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Interpol
Ivory ornaments and animal skins are displayed as part of INTERPOL's crackdown on illegal wildlife trafficking.
More than 200 people were arrested and two tons of ivory seized — along with guns, lion pelts, rhino horns and live birds — in the largest operation against wildlife smugglers to date, Interpol announced Tuesday. As sizable as the numbers are, though, the real test will be whether Africa finally sees a drop in the record slaughter of elephants and rhinos.
The three-month operation ranged across 17 African countries as well as China, where officials cracked down on websites and stores selling ornaments made from ivory, the trade for which is banned globally.
"The intelligence gathered during Operation Worthy will enable us to identify the links between the poachers and the global networks driving and facilitating the crime," David Higgins, head of Interpol's environmental crime program, said in a statement.
The International Fund for Animal Welfare helped Interpol by training officers in African countries, and said it also provided leads that allowed China to uncover 700 cases of illegal wildlife trade.
Just days after Rock Center aired Harry Smith's report, "The Last Stand," on the growing epidemic of illegal rhino poaching in South Africa, three of the rhinos featured in the report were attacked by poachers. Rock Center's Harry Smith reports.
China "busted 13 gangs, punished 1,031 illegal traders, seized over 130,000 wild animals and their animal products," IFAW said in a statement, adding that 7,155 shops and 628 websites selling banned animals were shut down.
Still, the two tons of ivory seized is just a fraction of what's smuggled each year.
Last year, a record 23 tons of ivory were confiscated -- which means many more got smuggled out of Africa. Those 23 tons probably represent some 2,500 elephants, the international monitoring group TRAFFIC said in a statement.
Report: Tens of thousands of elephants likely killed last year
And this year seizures include 359 tusks, weighing 1.6 tons, found in containers shipped out of Kenya.
In Cameroon, several hundred elephants were slaughtered last January -- inside a national park.
Africa's elephant population is estimated around 450,000 -- compared to between 5 million and 10 million in the 1930s.
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Leave a Comment:
Can somebody please cut their hands off, or better pull off their teeth off......stupid/ignorant people, but even doing that , won't bring any poor animal back to life..... We are in a race to eliminate everything on earth... sad but true
When are people going to understand that rhino horn, elephant tusks, organs of one kind or another, and animal skins work better on the animal than anything humans can do with them? We have this idiot belief that animal parts can somehow do something for us that enhances our physicality or our home.
Congratulations to INTERPOL's investigation which led to these much needed arrests. Animal poachers need to be stopped as it may already be too late for some species to ever recover from the poaching. It is too bad we aren't allowed to do the same things to the poachers as they did to the innocent animals, because they deserve at the very least that and much more pain and suffering.
Shot every damn one of those worthless jerks. I can't even call them human beings, because I see them that kill any animal for money as taking up oxygen that I could use.
He will ruin those ruining the earth.
On the one hand elephants are delicious... (I'm joking around here). On the other hand we need to stop all of this "traditional" medicine for witch doctor remedies. They are also doing this slaughter against rhinos. People are using these ground up tusks for usually erectile dysfunction, cancer, and arthritis and with modern science these provide no cure and only destroy these lovely animals for no earthly good reason. Grind up some roots or other plant matter into a powder and sell it to these morons they will never know the difference.
they need to give them the death penalty
Congratulations to Interpol-for once the good guys won. I agree with all the other comments-severe penalties for the poachers and the countries that are allowing this stuff in. You are morons. I would trade 20 of you for one of the elephants, rhinos, cheetahs, leopards, etc. you slaughtered. Instead of funding useless programs to foreign countries, I would be all for giving more money to fund increased protection for the areas seeing this senseless killing.
I once asked a friend, who believes in reincarnation, what he would like to be next life.
Answer: A virus.
I have a wonderful idea for the poachers.Put them in a cage at the national zoo with a sign that says,"poachers". Have a machine thats sells soft balls that the public can throw at the poachers.Give the poachers a choice 10 year sentence at the Zoo or life in prison.