Awesome for the bears (really), but I'm annoyed that China doesn't do more to reduce demand for rhino horn, which is devastating the African rhino population for absolutely no reason. Black rhino population is down 95%+ since 1960.
Other countries can definitely share the blame, but I would imagine China would be more sensitive to the issue since they have their own endangered species that we all celebrate.
Rhino horn is an essential ingredient in many Chinese medicines, while panda is not. Even though Chinese medicine is mostly bunk pseudoscience, enough people in China believe in it to create a crisis.
The Chinese government is loath to reverse these beliefs, as it would mean investing a lot more money in real western medicine. In fact, Mao originally put forth TCM as a distraction from a serious lack of real medical resources in the 50s, from wiki:
In 1950, Chairman Mao Zedong made a speech in support of traditional Chinese medicine which was influenced by political necessity.[11] Zedong believed he and the Chinese Communist Party should promote traditional Chinese medicine (TCM) but he did not personally believe in TCM and he didn't use it.[11] In 1952, the president of the Chinese Medical Association said that, "This One Medicine, will possess a basis in modern natural sciences, will have absorbed the ancient and the new, the Chinese and the foreign, all medical achievements—and will be China’s New Medicine!"[11]
> loath to reverse these beliefs, as it would mean investing a lot more money in real western medicine
And more generally it could raise "what else that the government has been assuring us for the last X decades might also be wrong?" thoughts in the potentially-cynical-but-not-yet-actively-so amongst the general population.
Meh, they could spin it how ever they want. They're masters at that.
The Chinese government has stopped harmful Chinese traditions on a number occasions without significant backlash. Especially anything that challenged their control. Just look at the suppression of religions, ethnic cultures, and many other traditions throughout China:
You are mistaken. China very effectively fights against rhino horn smuggeling nowadays. It is primarily vietnam where the horn is consumed. It goes so far that the demand is heavily influenced by the economic situation in vietnam.
"Rhino horn acquisition in China is mostly reported for its investment value"
"The art and antiques market is a new threat to rhino conservation"
"Chinese rhino horn auction records (n = 7,042, 2000–2011) showed a significant positive correlation between the volume of rhino horn auctioned in China and the number of rhinos poached in South Africa"
Interesting, I had not thought of the investment market. My statement still stands though as the article also states that Vietnam is the primary consumer (at 1/15 of the population and 1/80 the GDP of China). Presumeptly China could do more against it but that would probably be a more general strategy against organized crime than against poached rhino horn especially. And of course getting rid of loop holes like declaring ivory to come from siberian mammoths or before 1990 to make them legal. China is part of Cites and that it is enforced can be seen in Fig. 3 where the auctions drop dramatically in the last four years.
You comparison is valid ONLY IF Rhino lives in the area within China's jurisdictional control. Panda and Rhino are different cases. Don't compare apple with orange. Rhino could be saved if it was inside China.
Let me explain:
What BBC failed to mention is that Chinese government put death penalty[1] on Panda poachers. This is one of measures taken by government among others. It could be a human right's violation but it's not significant enough so BBC can choose to be blind.
However to execute anybody who dare to buy or sell Panda skin, it's going too far. Chinese government would not do that other than threatening to do so.Killing drug dealer is acceptable although controversial, killing drug consumer is not acceptable.
Go back to Panda vs Rhino: China have no control over poachers. Punishment on illegal trade alone is not effective enough.
Throwing up our hands and saying "China is not responsible because not every variable is within our control" is counterproductive.
You're assuming I make China solely responsible for this. I do not. However it would be nice for all parties who are able to reduce impact, to do so within the gamut of their responsibility and influence. Africa must take responsibility for managing poachers and local smuggling networks, and other countries can work to reduce demand. China has an enormous populace so has a massive influence over demand. Pressure must be applied to all points of the problem.
I agree, it's as if one would accuse the drug consumer of being responsible for Mexican drug cartels torturing and beheading innocent civilians which is part of their business strategy.
That is not to say that I approve of drug abuse, but everyone can only be held accountable for his own actions, not for the actions of others.
It would be something different if the Chinese government actively encouraged import of Rhino parts, but they don't allow this as far as I know.
