhinos to begin with, they are the real problem. They wouldn’t be hunted if there was no incentive.

    • lambalicious@lemmy.sdf.org
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      1 year ago

      Poachers don’t do what they do because they’re greedy and hate animals, they do it because they’re poor and have often no other choice but to risk their lives to make a living,

      Well, they’re risking their lives, they’re losing them in the gamble. No one owes you winning a gamble.

      This is a systematic problem perpetually reinforced by the actual people we should be shooting: the millionaires who hire the poachers

      Not saying we don’t, I’m all in for shooting a millionaire myself; but that doesn’t detract from still needing to kill the poachers: we can’t leave the reservoires and wild habitats unguarded merely to kill one or two twitter twats, so the job of millionaire killer we have to give to someone else.

    • pinkdrunkenelephants@sopuli.xyz
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      1 year ago

      Nah, we of the working class and impoverished are partly responsible for the situation we’re in, because we’re too busy playing the system instead of fighting back like we were supposed to be doing. The result is this: people wiping out popular and beloved species just to get crumbs from their masters. How disgusting.

    • argv_minus_one@beehaw.org
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      1 year ago

      ridiculous amounts of money on the black market

      Exactly. These aren’t impoverished farmers doing what’s necessary to live in some semblance of comfort. They’re greedy SOBs who don’t give a rip about anything other than riches. They don’t deserve sympathy.

    • Nacktmull@lemm.ee
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      1 year ago

      Exactly, the real solution would be the west allowing disadvantaged countries to develop a functional and stable local economy that provides people with better ways out of poverty than poaching endangered animals.

    • misterundercoat@lemmy.world
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      1 year ago

      Average Hogwarts student: Charms homework is so difficult, but later we’re going to prank that annoying ravenclaw by putting slugs in his hat lol.

      HL Protagonist: If I can group these goblins and dark wizards together, I can kill a dozen of them with a single killing curse. Excellent!

    • dansity@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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      1 year ago

      Poverty hardly justifies crime. It is a cause not a justification. They are still poachers doing illegal hunting for protected animal on protected land. Also poaching is rather lucrative, even if the government raises income 200% poaching will still stand out.

      • GreenTeaRedFlag [any]@hexbear.net
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        1 year ago

        yeah no if I can feed my starving family by killing some animal I would take that in a heartbeat. In contrast, if I can work in a factory and make enough to live decently I’m not going into the woods to try and kill something that can kill me back and risking getting into trouble with the law. Have fun in perfect actor land where you live though.

        • dansity@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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          1 year ago

          This is all relative. Their paychecks are nothing compared to what people have in the west, they are not eating lobster. Its like you get 1 usd a day for manual labor or 100 usd for a single rhino shot. So the difference is multiple fold. They know what are they getting into. It’s like someone asks you to sell coke. You know you will get easy money and you know the risks as well.

      • bouh@lemmy.world
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        1 year ago

        Poverty does justify crimes. When you need to eat, killing a rhino not so bad.

        I hate this mentality where poverty crimes are evil but any rich guy destroying the lives of millions of people through financial schemes or to make a better profit are considered almost like good guys. This is completely fucked up.

        • EndOfLine@lemm.ee
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          1 year ago

          So if they are poor and eradicating a species off the face of the planet, then they should get a pass? They have the equipment and skills to hunt non-endangered animals which would provide food for themselves and their family. Excess meat could likely be traded or sold. Poaching is not a crime of necessity.

          • bouh@lemmy.world
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            1 year ago

            What if we shoot the wealthy people buying the horns instead? Wouldn’t that be better? I think so.

            It’s like fighting drugs by arresting the last guy in the chain selling the stuff in the street.

            But it’s always easier to blame and punish the poor guy at the end of the food chain.

            • EndOfLine@lemm.ee
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              1 year ago

              You are using 2 different analogies that contradict each other. The poachers are cultivating a product, similar to poppy and coca plants, not the street dealers, and the wealthy are the buyers / “users”.

          • emergencyfood@sh.itjust.works
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            1 year ago

            The problem is that under Indian law, hunting non-endangered species such as deer and rabbit is just as illegal (most of the time).

            • EndOfLine@lemm.ee
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              1 year ago

              And if they were hunting non-endangered species for food, then I would be outraged by a lethal response, but that’s not the case here.

              • emergencyfood@sh.itjust.works
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                1 year ago

                My point is that the forest laws and forest departments in India are set up to criminalise tribals whatever they do. Most of the rules date to the British era, when the government wanted to protect game animals from the tribals and farmers. So when tribals, who have been hunting boar and other common animals for thousands of years, are suddenly told that hunting for food is a crime, they have no option but to break the rules. Now they have a choice - keep hunting boar and deer every week and risk arrest each time, or kill a rhino and get enough money to last a few years. If we could relax the laws on hunting common species, I expect to see rhino poaching go down automatically. Some Indian states have more liberal hunting laws (for tribals) than others, and in those places you do see reductions in human-animal conflict.

