#Poaching

[headspace-hotel]

Oh my god I'm sooooo mad right now

So. I have no business telling people not to collect wild plants/materials.

I do it all the time.

However.

The words "wildcrafted," and "foraged," even "sustainably harvested," are terrifying to see in an ad on Etsy or Instagram

There is a such thing as the honorable harvest where you ASK the plant if it is okay to take, with the intention of listening if the answer is NO. Robin Wall Kimmerer talked about this, She did not make it up, it is an ancient and basic guideline of treating the plants with respect.

Basically it is not wrong to use plants and other living things, even if this means taking their life. But you are not the main character. You have to reflect on your knowledge of the organism's life cycle and its role in the ecosystem, so you can know you are not damaging the ecosystem. You have to only take what you need and avoid depleting the population.

Mary Siisip Geniusz also talked about it in an enlightening way in her book Plants Have So Much to Give Us, All We Have To Do is Ask. She gave an example of a woman who was on an island and needed to use a medicinal herb to heal her injured leg or she would not survive the winter. In that situation she had to use up all of the plant that was on the island. This was permissible, even though it eliminated the local population, because she had to do it to save her life. But in return the woman had the responsibility to later return to the island and plant seeds of that plant.

And what makes me absolutely furious, is that there are a bunch of people online who have vaguely copied this philosophy of sustainability in a false and insulting way, saying "wildcrafted" or "foraged" materials to be all trendy and cool and in touch with nature, when it is actually just poaching.

If you are from a capitalistic culture the honorable harvest is very hard and unintuitive to learn to practice. I am not very good at it still. This is why it is suspicious if someone is confident that they can ethically and respectfully harvest wild materials with money involved.

So there's this lichen that is often called "reindeer moss." It looks like this:

It grows only a few millimeters a year.

This is "preserved" reindeer moss.

It is from Etsy, similar is also sold in many other online shops, many of which have the audacity to describe it as a "plant" for decorations and terrariums that needs no maintenance.

It is not maintenance-free, it is dead. It has been spray-painted a horrible shade of green. The people buying it clearly don't even know what it is. It is a popular crafting material for "fairy houses," whatever the hell those are. So is moss, also dead, spray-painted, and wild-harvested. Supposedly reindeer moss is harvested sustainably in Finland, where it is abundant, for the craft industry. However poaching of lichens and mosses is absolutely rampant.

It's even more upsetting because there's hardly any articles drawing attention to the problem. This one is from 1999. And the poaching is still going on.

There is a "moss" section on Etsy, and it is so upsetting

These mosses and lichens were collected from the wild. Most of the shops are in the Pacific Northwest or Appalachia, which are the major locations of moss and lichen poaching. There are some shops based in Appalachia selling "foraged" reindeer moss.

Reindeer moss may be abundant in Finland, but in Appalachia it should NOT be harvested to be sold on Etsy as craft supplies! Moss doesn't grow quickly. Big, healthy colonies like this took years to grow. Some of these shops have thousands of sales, all of bags and bags of moss and lichen, and thinking of how much moss and lichen that must be, I am filled with horror.

Clubmosses do not transplant well, and these ones have no roots. The buyers do not realize they have bought a dead plant because clubmoss stays green and pliable after it is dead.

This is especially awful because in Mary Siisip Geniusz's book she talked about clubmosses being poached so much for Christmas wreaths that they had almost disappeared from a lot of forests.

I don't even know if this is illegal if it's not a formally endangered species so I don't know if I can report them I'm just. really sad and angry

[reasonsforhope]

Camera-trapping data revealed in a new study show a steady recovery of tigers in Thailand’s Western Forest Complex over the past two decades.

The tiger recovery has been mirrored by a simultaneous increase in the numbers of the tigers’ prey animals, such as sambar deer and types of wild cattle.

The authors attribute the recovery of the tigers and their prey to long-term efforts to strengthen systematic ranger patrols to control poaching as well as efforts to restore key habitats and water sources.

Experts say the lessons learnt can be applied to support tiger recovery in other parts of Thailand and underscore the importance of the core WEFCOM population as a vital source of tigers repopulating adjacent landscapes.

