aradow:

negativecon:

mens-rights-activia:

ninjakittenarmy:

mens-rights-activia:

I saw this post and idk it made me feel some type of way. I may get flack for this but idc I feel it must be said. Poaching is a lot more nuanced than “bad people kill animals.”

Poaching, especially in Africa, is a byproduct of colonization and poverty. Although poaching existed prior to European colonizers, it was not done at a scale and frequency that would threaten wildlife populations. Poaching exploded under colonial rule where things like ivory, pelts, hunting trophies, and in some cases, land were prized and sought after by European settlers. This led to an initially boom that devastated local animal populations and cause some tribes to become very reliant on poaching as a means of subsistence.

Additionally, due to poverty, people are still being driven to poach animals, even endangered animals because it’s a more profitable way to support oneself and community, and predatory animals can be poached because they threaten and devastate local livestock. Anti-poaching measures rarely take into account the human and economic drive behind poaching. You’re shooting and killing poachers but what about their families and communities that they support? Are those animals in a better place when there more people waiting to hunt them? Anti poaching measures don’t actually care about eliminating poaching, if they did they’d come from the angle of human and economic development and community improvement. Because let’s be real, if those people living in their poor, rural, undeveloped, undereducated*, regions with not many opportunities turn to poaching, it’s not from a moral standpoint, they’re chasing survival.

African governments be corrupt af, keeping all the money for themselves and leaving masses in poverty then erect some anti-poaching laws to please smug westerners as if they aren’t driving people into desperation. And then poaching rings take advantage of this desperation, much like a gang would, and supply them with guns and a promise of a better life. And bam, you have a poaching problem. So long as you have people in desperation, poaching will still be a problem.

Like many social issues; drugs, violence, crime; a closer look and you’ll find that poverty and lack of opportunity are at the bottom of it…

Ok but none of that excuses their actions. You’re absolutely right about the root cause of poaching and the desperation these people suffer, but they still absolutely deserve to die for it.

Im not excusing poaching but I’m framing it because the context matters, also sorry I simply don’t agree with “they deserve to die from it” because genuinely it’s not even well understood by the people poaching the importance and endangerment of the animals and the idea that animal life is equal to or more important than human life, is very western thought*** so even the moral framing is different.

Like do you understand that these people aren’t viewing their actions the same way that you a westerner with your much higher levels of convenience and safety would? Like a lot of these people can’t even begin to understand the idea that “we’re killing all the elephants” when they are struggling with bottom tier of maslow’s hierarchy of needs and not to mention lack of education, please consider a different point of view.

I hate poaching. I love animals, I want a better world for them and I truly believe that we can make a better world for them but making a better world for animals starts by making a better world for people, all other measures are temporary and will not solve the root cause because issues are more complicated than simply let’s kill all poachers

How is the concept of “human lives matter” so out of reach for people when it comes to situations like these? I love animals and want to save the planet as much as the next person but have some freaking empathy for the people who are so desperate they’d risk being eaten alive to keep their families and communities afloat.

The weird thing to me is there are folks who don’t believe in the death penalty for human murder (like me) who think poachers dying this way is justified or somehow positive (not like me). It’s… Disturbing. Why do animals deserve life more than humans? Because of your arbitrary moral guidelines that determine when someone has reached suitable levels of Bad Guy to deserve death? What gives you the right to determine that?

Poaching is terrible, I think it needs to utterly stop, but I don’t know how we can do that while we force surrounding communities to live in abject poverty.

And if the best conservation work starts with the locals that live near the animals. Investing in the communities around the endangered species is a better way to get them to care about the wildlife around them.

Look up the conservation work involved with Bali Mynah Starlings. One of my favorite examples of people working to better both animals and communities. There are other examples around the world too.