                If you don’t want to take my word for this, or would like to read more, I would suggest the last two sections of An Ecological History of India by Prof. Madhav Gadgil and Ram Guha.

                • EndOfLine@lemm.ee
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                  1 year ago

                  I am happy to take your word for most of it, but it does not change my view. I am completely in favor of identifying and taking steps to remediate the underlining cause of all forms of crime rather than simply punishing violators. That being said, the hubris that an individual, or group of individuals supercedes the survival of an entire species is repugnant to me. I have no sympathy for anybody that actively contributes to the the extinction of another species (except mosquitos).

                  The one point of your argument that I do question is the “kill a rhino and get enough money to last a few years” claim. While I have not looked into the details in India, as I understand it, poachers in Africa can make roughly the equivalent of an average 1 month salary for killing 1 rhino. If, in India, they make enough money to last a few years than either poachers are almost exclusively first timers, which seems highly unlikely to me, or they are doing it for greed rather than survival, which would negate your argument of the restrictive hunting laws.

        • dansity@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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          1 year ago

          There is a broad spectrum of crimes, from stealing an apple to mass murder other people. When you decide to steal food from the supermarket to feed your family it is justified. Hunting… I don’t know… deer or hogs is justified so they can feed their family. But picking a very lucrative business and say you are doing it coz of poverty is kinda fucked. Just for clarity: I’m not agreeing with gunning these people down.

      • PosadistInevitablity [he/him]@hexbear.net
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        1 year ago

        Hunting is perfectly normal and has been a key to human survival since the dawn of man. It’s suddenly immoral because some capitalist country said so?

        Rethink what crime is.

        • Gork@lemm.ee
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          1 year ago

          There’s a bit of a difference between hunting a gazelle for its meat and another for poaching an endangered rhino for its horn.

          • PosadistInevitablity [he/him]@hexbear.net
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            1 year ago

            Because otherwise rich people won’t get to see them on safari.

            No animal life is inherently more valuable than one another. The concept is absurd and so full of contradictions.

            I’m not about to cheer the violent murder of a human being to preserve a fucking safari.

            • ɠισƚԋҽϝʅσɯ@lemm.ee
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              1 year ago

              Nah fuck humans. The worst animals of them all. I wont advocate violence but I wont shed a tear over a dead poacher nor rich horn buyers. Humans can just make more humans, with ease. Rhinos aint never called me bad names. Im im the Rhinos corner.

    • ShimmeringKoi [comrade/them]@hexbear.net
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      Honestly, this is the biggest thing that sets off my 👁 senses whenever some version of this post goes around. It squicks me out in the same way as the “Somali pirates OWNED” genre of content that was popular a while back. Stuff that encourages and socially conditions us us to cheer the killing of people who’s have been brought to this point by hostile economic conditions.

  • excitingburp@lemmy.world
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    1 year ago

    I know a well-connected resort liaison in South Africa. This is what happens on game reserves with predators/scavengers, nature has a way of cleaning up the evidence.

  • Polymath@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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    1 year ago

    It is important to note here how well-indoctrinated the US and Europe are to “point the finger” and absolve responsibility…

    We don’t refer to stuff as “deforestation,” we call it “urban planning” or “development.”
    We don’t talk about “poaching,” we just accept that farmers and the agriculture industry finds natural predators inconvenient, so we allow them to kill off coyotes, foxes, mountain lions, etc.

    We have just as many people doing similar, but for some reason we’re only taught to lose our minds over conservation elsewhere, in the places where the US intentionally destabilizes (with Europe) to keep prices low for us. After all, it’s what our economies are built upon: ruin everywhere, so we can call ourselves the heroes for killing off indigenous folks to areas just for the crime of living and wanting things to feel fair.

    Check yourself. This isn’t “the way”

    • pinkdrunkenelephants@sopuli.xyz
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      Well, that’s naive and misinformed. And also irrelevant; endangered species are too important to the environment for poor people to justify killing them off to buy food. Poor people have agency and therefore responsibility for their actions too. Your stance is both anti-environment and anti-working class.

      We can and should help the poor in ways that don’t involve absolving them of responsibility for driving endangered species extinct.

      • SpiderShoeCult@sopuli.xyz
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        1 year ago

        Well articulated. We can’t absolve people of responsibility just because they are poor, unless we absolve them of all responsibity and treat them like children, and put the ones who have no caregivers in a foster care system. I’m fairly certain nobody wants that.

        Yes, I am aware poverty is not something you can just wish away, but they know what they’re doing. Same as the people illegally cutting down forests in Eastern Europe. They’re also poor but they’re also assholes. They also have a penchant for shooting people who try to stop them. Pretty sure them rhino poachers would do bad stuff to anybody getting in their way as well.

      • Polymath@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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        1 year ago

        That’s exactly it: we’re taught “white good; everyone/everything else bad” and it seeps into our conservation and environmentalism efforts, getting spun into a tizzy about what happens in the Amazon or Africa, but, telling-ly, not really having the same depth and strength of emotions for wildlife conservation at home.