The tiger population density in a series of protected areas in western Thailand has more than doubled over the past two decades, according to new survey data.

Thailand is the final stronghold of the Indochinese tiger (Panthera tigris corbetti), the subspecies having been extirpated from neighboring Cambodia, Laos and Vietnam over the past decade due to poaching, habitat loss and indiscriminate snaring...

Fewer than 200 tigers are thought to remain in Thailand’s national parks and wildlife sanctuaries, only a handful of which are sufficiently undisturbed and well-protected to preserve breeding tigers. 

The most important of these protected areas for tigers is the Huai Kha Khaeng Thung Yai (HKK-TY) UNESCO World Heritage Site, which comprises three distinct reserves out of the 17 that make up Thailand’s Western Forest Complex (WEFCOM). Together, these three reserves — Huai Kha Khaeng Wildlife Sanctuary, Thungyai Naresuan West and Thungyai Naresuan East — account for more than a third of the entire WEFCOM landscape.

Now, a new study published in Global Ecology and Conservation documents a steady recovery of tigers within the HKK-TY reserves since camera trap surveys began in 2007. The most recent year of surveys, which concluded in November 2023, photographed 94 individual tigers, up from 75 individuals in the previous year, and from fewer than 40 in 2007.

Healthy tiger families  

The study findings reveal that the tiger population grew on average 4% per year in Hua Kha Khaeng Wildlife Sanctuary, the largest and longest-protected of the reserves, corresponding to an increase in tiger density from 1.3 tigers per 100 square kilometers, to 2.9 tigers/100 km2. 

“Tiger recoveries in Southeast Asia are few, and examples such as these highlight that recoveries can be supported outside of South Asia, where most of the good news [about tigers] appears to come from,” said Abishek Harihar, tiger program director for Panthera, the global wildcat conservation organization, who was not involved in the study.

Among the camera trap footage gathered in HKK-TY over the years were encouraging scenes of healthy tiger families, including one instance of a mother tiger and her three grownup cubs lapping water and lounging in a jacuzzi-sized watering hole. The tiger family stayed by the water source for five days during the height of the dry season.

The team of researchers from Thailand’s Department of National Parks, Wildlife and Plant Conservation, the Wildlife Conservation Society, Kasetsart University, and India’s Center for Wildlife Studies deployed camera traps at more than 270 separate locations throughout the HKK-TY reserves, amassing 98,305 days’ worth of camera-trap data over the 19-year study period.

Using software that identifies individual tigers by their unique stripe patterns, they built a reference database of all known tigers frequenting the three reserves. A total of 291 individual tigers older than 1 year were recorded, as well as 67 cubs younger than 1 year [over the course of the study].

Ten of the tigers were photographed in more than one of the reserves, indicating their territories straddled the reserve boundaries. The authors conclude that each of the three reserves has a solid breeding tiger population and that, taken together, the HKK-TY landscape is a vital source of tigers that could potentially repopulate surrounding areas where they’ve been lost. This is supported by cases of known HKK-TY tigers dispersing into neighboring parts of WEFCOM and even across the border into Myanmar.

Conservation efforts pay off

Anak Pattanavibool, study co-author and Thailand country director at the Wildlife Conservation Society, told Mongabay that population models that take into account the full extent of suitable habitat available to tigers within the reserves and the likelihood that some tigers inevitably go undetected by camera surveys indicate there could be up to 140 tigers within the HKK-YT landscape.

Anak told Mongabay the tiger recovery is a clear indication that conservation efforts are starting to pay off. In particular, long-term action to strengthen systematic ranger patrols to control poaching as well as efforts to boost the tigers’ prey populations seem to be working, he said.

“Conservation success takes time. At the beginning we didn’t have much confidence that it would be possible [to recover tiger numbers], but we’ve been patient,” Anak said. For him, the turning point came in 2012, when authorities arrested and — with the aid of tiger stripe recognition software — prosecuted several tiger-poaching gangs operating in Huai Kha Khaeng. “These cases sent a strong message to poaching gangs and they stopped coming to these forests,” he said."

