1. #1

    Kaziranga’s rangers have reduced rhino poaching by simply gunning down poachers

    I recall there being a thread on this not so long ago and I just saw this on reddit and found it interesting.

    Kaziranga’s ruthless rangers have reduced rhino poaching by simply gunning down poachers at sight

    In Kaziranga, a national park in north-eastern India, rangers shoot people to protect rhinos. The park’s aggressive policing is, of course, controversial, but the results are clear: despite rising demand for illegal rhino horn, and plummeting numbers throughout Africa and southeast Asia, rhinos in Kaziranga are flourishing.

    Yet Kaziranga, which features in a new BBC investigation, highlights some of the conflicts that characterise contemporary conservation, as the need to protect endangered species comes into contact with the lives and rights of people who live in and around the increasingly threatened national parks. India must balance modernisation and development with protections for the rights of local people—all the while ensuring its development is ecologically sustainable.
    To understand what’s at stake in Kaziranga, consider these three crucial issues:

    The BBC feature shows park rangers who have been given the licence to “shoot-on-sight,” a power they have used with deadly effect. In 2015 more than 20 poachers were killed—more than the number of rhinos poached that year.

    The programme accuses the rangers of extra-judicial killings. This resonates with a wider trend in the use of violence in defence of the world’s protected areas and the growing use of military surveillance technologies to support the efforts of conservation agencies.

    In India, the forest department, which is responsible for the protection of wildlife sanctuaries and national parks, has always been a “uniformed” service. Rangers wear military-style khakis, are allowed to carry arms, and have powers to prosecute offenders. Recently, the government allowed them to use drones as an anti-poaching measure in Kaziranga.

    To justify such escalation and its talk of a “war” against poaching, the government cites the growing power and sophistication of the crime syndicates involved in the illegal wildlife trade.

    However, as with all wars, a serious conflict over rhinos risks collateral damage. The worry is that increased militarisation is not conducted within strict legal limits or subject to judicial scrutiny. The BBC alleges that such checks and balances were not in place in Kaziranga.
    The rights of local and indigenous populations

    The BBC story also points to the growing conflict in and around Kaziranga between the interests and rights of local and indigenous people and the need to protect threatened species. Groups including Survival International, which features in the BBC story, claim that well-meaning conservation projects have denied and undermined the rights of indigenous groups around the world. The group calls for these rights to be placed at the heart of modern approaches to conservation. Most enlightened environmentalists now agree. It’s increasingly hard to look at conservation without also considering human rights and social issues.

    The context for these struggles in India is the colonial legacy of forest settlement, which reserved forests for the imperial state, but failed to take account of the rights of people who already lived there. This injustice was recognised in 2006, in a landmark legislation known colloquially as the Forest Rights Act, which restored both individual and community rights based on evidence of historic access and use.
    Yet there remains significant tension between India’s wildlife conservation lobby, which perceives the Forest Rights Act as the death-knell for nature, and groups such as Survival International which argue that it is only by recognising the rights of local people that the country’s wildlife will be protected.
    Can we keep expanding protected areas?

    To protect threatened species across the world, conservationists have called for more and more land to be placed under protection. Renowned biologist EO Wilson, for instance, wants us to set aside “half the planet.”
    In an unconstrained world, dedicating half the earth to the protection of the most threatened species and the world’s important habitats might seem like a sensible way to avoid the risks of what people fear might trigger the next great extinction. In reality, there are few places left where such a proposal might practically be implemented.

    In this Sunday, March 24, 2013 photo, a rhinoceros tries to chase away forest officials on an elephant during a rhino census at the Kaziranga national park in Assam state, India. The two-day census that ended Monday found that there was an addition of 39 one-horned great Indian rhinoceros to the previous year’s figure of 2,290, official sources said. Assam is home to the world's largest concentration of rhinos.

    Perhaps nowhere is this more evident than in rapidly developing India. The country already has a population of 1.3 billion, and it aspires to both develop as a global economic powerhouse and lift its poorest people out of poverty. This development requires land and resources, with little space left for nature.
    Plans to double the size of Kaziranga means villagers are being displaced with little due process and there are documented cases of violence and even death. This is a violent “green grab,” where land is usurped for ostensibly progressive environmental objectives, but which results in the dispossession of some of the most vulnerable people on this planet.

