How much money do rhino poachers make
A rhino-head heist spree is sweeping the world and destroying rhino populations, mostly because of some ridiculous myths. It was in most respects a typical heist that happened in Dublin last month. But this wasn't art or jewelry that was stolen. Or, more specifically, their horns. And this wasn't the first time.
Similar heists have also been on the rise in Africa , as well as in the odd American backwater town. Meanwhile, an online business thrives as well--including one dealer on Facebook who only accepts bitcoin.
What is driving this " highly organized " crime ring? If you guessed "China," you were wrong. The answer is Vietnam. Horns average around kg each , depending on the species. Behind the Mysterious Craze for Rhino Horn The weird thing is that the surge in Vietnamese demand is fairly recent. Though rhino horn elixirs for fevers and liver problems were first prescribed in traditional Chinese medicine more than 1, years ago, by the early s demand was limited.
Trade bans among Asian countries instituted in the s and early s proved largely effective in quashing supply, with some help from poaching crackdowns in countries where rhinos live. And only around 15 rhinos were poached in South Africa each year from to But things started changing in That year, 83 were killed, followed by the next year. By , that number had hit Here's a look at how many rhinos were killed, on average, each day:.
Cancer-Zapper What happened in to prompt a resurgence in demand? That rumor persists to this day. And note that this has nothing to do with traditional Chinese medicine. As Huijun Shen, the president of the UK Association of Traditional Chinese Medicine explained to Nature magazine, there's no record of using rhino horn to treat cancer in nearly two millennia worth of Chinese medical texts p.
The Convention on the International Trade on Endangered Species notes that this rising wealth is " inflating a bubble of demand for rhino horn " pdf, p. This chart of retail sales hints at how rapidly Vietnamese consumer spending has picked up in just a few years:. But as in many fast-developing countries, the quality and availability of cancer care in Vietnam hasn't kept pace with the country's economic growth.
Dang Huy Quoc Thinh told the International Association for Atomic Energy Bulletin pdf, p. Here's a look at how that ratio--about 3. The more likely reason, they say, is that the horn powder is increasingly seen as a cocaine-like party drug, virility enhancer and luxury item--" the alcoholic drink of millionaires ," as a Vietnamese news site called it.
That's partly because it is supposed to help the liver. The idea that it's an aphrodisiac, however, has no basis in traditional Chinese medicine. That could be partly because newly affluent Vietnamese don't have that much to spend their money on. Rhino horn is also popular among some public officials. Officials have been entwined in the business for a while. The Vietnamese embassy in South Africa has been " repeatedly implicated in illicit rhino horn trade " pdf, p. Oftentimes, poachers saw off the rhinos' horns while they're still alive , leaving them to bleed to death:.
The slaughter is such that poaching is becoming less frequent in some areas, simply because there are so few rhinos left to kill. Have a look at how Zimbabwe's poaching has trended:. Paradoxically, the world's dwindling rhino population threatens only to make this worse, as diminished supply makes prices climb even higher. That's probably why the fight against poaching is something of a losing battle. And as we discussed recently, other countries may soon use drones to foil poachers , so dire is the problem.
Vietnam's own nature park rangers don't have to worry, though.
Top Shocking figures of the illegal rhino horn trade | illegal-trade | Earth Touch News
Their job is already done. To understand how the standoff between Pyongyang and the world became so dire, it helps to go back to the country's founding. ATLANTA—Around midnight, hours after their candidate conceded he had lost the Most Important Special Election in History, the last remaining supporters of Jon Ossoff took over the stage where he had recently stood. One of them waved a bottle of vodka in the air. Together, they took up the time-honored leftist chant: But after a frenzied two-month runoff campaign between Ossoff and his Republican opponent, Karen Handel, the Democrat wound up with about the same proportion of the vote—48 percent—as Hillary Clinton got here in November.
If this race was a referendum on Trump, the president won it. Castile was licensed to carry a gun.
He carefully informed Officer Jeronimo Yanez—exceeding his legal requirements under Minnesota law, though following the advice some gun-rights advocates offer for concealed carriers when stopped by police.
And yet Yanez almost instantly shot him. That aspect made the case a central focus not just for Black Lives Matter activists, but for some gun owners, too. Even setting aside the questionable grounds under which Yanez had pulled Castile over a malfunctioning taillight is a classic pretextual stop police use to question black drivers , Castile had done everything right.
