This corrupt, illegal war on wildlife makes losers of us all

While war and terrorist atrocities make daily headlines, the horrors being waged on wildlife slide under the radar: 100 million sharks killed every year, mostly for their fins; 20,000 African elephants slaughtered annually for their ivory; more than 1,000 rhinos poached every year from South Africa alone. And there has been a huge decline in the size of wildlife populations since 1970. In human terms, that’s like losing the entire population of Asia from the world.
Wildlife crime is a key factor in those losses, sharing blame with overpopulation, deforestation and agriculture, to name but a few.
Perhaps the illegal wildlife trade lacks the visceral fear factor of novichok or terrorism to wake the world up to the harm being perpetrated. But while we dither, more species are being wiped out – an elephant is killed for its tusks every 25 minutes. The growth of the illegal wildlife trade is one of the biggest causes of extinction. It is driven by well-armed and resourced criminal gangs operating on an industrial scale.
Dominic Jermey, continue.