...ranger teams have detected no tiger poaching in the HKK-TY part of WEFCOM since 2013.

-via Mongabay News, July 17, 2024

[specimentality]

Check out this plush artist!

[follow-up-news]

As a helicopter hovers close to an elephant, trying to be as steady as possible, an experienced veterinarian cautiously takes aim. A tranquilizer dart whooshes in the air, and within minutes the giant mammal surrenders to a deep slumber as teams of wildlife experts rush to measure its vitals and ensure it’s doing ok. Kenya is suffering from a problem, albeit a good one: the elephant population in the 42-square-kilometer (16-square-mile) Mwea National Reserve, east of the capital Nairobi, has flourished from its maximum capacity of 50 to a whopping 156, overwhelming the ecosystem and requiring the relocation of about 100 of the largest land animals. It hosted 49 elephants in 1979. According to the Kenya Wildlife Service Director General Erustus Kanga, the overpopulation in Mwea highlighted the success of conservation effort s over the last three decades. “This shows that poaching has been low and the elephants have been able to thrive,” Kanga said. Experts started relocating 50 elephants last week to the expansive 780-square-kilometer (301-square-mile) Aberdare National Park in central Kenya. As of Monday, 44 elephants had been moved from Mwea to Aberdare, with six others scheduled for Tuesday.

[rebeccathenaturalist]

This is encouraging news! Poached cheetah cubs are popular on the black market, and any tools that can help stem the trade will be much-needed.

This poaching has been going on for many decades; actress Josephine Baker could often been seen with her pet cheetah Chiquita in the 1920s, and mid-century demands from zoos for cheetahs likely also fueled illicit trade. Today they are still seen as status symbols, with many ending up as pets on the Arabian peninsula in spite of increasing prohibitions.

Many poached cubs never survive to be sold to new buyers, and every cub taken out of the wild reduces the already plummeting population; perhaps 10,000 at most remain in the wild today, down from 100,000 a century ago.

Want an easy way to help? Don't share, like, or otherwise support videos that show big cats and other wild animals as pets (yes, that includes supposed "rescues" like Messi the cougar who is treated like a housecat instead of living in a proper big cat refuge--and whose owners have had more than one cheetah that they show off on their social media.) Educate others on how wildlife are not pets and while they may seem to be cute and cuddly, keeping them robs them of the chance to have a truly wild life and supports unsustainable, and often illegal, wildlife trade.

[probablyasocialecologist]

The global illegal wildlife trade is largely facilitated by organised criminal networks. For instance, pangolins are poached extensively in Asia and Africa to meet the demand arising from China. Research shows many other endangered species from the Global South end up reaching the Global North. For example, a recent study found that there were at least 292 seizures of illegally traded tiger parts at United States ports between 2003-2012; the majority of them from the wild in Asian countries where tigers still roam free. The over 6,000 wildlife seizures reported by European Union member states in 2018 represent 16,740 specimens of species protected under the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora, and mostly originated from the developing world. Clearly, local harvesters in poor countries are not the ones organising complex transnational operations to transport wildlife parts across international boundaries. The international kingpins and an extensive network of smugglers run this nexus. If the aim is to break this cycle of crime, it is these networks that need to be disrupted; it is the consumers they feed who need to be penalised.

[nando161mando]

[enriquemzn262]

Anti-poaching rangers should be viewed at the same level as firefighters or doctors.

[isthedogawolfdog]

Here is the statement and a link to where you can report.

There is very little information I can find, though I did find an article that may be related that I’ll add later.

Edit: other article wasn’t related, just a different wolf killing in Wisconsin :(

[erebusvincent]

I found a rhino.

The preserve has to take significant additional precautions to protect its rhinos because the demand for rhino horn by the Chinese is so high. Poaching is actually pathetic. Get a life. This ancient Chinese medicine bullshit is retarded. Rhino horns don’t do shit for you, leave them on the rhinos where they belong

If you’re under the weather, grow up and buy some Tylenol like the rest of us.

[tilbageidanmark]

Elephant herds used to be so much larger. Photo by Peter Beard.

