The war on elephants

[LONDONER]

What will the world say when the last one is killed?

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/resources/idt-...ine_280416

[Insertnamehere]

I reckon a bit of whining and finger pointing and then back to the usual indifference. It's the same way it happened with other species that became extinct around the XIX and XX centuries.

Rhinos are on the line too.

[Genersis]

Unfortunately it seems once an animal becomes sufficiently valuable to humans when dead, extinction is inevitable unless the animal is prolific or easy to breed.

Depressing stuff.
If only there were a way to make Rhino horn, ivory, sea horse ETC completely worthless in just a handful of years, ending demand...

[LONDONER]

Unfortunately it seems once an animal becomes sufficiently valuable to humans when dead, extinction is inevitable unless the animal is prolific or easy to breed.

Depressing stuff.
If only there were a way to make Rhino horn, ivory, sea horse ETC completely worthless in just a handful of years, ending demand...

It is already worthless in that it has absolutely no medicinal properties whatsoever, but try convincing a billion Chinese that!

[Genersis]

It is already worthless in that it has absolutely no medicinal properties whatsoever, but try convincing a billion Chinese that!

Indeed.
In a way, you can't really even blame the Chinese people, but their government, for promoting traditional medicine as superior to that of the west.
I guess in a roundabout way, you could say many animals are casualties of cold war mentalities.

[LONDONER]

Indeed.
In a way, you can't really even blame the Chinese people, but their government, for promoting traditional medicine as superior to that of the west.
I guess in a roundabout way, you could say many animals are casualties of cold war mentalities.

I agree. The Chinese Government could put a stop to this slaughter immediately if it wanted to. but probably members of the Government are old, hard grain believers in traditional medicine. Some traditional Chinese medicine is perfectly valid but among the supersticious Chinese there is a mystic surrounding the body parts of rare animals and it is that that makes them so vulnerable.

[matty7]

well they have declared a subset of the black rhino extinct for Africa recently - don't kid ourselves the we wont do the same to all Elephants and Rhinos to say the least in the next x amount of years. Im sure if humans were living during the dinosaur age it would have been us and not a meteor that wiped them out - its in our nature to kill everything...especially now we can make money from their corpses

[Insertnamehere]

It is already worthless in that it has absolutely no medicinal properties whatsoever, but try convincing a billion Chinese that!

Mao is to blame for that one, or at least with making it popular. As with the rhinos.

Trying to convince even a 10% of the people on the world that believe in nonsense would be an impossible task, I afraid.

Mix a horde of people seeking a commodity to exploit and a place that doesn't have to tools to prevent it from happening, and this is what you get.

[Insertnamehere]

well they have declared a subset of the black rhino extinct for Africa recently

No, not recently. It was a news piece that emerged last year about a study published in 2013, said study saying that this species had not been sighted since 2001, or something on the likes of that.

That makes it all the more horrible, if you ask me.

[matty7]

http://time.com/9446/western-black-rhino...d-extinct/

I got it from this article about the Rhino - without reading the entire thing again I guess they must just mean in Africa itself