The Illigal Wildlife Trade
This movie inspired my fourth and final move. The illegal wildlife trade. This contains everything from illegal hunting whether it be for medecines, food, or a particular body part such as a tusk. The illegal pet trade also falls unter this category.
This is a Pangolin. This animal is incredibly unique in that it is essentially a cross between an armadillo and an anteater. It has beautiful scales made out of thick keratinized hair and can roll up in a ball to protect itself. Unfortunately this creature cannot protect itself from humans. In China there are ancient “remedies” and “medicines” which require the usage of the scales of these animals and though they have no beneficial effect such as curing cancer as they are believed to do they are still used because of superstition and misinformation. (Stromberg) These animals are being hunted to death just to be ground up and put into traditional chinese medicines which have no healing properties.
Poaching is a deadly crime against wildlife and wildlife crime is a big business. Run by dangerous international networks, wildlife and animal parts are trafficked much like illegal drugs and arms.
Like the slow lorises shown in this video many animals are vicims of the ever increasing illegal pet trade. Many people enjoy importing exotic animals from all over the world to admire them in aquariums, terrariums, and other enclosures. This is not as disagreeable as killing animals for their parts but it still can be unsustainable depending on the species. Not to mention that when organisms are taken away from their home in planes, boats, or trucks the survival rate plummets. Due to these low survival rates during transport much more organisms need to be taken away from their ecosystems to make up for losses in the buisiness.
There are crime syndicates and well organized gangs who operate via complex webs of markets around the globe and the only way to stop them is to make laws more strict and increase enforcement. Worldwide we need to band together to bring down this horrible market.
