7 ms·

Call me cold, but this strikes me as a situation that can be managed by altering the risk:reward landscape of poaching. Shoot people on sight who are poaching,

• wnevets 10y ago
  Isnt that what's already happening in some areas?
  • ifdefdebug 10y ago
    it is, and they shoot back. so stakes are high already.
    • M_Grey 10y ago
      Hence: "Greatly increase the number of game wardens." At some point the risk vs. reward gets skewed in the elephant's favor, and as a bonus you're employing people who might otherwise be in a militia or mercenary group.
  • M_Grey 10y ago
    It is, but typically it's a local affair, undertrained, understaffed, and underfunded. For the sake of saving a possibly intelligent species, we could afford to pool a bit of money and manpower and make it less of a fight and more of a slaughter of the poachers.
• Bud 10y ago
  This is a good strategy. I think it'd be even more effective if large bounties were offered for the body parts of poachers. Macabre, yet, somehow fitting.
  • cglace 10y ago
    Sounds like you should run for president of the Philippines.
    • M_Grey 10y ago
      That seems more than a little unfair. If you're in the middle of a protect nature preserve in the African bush, with the tools of your trade, you're not a victim. This isn't a case of mistaken identity, or just being in the wrong place, or pissing off the wrong people.
      • cglace 10y ago
        You don't see any way that giving incentives to people for killing poachers without a trial could go wrong?
        • M_Grey 10y ago
          I can't imagine any human endeavor that lacks the potential to go wrong, but I also don't think that's a reason not to try anything, ever.
          • cglace 10y ago
            I believe extrajudicial killings have a bit more than "the potential" to go wrong.
            • M_Grey 10y ago
              It's a pretty limited use case, unless you think that people tend to wander the African bush with chainsaws and elephant guns just because... reasons? You'd have to quite literally go well out of your way and leave civilization behind to be targeted. Maybe you can tell me what exactly you suspect would go wrong in this limited scenario?
              • cglace 10y ago
                Well the person I responded to said we should offer rewards for murdering poachers. So the incentive would be to go out and murder people and plant chainsaws/rifles on them. You wouldn't really even have to "go out in the bush" to kill them. You could kill someone and claim they were out there poaching.
  • gozur88 10y ago
    You'd run into the same problem everybody who pays for body parts runs into - defenseless people become a source of income for the unscrupulous.
  • rangibaby 10y ago
    Belgium paid on the basis of body parts received already: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Congo_Free_State https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Congo_Free_State https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cobra_effect https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cobra_effect
• mmagin 10y ago
  Would you be comfortable living in a place where such a simplified means to capital punishment was legally practical?
  • deleted 10y ago
    [deleted]
  • TeMPOraL 10y ago
    Living? Maybe. I would definitely not be comfortable poaching in such a place.
• astrodust 10y ago
  Remember Economics 101: Reduce the supply of something and you'll only make the reward of obtaining it that much higher. You need to kill demand for this stuff, or you need to sabotage the market so the supply is through the roof like the team making fake rhino horn is doing: http://www.iflscience.com/technology/fake-rhino-horn-fight-poaching/ http://www.iflscience.com/technology/fake-rhino-horn-fight-p... Shooting drug dealers, for example, doesn't make people not want to be drug dealers, it just kills off competition and makes the surviving dealers earn way, way more money.
  • M_Grey 10y ago
    There aren't that many elephants left to guard, and there isn't an infinite supply of poachers. Unlike dealing drugs, for which the supply is worldwide and can be hidden, and for which no particular skills or guts are required, hunting elephants is not so simple or stealthy. I'm happy to attack this from both ends though.
    • astrodust 10y ago
      Elephants aren't content to sit in one spot, they wander over considerable distances and between many different countries. This makes them a lot harder to police than, say, a captive bear. You can have all the guards in the world attached to these elephants but guards are human and they'll get lazy doing nothing. When they let themselves slip, someone will be there to take advantage of their lapse. This is a game you can't win by protecting the animals alone. You need to kill demand, you need to make the risk way, way too high for the potential payoff. One thing you could do to incentivize protecting elephants is offer a payout for a given herd. If someone poaching an elephant costs you money you'd be motivated to protect them, so long as the protection money is greater than any reward for poaching. Hopefully over time we'll have more technology based solutions like drones that can spot poachers long before they're a threat or civilians who will snitch out poachers because their livelihood is at stake.
