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I'd rather invest that same money in multiple shifts of spotters and snipers, and cash bounties for middlemen.
by M_Grey 10y ago
I'd rather invest that same money in multiple shifts of spotters and snipers, and cash bounties for middlemen.
- astrodust 10y agoI don't think you recognize how big an area you have to patrol and how many threats you have to protect against. Africa is huge and the area that elephant herds wander over is perhaps as large as continental USA. It's that big. I doubt your approach would work in some place as contained as Texas. It might work in a place like Hawaii, if, say, raptor poaching at the local dinosaur exhibit was a problem.
- M_Grey 10y agoElephants have a wide range, but it's not as though they teleport across that range in the dead of night. They're large, you can track their calls for miles, and they often take predictable routes for their entire lives. You don't need to protect empty land, you just need to have rotating teams covering the elephants.
- astrodust 10y agoRotating teams. Replacement vehicles. Spare parts. Fuel. Food. Batteries. Crew swaps. Visas and permits. Armed guards to protect the anti-poaching crew when they might run into conflict with local militia. It's also not like elephants pick areas to travel that are particularly friendly to vehicles. Look at this track one group took from one side of Africa to the other: https://safarihorizons.wordpress.com/2012/06/26/in-the-tracks-of-giants-following-elephant-migration-routes-across-southern-africa/ https://safarihorizons.wordpress.com/2012/06/26/in-the-track... Africa is not known for having exceptionally well maintained roads, they make Russian backwoods trails look like the Autobahn, and that goes quadruple inside a nature reserve. Driving this distance in any vehicle would be absolute hell.
- M_Grey 10y agoYes, it would cost money, and require manpower and material support. We can take some of the billions we'll use to pointlessly fight the war on drugs and divert it, or pretend there's oil or REE's there...
- astrodust 10y agoOkay, so either billions of dollars shuttling people back and forth across hostile terrain in Africa, or say a tiny fraction of that disrupting the market by flooding it with fake or alternative ivory products, which one do you think is a better plan? I agree, the war on drugs is hopeless, but like trying to dump all the alcohol during prohibition you can't win this by guarding things, you can only win it by changing the economics of the entire situation. Cut demand, boost supply. If you can do that the problem goes way. Nobody poaches ragweed or dandelions.
- M_Grey 10y agoDisrupting the market hasn't worked at all, time to spend the money.