emeraldrafael said:
I dont forsee them doing alot to be honest. The UN is all about countries gathering and look waht they do. We just have to face that we as humans are destructive creatures, and have pretty much topped the evolutionary chart. There's no more survival of the fittest to put us in our places. We're just letting ourselves over populate the species, kinda like deer.
Its a sad thing to say, but theres just as much good to things like Cholera, AIDS, Smallpox, polio, etc. as there are bad.
But to be on topic, its kinda awesome to see the countries putting together and effort, but it wont stop anyhting. Poachers gonna poach.
Well, the problem is that discussion is fine, but especially when dealing with international conferances through things like the UN the problem is getting it to actually DO anything. Typically things like this end with everyone agreeing, and imposing even stricter fines on the people involved or whatever. That doesn't do much to stop behaviors that are already criminal (or at least frowned upon) to begin with.
What's more it comes down to problems with liberalism (irregardless of the countries involved) and "respect for cultures" and the like. Nobody is willing to just put their foot down and flat out say a culture, or an aspect of it is not worth preserving on a global scale.
To put things into perspective, look at whaling as an issue. Efforts have been made to curtail it, but for the most part they have failed. Nations that have done this for centuries or thousands of years continue doing it, and wind up with a degree of protection due to "cultural preservation".
Truthfully, if international navies and police forces were ever given a "kill on sight" order on whalers, and permission to pursue and exterminate whaling operations onto the land and in defiance of national sovreingty, I imagine the whalers themselves would be extinct inside of a decade. We won't do this however, so most of the resistance seems to come down to "keystone cop" like coasties and naval efforts, and greenpeacers running around with cameras. Naval ships in many cases have literally sat there and watched this kind of thing go on with their hands effectively tied. Want to save the whales? When you spot a whaling boat, torpedo the bloody thing, and then use an survivors splashing around for target practice with the deck guns. Start blowing away towns and communities even suspected of harbouring whalers, that is going to scare the people to the point where to avoid being killed they will cease to shelter or deal with those people. It's not nice, but it will work.
Of course there are all kinds of moral difficulties with it, especially given the inevitable collateral damage, and the targeting of people who might not have actually done anything wrong to make a point. But that's exactly the point, and why nothing gets done.
The same basic logic applies to things like tigers. Sure, there are laws against poaching and the like, but there are so many places these guys can hide and find shelter that it's a problem. Especially when in a lot of cases these guys can flee into areas where what they are doing isn't illegal. If being suspected of harbouring poachers gets daisy cutters dropped on towns nd villages, I can bloody guarantee people are going to rapidly start doing whatever it takes to allay even the slightest suspician and sheer survival is going to push these guys out into the open where they would be eradicated too.
Do not get me wrong, I'm not saying this is what is going to happen. I'm saying that's what I think it will take. The money involved is substantial enough for people to be willing to risk jail time or even their lives (which is why you have to put pressure on the human support as well, a poacher might be wiling to risk his life, but the guy who runs the Bar where he gets a drink, or rents the Inn room where he sleeps, is not going to risk being killed so that dude can make money). What I am saying is that the only viable way to stop it given all the things that have been tried and failed are exactly the kinds of things the civilized nations concerned about this would never do.
But then again understand that I'm a cynic. You'll notice almost everything I say is extreme and winds up the same way. Through my life I have come to the conclusion that major issues are never resolved by diplomacy, dialogue, or commitees. Either your going to do something drastic, and probably distasteful, or nothing changes. I feel that dialogue and diplomacy have achieved a lot of things, but the issues remaining today are by their nature ones big enough where no amount of dialogue can resolve them (and have usually seen numerous failures). Generally speaking people are not willing to just give up a major aspect of their culture, or their livlihood (which might have been going on for generations) because someone asks them to. In the end, when your looking at the specialized skillsets and networks maintained for things like poaching, whaling, and similar professions, what are these guys going to do if they were to stop? What's more even if they could find another profession it wouldn't pay as much as what they are doing (which is why they stay in the business). This is why dialogue has generally failed to bring a complete halt to these behaviors.
Who knows, maybe something miraculous will happen.
I'm a cat person, and like big cats myself (even if they can be quite dangerous). Truthfully though I think like most animals, their going to exist only in zoos after a point. Tigers are never likely to ever totally disappear because I think we're preserve them. Truthfully if humanity survives it will come about as a result of a global unity, and with no offense to enviromentalists I'm "humans first" enough (despite liking animals) to think our planet is going to wind up being a lot like Trantor from Asimov's writings in a thousand years or so.
Ah well, enough rambling. Such are my thoughts.