[liquoricebxxxh]

Mind you, this is literally describing Beyoncé…

[reasonsforhope]

"Nouabalé-Ndoki National Park in Brazzaville, Republic of Congo has a lot to celebrate.

The park, which celebrated its 30th anniversary on December 31 of 2023, also shared an exciting conservation milestone: 2023 was the first year without any elephant poaching detected.

“We didn’t detect any elephants killed in the Park this year, a first for the Park since [we] began collecting data. This success comes after nearly a decade of concerted efforts to protect forest elephants from armed poaching in the Park,” Ben Evans, the Park’s management unit director, said in a press release.

Nouabalé-Ndoki National Park was developed by the government of Congo in 1993 to maintain biodiversity conservation in the region, and since 2014, has been cared for through a public-private partnership between Congo’s Ministry of Forest Economy and the Wildlife Conservation Society.

Pictured: Nouabalé-Ndoki National Park. Photo courtesy of Scott Ramsay/Wildlife Conservation Society

Evans credits the ongoing collaboration with this milestone, as the MEF and WCS have helped address escalating threats to wildlife in the region. 

This specifically includes investments in the ranger force, which has increased training and self-defense capabilities, making the force more effective in upholding the law — and the rights of humans and animals.

“Thanks to the strengthening of our anti-poaching teams and new communication technologies, we have been able to reduce poaching considerably,” Max Mviri, a park warden for the Congolese government, said in a video for the Park’s anniversary. 

“Today, we have more than 90 eco-guards, all of whom have received extensive training and undergo refresher courses,” Mviri continued. “What makes a difference is that 90% of our eco-guards come from villages close to the Park. This gives them extra motivation, as they are protecting their forest.”

As other threats such as logging and road infrastructure development impact the area’s wildlife, the Park’s partnerships with local communities and Indigenous populations in the neighboring villages of Bomassa and Makao are increasingly vital.

“We’ve seen great changes, great progress. We’ve seen the abundance of elephants, large mammals in the village,” Gabriel Mobolambi, chief of Bomassa village, said in the same video. “And also on our side, we benefit from conservation.”

Coinciding with the Park’s anniversary is the roll-out of a tourism-focused website, aiming to generate 15% of its revenue from visitors, which contributes significantly to the local economy...

Nouabalé-Ndoki also recently became the world’s first certified Gorilla Friendly National Park, ensuring best practices are in place for all gorilla-related operations, from tourism to research.

But gorillas and elephants — of which there are over 2,000 and 3,000, respectively — aren’t the only species visitors can admire in the 4,334-square-kilometer protected area.

The Park is also home to large populations of mammals such as chimpanzees and bongos, as well as a diverse range of reptiles, birds, and insects. For the flora fans, Nouabalé-Ndoki also boasts a century-old mahogany tree, and a massive forest of large-diameter trees.

Beyond the beauty of the Park, these tourism opportunities pave the way for major developments for local communities.

“The Park has created long-term jobs, which are rare in the region, and has brought substantial benefits to neighboring communities. Tourism is also emerging as a promising avenue for economic growth,” Mobolambi, the chief of Bomassa village, said in a press release.

The Park and its partners also work to provide education, health centers, agricultural opportunities, and access to clean water, as well, helping to create a safe environment for the people who share the land with these protected animals. 

In fact, the Makao and Bomassa health centers receive up to 250 patients a month, and Nouabalé-Ndoki provides continuous access to primary education for nearly 300 students in neighboring villages. 

It is this intersectional approach that maintains a mutual respect between humans and wildlife and encourages the investment in conservation programs, which lead to successes like 2023’s poaching-free milestone...

Evans, of the Park’s management, added in the anniversary video: “Thanks to the trust that has been built up between all those involved in conservation, we know that Nouabalé-Ndoki will remain a crucial refuge for wildlife for the generations to come.”"

-via Good Good Good, February 15, 2024

[specimentality]

It’s almost always poaching and/or netting bats in mass. Don’t support oddities/taxidermy/bone/specimen vendors that carry bats

[kaitropoli]

The Rhinoceros

By Pietro Longhi

Oil Painting, 1751.

Ca' Rezzonico.