    Kaziranga illustrates the dilemmas of contemporary conservation. If it is to be successful, environmentalism in India must be seen as part of the changing social and economic context, and not set itself up in opposition to these wider trends.
    Conservation needs to recognise the need to build bridges, sometimes with its fiercest critics. While Kaziranga is in many ways a remarkable conservation success, its costs are considerable. The forces driving the world to overuse its resources haven’t gone away, and finding sustainable futures for both people and the planet requires coalitions that work together—let’s begin with Kaziranga

  2. #2
    nice one! /10c
    Money talks, bullshit walks..

  3. #3
    well, i don't support the killing of people. but poachers certainly won't be missed.

  4. #4
    Someone has to play devil's advocate: Are we really valuing the life of an animal over a human?
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  5. #5
    If I were honest, I'd say I care about the poachers about has much as I care about the Rhinos(not much). Since many claim they care about animals more than people, I guess these rangers should be applauded.

  6. #6
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    Good, now we just need a market for Poached Poacher Taxidermy.
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  7. #7
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    Quote Originally Posted by Symphonic View Post
    Someone has to play devil's advocate: Are we really valuing the life of an animal over a human?
    Works both ways:

    Are we really valuing the life of a greedy dirtbags over endangered species?

  8. #8
    I'm all for taking care of poachers but this is dangerous.
    You could reduce rapes by 95% by killing all men on sight but thats not really a good solution.

    A much better solution would to do something about the economic situation in India and make sure people in the rural areas get a proper education.

  9. #9
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    Quote Originally Posted by Aggrophobic View Post
    I'm all for taking care of poachers but this is dangerous.
    You could reduce rapes by 95% by killing all men on sight but thats not really a good solution.

    A much better solution would to do something about the economic situation in India and make sure people in the rural areas get a proper education.
    Normally I would agree, but that would take too long in this case. There simply aren't enough rhinos left in the world to wait for people to learn not to kill them.
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  10. #10
    Very hypocritical of them. If we started gunning down anyone who commits a crime, crime would drop. This is some Judge Dredd shit right there.

  11. #11
    Love it

    Here is the last male northern white rhino in the world that have survived for 50 million years and is pretty much gone all because of poachers. Though the people protecting it is real heroes.




    Only good poacher is a dead one.
    Last edited by ParanoiD84; 2017-02-13 at 04:34 PM.

  12. #12
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    Quote Originally Posted by Symphonic View Post
    Someone has to play devil's advocate: Are we really valuing the life of an animal over a human?
    It's not the life of an animal, it the survival of a species.
    you can't make this shit up
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  13. #13
    Deleted
    Well done. I completely approve such tactic.
    Quote Originally Posted by Symphonic View Post
    Someone has to play devil's advocate: Are we really valuing the life of an animal over a human?
    Yep. There are billions of humans, many of whom are pieces of shit. That includes poachers. I value any animal's life over their lives.

  14. #14
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    how exactly are the killings extra-judicial when they literally have a license to kill.

  15. #15
    Quote Originally Posted by derpkitteh View Post
    well, i don't support the killing of people. but poachers certainly won't be missed.
    could also arguing the collapse of an ecosystem could lead to far more human deaths.

  16. #16
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    Quote Originally Posted by zenkai View Post
    Very hypocritical of them. If we started gunning down anyone who commits a crime, crime would drop. This is some Judge Dredd shit right there.
    nah they are just the executioners. the judge is the government who issue the kill license. the jury is probably some place where you can request to enter the wildlife preserve legally, of which the rangers are then informed.

    it's basically trespassing on government properly that is enforced with lethal force, nothing more.

  17. #17
    Quote Originally Posted by Aggrophobic View Post
    You could reduce rapes by 95% by killing all men on sight but thats not really a good solution.
    .
    Quote Originally Posted by Vomlix View Post
    Normally I would agree, but that would take too long in this case. There simply aren't enough rhinos left in the world to wait for people to learn not to kill them.
    You only really need to kill off the Alpha males. The Betas need not be feared.

  18. #18
    Deleted
    Quote Originally Posted by Aggrophobic View Post
    A much better solution would to do something about the economic situation in India and make sure people in the rural areas get a proper education.
    Also you assume that poachers are locals. If locals stop poaching, outsiders will come. Also, if people suddenly get education, it doesn't mean they would stop killing rhinos. Its just business. If there is demand, there will always be people willing to supply. Capitalism ftw!

  19. #19
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    It's on page 2, which is quite recent, so I'm locking this one and pointing you to the older thread:

    http://www.mmo-champion.com/threads/...s-be-shot-dead

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