If the party cares about winning, it needs to learn how to appeal to the white working class.
The strategy was simple. A demographic wave—long-building, still-building—would carry the party to victory, and liberalism to generational advantage. The wave was inevitable, unstoppable. It would not crest for many years, and in the meantime, there would be losses—losses in the midterms and in special elections; in statehouses and in districts and counties and municipalities outside major cities. Losses in places and elections where the white vote was especially strong.
But the presidency could offset these losses. Every four years the wave would swell, receding again thereafter but coming back in the next presidential cycle, higher, higher. The presidency was everything.
With the powers in Pyongyang working doggedly toward making this possible—building an ICBM and shrinking a nuke to fit on it—analysts now predict that Kim Jong Un will have the capability before Donald Trump completes one four-year term. Though given to reckless oaths, Trump is not in this case saying anything that departs significantly from the past half century of futile American policy toward North Korea. Preventing the Kim dynasty from having a nuclear device was an American priority long before Pyongyang exploded its first nuke, in , during the administration of George W.
The Kim regime detonated four more while Barack Obama was in the White House. In the more than four decades since Richard Nixon held office, the U. But the GOP wins despite those Democratic gains have shown that enough ordinarily Republican-leaning voters are sticking with their party to give it a plausible chance of holding its majority.
This dynamic points to the sensible conclusion that control of the House in November will turn on events that have not happened yet—which is why special elections historically have had such limited value in predicting the next general election. The myth, which liberals like myself find tempting, is that only the right has changed. In June , we tell ourselves, Donald Trump rode down his golden escalator and pretty soon nativism, long a feature of conservative politics, had engulfed it.
If the right has grown more nationalistic, the left has grown less so. A decade ago, liberals publicly questioned immigration in ways that would shock many progressives today.
Poaching - Wikipedia
Listen to the audio version of this article: Download the Audm app for your iPhone to listen to more titles. Over time, leaders lose mental capacities—most notably for reading other people—that were essential to their rise. If power were a prescription drug, it would come with a long list of known side effects. But can it cause brain damage? When various lawmakers lit into John Stumpf at a congressional hearing last fall, each seemed to find a fresh way to flay the now-former CEO of Wells Fargo for failing to stop some 5, employees from setting up phony accounts for customers.
Nor did he seem defiant or smug or even insincere. He looked disoriented, like a jet-lagged space traveler just arrived from Planet Stumpf, where deference to him is a natural law and 5, a commendably small number.
Summertime in Washington, D. There are swampy heatwaves in a region where the standard dress-code includes a blazer. And a metro that always seems to be catching fire.
The squirrel leaped onto his chest, then quickly bounded off onto a nearby tree. They accounted for 86 percent of rodent-transmitted rabies cases reported to the CDC over a year period ending in the s. You probably know this, but just in case: The Wall Street Journal has fired Jay Solomon for becoming involved with an arms dealer, but reporters have often been unable to resist getting their hands dirty with the topics they cover.
Journalism scandals are all too common: Reporters are as fallible as the practitioners of any other profession, and because the press loves to cover itself, such stories receive great attention. The story of Jay Solomon is in an entirely different league. The ascension of Mohammad bin Salman may help entrench a more assertive foreign policy for the kingdom.
Humans aren't the only mammals who kill each other. So how do we stack up to lions, tigers, and bears? Lacey Schwartz grew up in an upper-middle-class Jewish household, and never once questioned her whiteness—despite not looking like anyone in her family.
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Because Vietnam Thinks It Cures Cancer and Hangovers A rhino-head heist spree is sweeping the world and destroying rhino populations, mostly because of some ridiculous myths. Most Popular Why Ossoff Lost Molly Ball 7: Franklin Foer Jun 20, How to Deal With North Korea Mark Bowden Jun 19, What Democrats' Defeat in Georgia Means—and Doesn't Ronald Brownstein 3: A rhinoceros killed by poachers in Karbi hills, near India's Kaziranga National Park.
Latest Video How North Korea Became a Crisis To understand how the standoff between Pyongyang and the world became so dire, it helps to go back to the country's founding Daniel Lombroso , Jackie Lay , and Mark Bowden Jun 19, About the Author Gwynn Guilford is a reporter and editor for Quartz.
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