THERE are two slightly different versions of this painting, but for now (and because this will be quick for me), I will detail certain things that stand out to me in this piece.

=== BEFORE READING INFO BELOW: (POTENTIAL TRIGGER WARNINGS: ANIMAL ABUSE; POSSIBLE CUCKOLDRY) === TLDR TOPICS (With Skip Marks): Clara, a live exhibited rhinoceros...paragraphs 1-5; Possible cuckold messaging in this painting (going with the story of Clara)...paragraph 5; The Venice Carnival (masks)...paragraphs 6-7. ===

THE Rhinoceros--or known by two different names: (1) Clara the Rhinoceros; (2) Exhibition of a Rhinoceros at Venice--has the very obvious subject of Clara, a rhinoceros who was displayed in Venice during Carnival. Clara had been on tour throughout Europe, now finally making her debut in wonderful Serenissima, the floating city where women and men walk with their identities covered during the time of enlightenment, reformation, and new political thought while the Holy Roman Empire shines down their reign, and the Papal States are near their last century of control.

CLARA has been the subject of a few art pieces throughout her touring days on Earth. She once came from India and spent her last days in Lambeth, England (imagine dying in Britain💀), witnessing history before her very eyes; though, she wouldn't know it, especially being the one making history as one of the first living rhinos to be exhibited in modern Europe since 1515 (and before 1515, it was the og Roman Empire... centuries before 1515!). She was an orphan who was adopted by a dude in Bengal by the name of Jan Albert Sichterman, who worked for the Dutch East India Company, and then, of course, he sold her to a man who would be a permanent father figure for the rest of her life, cpt. Douwe Mout van der Meer (wild ahh name, but he's Dutch, so what do you expect?). I guess it'd be wrong to call him a father figure, considering he also technically "sold" her, as in what you'd do back then if your child had a deformity and you're poor (market crash, dustbowl, Great Depression things) and the freak show was in town, but when you have daddy issues, being made an attraction is still love (and a good kind of attraction) in your eyes. I mean, I'd probably lose all respect for myself if that means I can travel (I'M KIDDING... probably. The opportunity hasn't come knocking at my door just yet).

THERE'S much history to our girl, Clara, like how she had her own personal 8HP-drawn wooden carriage (treated like the damn queen she is), or how she moisturized with fish oil (we don't use Drunk Elephant around these parts👹). They kept her in better, more secure care than Dürer's Rhino (1515, remember? Anyway, he drowned! They weren't gonna do that to our Clara-baby) when traveling to Italy... but this is where something did happen to her..................

UPON arrival in Rome, Clara was discovered to have lost her horn (evidently seen in the artwork above). It is debated how she lost it: either she rubbed it off (which apparently is a common trait among rhinoceroses who are kept in tight confinement), or somebody cut it off (Wikipedia claims for safety reasons, but does not provide a footnote, so keep a close eye on that). ** SIDE NOTE: I tagged this part specifically as animal abuse; though poaching is a serious topic, in a case like this, it can be compared to the *controversial* practice in which rhino workers dehorn to ensure nobody attempts to poach the animal (a way of justifying this is that the horns are made of keratin, which, if you don't know, is the same as our fingernails; rhinos will regrow their horns in ≤ two years; rhino horns are sought out for a good chunk of money due to them being used in medicines, typically that found in Asian cultures, so people will hunt these animals with tranquilizers (not the issue seen in Philly right now, but if you have time, check that out) and leave them to bleed to death due to negligently cutting the horn off).

