In parts of Kenya, the economic damage wrought by the coronavirus pandemic has been so catastrophic that people have started to kill endangered wildlife for food. Last week, The Telegraph trekked with rangers through the Tsavo conservation area, a region larger than Wales in southeastern Kenya, and found a Masai giraffe which had been stripped […]
Tag: bushmeat
Porcupines Face a Poaching Crisis — and It’s All Because of What’s in Their Stomachs
A porcupine’s diet is wide, varied, and a little hard to digest. A lifetime of grasses, herbs, bark and other vegetation can leave little bits of indigestible matter behind in a porcupine’s digestive tract, where they occasionally congeal into a hard ball called a bezoar. That sounds uncomfortable, but a porcupine’s health probably doesn’t suffer […]
In Sri Lanka, bushmeat poachers haven’t let up during lockdown
COLOMBO — The killing of a young forest ranger by suspected poachers has underscored that illegal hunting in Sri Lanka, and the bushmeat trade it feeds, hasn’t stopped during the lockdown imposed in response to the COVID-19 pandemic. Pradeep Bandara, 25, was shot dead on April 22 while leading his team on an anti-poaching raid […]
Python skin jackets and elephant leather boots: How wealthy Western nations help drive the global wildlife trade
Three-quarters of new and emerging infectious diseases in humans originate in wildlife. COVID-19, SARS and Ebola all started this way. The COVID-19 global pandemic has drawn new attention to how people think about wild animals, consume them and interact with them, and how those interactions can affect public health. Any activity that puts people in […]
South African proposal to breed wildlife for slaughter courts disaster
There are times of spectacular policy myopia – and promoting a revision to the Meat Safety Act by the South African government is surely one of these moments. In late February the government proposed adding over 90 local and non-indigenous species to the list of animals regulated under the Meat Safety Act. Prior to this […]
Petition: Punish Poachers Who Use Wire Snares To Destroy Wildlife
Wildlife poaching drives species extinction. In fact, the impending sixth mass extinction will largely be caused by the killing of animal species. Animals like elephants, rhinos, lions, and more are seriously threatened by wildlife poaching. Poaching is the illegal hunting of an animal and that is bad enough no matter which method of killing you […]
Twelve rangers killed in latest Virunga Park incident
Twelve rangers and five other people were killed in Virunga National Park in the eastern part of the Democratic Republic of Congo on Friday. It was the latest deadly incident in the park, where more than 150 rangers have been killed since 2006. Virunga, which includes large areas of intact rainforest that are home to […]
Petition: Illegal Bushmeat Smuggled into UK Could Lead to Another Pandemic
Experts are warning that the illegal bushmeat trade in the United Kingdom could lead to additional zoonotic disease transmission. According to the Mirror, the amount of illegal bushmeat smuggled into the country has doubled since 2015. Border staff seized over a thousand kg of meat in 2018/2019, a number that increases every year. Experts are […]