      • M_Grey 10y ago
        "Hopefully over time" will leave us with the tech and not the elephants. There's no reason not to both attack demand, and supply at the same time. Even if the result is less than perfect, delay at this point will allow for that tech you mentioned.
• wehadfun 10y ago
  Wrong people. The shooters are just poor kids who are doing this to earn a meager living. Their "employers" care less about them than the elephants. They will simply find some other poor hungry kids and pay them to kill the elephants. What they need to do is catch the recruiters / middle men and shoot them.
  • M_Grey 10y ago
    I'm absolutely on board with that, if you can take some of these poor kids into custody without killing them, and flip them, that works for me.
• majani 10y ago
  The thoughtful solutions on this forum remind me of this xkcd: https://xkcd.com/538/ https://xkcd.com/538/ I am Kenyan. A conveniently left out truth when discussing the poaching menace here is that the big bad poacher in the story is non other than the president's mother. Your intelligence in this case will be no match for the force of sheer impunity backed by state resources
  • M_Grey 10y ago
    That's why I'm proposing an immediate, violent solution, not one based on nonexistent cooperation, politics, or locals who care.
    • jorgecastillo 10y ago
      >That's why I'm proposing an immediate, violent solution, not one based on nonexistent cooperation, politics, or locals who care. You surprise me, from the comments you made a few days back on the European refugee crisis, I though you were a peaceful person. Now your true nature is revealed. Would you be willing to sacrifice your own life, to save the elephants? Would you be willing to kill another human being yourself, to save the elephants? If your not willing, I don't even know how you come up with this ideas!
      • M_Grey 10y ago
        I'm not a hawk or a dove, the world isn't black and white and situations should be examined on their own merits. People fleeing unlivable conditions, who are essentially helpless, and who are fleeing conditions with deep roots in the places they're fleeing to, are a very different set of circumstances. Not to mention that there is simply no need for the extremes of violence, that would just be a ridiculous choice to satisfy xenophobia. In this case, the helpless and nearly extinct intelligent animals aren't humans, but elephants. For decades, peaceful attempts have been made to preserve them in some way, and all of those attempts are failing. The alternatives are very clearly to take drastic action, or accept the extinction of an intelligent species. As for whether I'd be willing to kill a human to save an elephant, yes, I would frankly welcome the chance. I despise people who destroy life in the name of ideology, profit, and a general lack of giving a shit. The only difference for me personally is that I'd be much more willing to kill the people truly responsible, rather than the poachers themselves who are often tools of those people.
• tn13 10y ago
  There is nothing cold about it. It is the smart thing to do. Give people ownership of the animal and they will defend it. But as one of the Kenyan person has mentioned about the Government (the law) itself is engaging in this so you cant really expect any private property laws being honored. Best is to import these animals to USA and breed them.
  • foolrush 10y ago
    Makes me wonder if some sort of adopt-a-block approach for tagged endangered species could work. The cost to tourism is likely staggering compared to the profit a poacher makes. Perhaps state and environmental campaigns can fund protection of the animals. One part prestige and one part economic? For-hire endangered species body guards?
    • tn13 10y ago
      As the Kenyan citizen mentioned above, the government itself is doing this. These are the countries where poachers would put a hammer in your head in-front of entire village and throw your body to rot and nothing will happen. I doubt if any campaign can make a difference. Bringing those animals to safe places is a much better idea.
      • M_Grey 10y ago
        Unfortunately there really isn't the time to spend on waiting for reforms either... we either stand by and do nothing and let an intelligent species be killed off, or protect them with violence.
        • xj9 10y ago
          Are we at the point where corporations can have private militias? I'm really impressed at how committed we are to acting out a cyberpunk novel. I'd say the best thing would be to maintain elephant populations domestically on wildlife reserves. Saving the species is important, but it doesn't give us the right to interfere with foreign affairs.
• ajmurmann 10y ago
  Yes, this always seemed like a really easy to solve problem to me as well. I hear the poachers are very well armed. However, it seems like a few (military-?)drones that circle the area 24/7 could solve this problem once and for all. I think a sibling post hits the nail on the head though by explaining that in Kenya the problem is really political.