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I read an article in Newsweek about how the illegal trade in animal parts may be helping to fund terrorism. I don't like the conflation of everything bad with terrorism. This is happening all over. If we allow this trend to continue then soon such things as looking at someone in a funny way, coughing and not covering your mouth or squeezing the toothpaste from the middle will be categorized as terrorism.
The article admits that the evidence for a link between poaching and terrorism in the genuine sense is anecdotal at best and I still think evidence would point to simple greed being the biggest factor. Poverty had a lot to do with it in the past and maybe something to do with it now. Now however, many species are protected by law and by force and the business of actually getting to the animals and getting them out past the guards I imagine takes a bit of financial outlay.
The article also points out the way to stop this brainless brutality is to persuade the morons who buy things with ivory, rhino horn and tiger bones etc that it might not be a good idea.
Nevertheless, even though it was about poaching and not habitat loss some part of me was upset that the article did not even mention habitat loss.
As stupid and destructive as the trade in endangered animal parts is, it does not come close in its impact on wildlife to habitat loss and a lot of the things we usually do in our daily lives.
Habitat loss is caused by asphalting everything, deforestation, dumping of rubbish and pollutants, urban development, industrial farming, war, fire suppression, and forest fires and is absolutely the biggest danger to wildlife.
Imbecilic, insensate and inane the trade is, but no more so than some of the things we habitually do every day that lead to habitat loss which, I reiterate, is by far the biggest threat to wildlife.
I wonder if it would be a specific group of people the other species of the world would describe as terrorists or just all of us. After all, the vast majority of them either run/fly/swim away or try to bite us when they see us. The problem with that is that we aren't leaving them any more spaces to run into. If this continues then in the long run everyone loses.
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As a little postscript to the above"-I am not saying simply animals=good, humans=bad.
Even the important business of conservation requires the killing of a lot of animals. If you want to clear an island as a safe haven for a kind of bird for example, you have to kill off every rat and cat on the island. If you want to keep rare birds of prey from extinction by keeping a couple of breeding pairs in captivity then you probably will have to kill a lot of mice to feed them with and so on.
It is the destruction of the biomass that is necessary for our wellbeing and the wellbeing of every living thing for the purposes of making shit that is not even remotely necessary that is the problem. Poaching is one part of it, habitat loss is a far larger part. I for one would far rather see a fish in a river than have a plastic fish sing Al green songs to me.
