HUNTING AND POACHING

What is Poaching? Poachers are people who steal wildlife from protected areas such as national parks. This is a recognised crime and if caught poachers can be fined as well as being put in jail. Cruel ways of killing wildlife abound: traps and poison are often used to hunt down targets.

Killing animals can hinder efforts at wildlife conservation by threatening endangered species. Wildlife is stolen from parks, the sea and even forests, all over the world. Body parts of endangered species are sought after because of their rarity. Rhinos’ horns and tigers’ skin and bones are smuggled to countries like China, Tibet and Taiwan where they are illegally sold as traditional medicines. 

There has been a crackdown on poaching in many countries in the last few years and an increasing number of anti-poaching teams have been set up. These teams may be given vehicles and boats in order to monitor the protected areas and track down poachers

To find out more about animals that have become endangered in Africa because of poaching see http://www.safaripark.co.uk

During our excursion to the Werribee Zoo you will have the opportunity to see some rhinos in something close to their natural habitat. Rhinos are one example of a species that has become endangered mainly because of illegal poaching activity.

The populations of rhinos most affected are in western and central Africa and Nepal, with one sub-species in Cameroon believed extinct already. Rhinos have almost been poached to extinction In the middle of the 1800s, there were probably more than a million black and white rhinos on the plains of Africa. Hunting by European settlers brought numbers down spectacularly, and at one point the southern white was thought extinct.