AS I had briefly mentioned, horns can grow back, so try not to worry too much about our girl. After all, she lived quite longer than expected, so it couldn't be all that bad. Anyway, back to when she was hornless and staying in Venice during the time of Carnival, Italian painter Pietro Longhi, who was notorious for his Venetian everyday life paintings, decided it'd be nice to visit Clara and paint her. In this scene, we see a man in the crowd holding up a horn, which leads many to believe that this is a message. You know how you do those bunny ears when somebody's taking a photo--children to their grandmothers, sisters to their brothers, and so on and so forth? Well, believe it or not, the bunny ears were the original symbol for cuckoldry, besides the obvious metal hand (sad day for the metalheads... or maybe good day if you're a cuck, but that wouldn't make sense because you gotta have taste to be into metal). Horns are used to represent cuckolds because it uses the similarity of stags' mating rituals, compared to how it got the name due to cuckoo birds leaving their eggs in others' nests (kind of like those types of faeries that stole children and left their own to mimic... which this led to an ACTUAL murder... but that's not up for discussion today, sorry). Anyway, because this dude is holding a horn, which appears to seem like it belonged to Clara, and the unattended ladies in the back (we will discuss them in a hot minute), this man may as well be a cuckold, or, unlikely (because I think it's funnier and more apparent), signing somebody else off as one.

FOR the other patrons in the crowd, as I have mentioned a billion times already, this was Carnival time (Fat Thursday to Fat Tuesday, celebrating before Ash Wednesday and Lent; U.S. citizens know Mardi Gras, which is technically the last day of Carnival... if that's an easier explanation, I'm glad to help, because I don't feel like getting into the specifics of it all). Tradition is to wear masks (although this was the main cause for the abrupt ending of Carnival until it was revived in the 1970s), which was originally done to hide identities, which made it easier for social classes to clash. One of these ladies is wearing a mask (can you guess which one?), and it holds a provocative nature.

MORETTA, or also known as servetta muta, is a strapless mask that is usually crafted with black velvet. The wearer would bite down on a bead which keeps the mask in place, however disables them from speaking. Seems impractical, right? Well, women died for it as much as the men they were attracting did. The silence, and the contract of black to their skin, making the mask pop out, just like their breasts when wearing décolleté alla veneziana fashion (clothes which reveal the body; and don't get me started with the shear fabric and what they did to make their nipples more apparent). To take away from the face will bring more attention to other areas, which was the achieved goal. To bring silence is to be the mysterious dark beauty that people still talk about being today! Don't deny that this is feminism, because it is in the end... giving women the choice to keep playing a mysterious game where their intentions are anonymous, or to burrow in the advances of the potential suitor. Whichever they chose, it is ultimately up to the man if he wants to play a round of blind dating/hookup.

LINKS TO SOURCES:

| Wikipedia - Carnival of Venice

| Wikipedia - Clara (Rhinoceros)

| National Gallery - NG1101

| Historians of Netherlandish Art - Exhibition: Clara the Rhinoceros

| Mental Floss - Clara

| Science - Cutting Off Rhino Horns

| Save the Rhino - Poaching

| Italy Mask - History of the Venice Carnival

| Ca' Macana - The Moretta or Muta

YAPPING all done completely by me (@kaitropoli)

[rebeccathenaturalist]

This is a long read, but a good one, well-written. It's an excellent overview not just of the headline--the murder of game warden Guy Bradley--but the surrounding circumstances including the demand for bird feathers in the late 19th and early 20th centuries.

It surprises a lot of people in my birdwatching classes when I tell them that the possession of most native bird feathers is against federal law. "But it's just a feather I found on the ground!" I'm well aware of that, and the vast majority of people who pick up a molted feather would never do harm to a bird to get more of them. It's almost impossible to differentiate between a natural molt, and a feather torn from a poached bird, though, so the law bans them across the board.

After reading the article, this may make more sense to you. Think of the avarice of the plume hunters who went into the wetlands and forests and gunned down thousands of birds in a day, just for the feathers. They continued even after it became illegal, simply to fill the demand for feathers--or wings, or entire taxidermied birds--for hats. Couldn't you imagine such a person removing the feathers from the carcasses of birds they'd shot, and then claiming they were simply very good at finding molts?

The Migratory Bird Treaty Act of 1918 protects almost all native wild birds in the United States; you can find the list of of protected species at https://www.federalregister.gov/documents/2023/07/31/2023-15551/general-provisions-revised-list-of-migratory-birds. There's also a list of (mostly non-native) birds that are not covered under the MBTA at https://www.federalregister.gov/documents/2020/04/16/2020-06782/list-of-bird-species-to-which-the-migratory-bird-treaty-act-does-not-apply.