Kenya - a country that deserves your TOTAL RESPECT! Surrounded by wars, starvation and mediocrity, these africans learned how to avoid its neighbors' problems and are now an example to the entire World!
The lack of territories lead to stress on animals. Here an elephant is warned by a couple of rhinos.
Rhino battle injuries are heal easily, but hunters use more powerful weapons, that elephants don't resist.
Hooray for Kenya + India! Boo-hoo for South Africa + many others
Tomorrow, CITES (Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species) will be discussed again, in Nairobi / Kenya.
To make a long story short, what many countries will discuss, is the commerce of some highly endangered species (like elephants, whales and sharks). The elephants will monopolize much of the meeting, since South Africa, Zimbabwe, Botswana and Namibia, are trying to shift that species from CITES' section 1 to CITES' section 2, ie, they are trying to shift elephants from "species that you can't commerce" to "species you can kill & sell, if under authorization".
The aforementioned countries (boo-hoo for them!) argue that the money that they would profit from the merchandise of "natural deaths" and from "dangerous animals", could be used to fight illegal hunters.
India and wonderful Kenya are on the pole-position against the stupid who endorse the killing trend. Hooray for them!
If South Africa (which has lately been expressing other worrying attitudes, such as supporting Robert Mugabe's racism), Zimbabwe, Botswana and Namibia "win", there will be ZERO free elephants on Earth, by the end of 2004... Can you imagine a world without elephants?! SCARY!
Japan is another country to blame. Many japanese are ignorant enough to believe that some parts of tigers, whales, sharks, elephants, etc... will give them a hard-on, or longer life. Japan is the world greatest importer of endangered species... and they still hunt the blue whale, the larger mammal that ever lived! Check the 050200 update, for related info.
More examples: Cuba is applying for an authorization, under CITES' section 2, for the sale of 7 tons of "careta" turtles, a species whose population has decreased in 80%, in the latest 40 years! Japan is willing to buy...
Portugal and the European Union [EU] in general, are also to blame on smaller, but relevant aspects. Portugal alone has a poor control over imported species, and it is estimated that over 4000 illegal species enter the country, each year!
Still, Africa is the source (and the home) of the problem. Some governments' policies are completely medieval, trying to obtain money from non-renewable resources (killing animals), instead of investing on their protection / tourism, like Kenya does. Again, hooray for Kenya!
It is a shame that so many millions of (African) people live on the hands of completely incompetent politics, who know nothing more than self profit and destruction.
For example, (#1) Ethiopia is starving to death, from the days of the Live-Aid project, yet it fights a war against Eritrea, for the possession of sterile lands!! (#2) Zaire loses its 2000's crops and kills innocent farm owners, for the personal benefit of its "President"; (#3) Angola is more rotten, each day;... bla bla bla...
Save the elephants! Save the wildlife!
Discuss this @ the
Kenya has a strong original culture, that doesn't succumb to the terrible examples of neighbor countries.
Rhinos do it but hunters kill them faster.