Are you arguing that every drug abuser caught should be charged with murder?
You kill the Rhino, you are responsible for killing the Rhino.
You buy Rhino horn, you are responsible for buying illegal goods and creating demand. (which is not equal to actually killing a Rhino or a human being!)
You fail as a government to prevent import of illegal goods, you are responsible for not controlling imports with 100% accuracy.
You tell me if you know of any country in the world that is capable of preventing imports of highly sought after illegal goods to a degree that puts producers of these illegal goods out of business.
If that was possible there would not be any illegal drugs in the West.
I honestly can't come up with a single example where someone should be held accountable for something someone else did except for cases that involve enabling others who suffer for some kind of psychological illness or are otherwise incapable of acting responsibly as one would expect from an adult.
Sure, you just came up with a couple counterexamples on your own.
Another one:
If you're a mob boss and you tell your henchmen to murder someone, you're also on the line. That's a pretty direct one. But you could also argue that the witness who accepted a bribe to lie for the mafia is guilty of something, as may be the guy who stocked the weapons that day, or their getaway driver.
And at least legally, in the US, if your buddy is robbing the bank and you're his getaway driver, and he kills a police officer before dying himself, you're now on the line for murdering that police officer.
I think there's really a sliding scale of complicitness which makes it pretty complex.
> You kill the Rhino, you are responsible for killing the Rhino.
You buy Rhino horn, you are responsible for buying illegal goods and creating demand. (which is not equal to actually killing a Rhino or a human being!)
If you buy an illegaly obtained human heart, are you not culpable for the death of the former owner?
If you hire a mercenary to obtaining a human heart, are you completely free from all blame for the subsequent murder?
> If you buy an illegaly obtained human heart, are you not culpable for the death of the former owner?
Not if you do not know that the person has been killed for you to receive the heart or even worse, you ordered someone directly to kill someone. There are plenty of people dying in accidents or of natural causes and some do buy organs (usually bribing doctors) to get ahead in donor waiting lists.
You are culpable for bribing someone and risking that someone might have been killed for the product (at least if you didn't make sure where it came from), thus it is illegal. But you wont be charged with murder.
> If you hire a mercenary to obtaining a human heart, are you completely free from all blame for the subsequent murder?
Well of course you are directly to blame for any of these murders. You ordered it so there's not much of a difference between killing the person yourself and paying someone to do it for you.
For me both are to blame for the murder about equally. I believe that in most Western countries the punishment for the mercenary (btw it's an assassin, mercenaries can do legitimate work like providing security in war zones) would be slightly worse.
But I'm not 100% sure about the last point, never had to deal with assassinations so I never felt the need to research it.
I think I can see the problem with his argument. He argues that in judging a person's actions, I should only look at that action in isolation, so as not to hold the person accountable for others' actions.
If I were to look at the isolated action of buying Rhino horn, I could easily argue that no harm is done by trading Rhino horn that has already been cut off a Rhino. But that's not what happens in his argument: He notes that the isolated action of Rhino horn buying is in fact illegal, but ignores that the origin of this rule directly contradicts his moral reasoning.
I do not view a persons action in complete isolation, that's not what I said.
I just say it is a different thing if you kill a Rhino yourself (or order someone to kill one for you) than walking down a market in Hong Kong, seeing some Rhino horn for sale and then deciding to buy it.
Buying the Rhino horn is not legal in any civilised place (because it most likely comes from illegal sources), but the punishment is also not the same one that you would get for walking into your nearest zoo and killing a Rhino yourself, and rightly so.
Agreed. Everyone can only be held accountable for their own actions. So let those who can influence demand do so, and let those who can control supply do so.
China is working on reducing consumption of endangered animal parts. It's a really tough battle especially since it's a deep-rooted cultural phenomenon. There are orgs like WildAid doing a lot of good work in educating the public. China is also getting ready to establish its first national park system to protect more indigenous wildlife http://www.pri.org/stories/2016-08-26/china-looking-us-it-bu....
This is true - wildlife conservation is an incredibly difficult endeavor. Classical strategies such as those employed by WildAid [1] are not the only approaches on how to help poor creatures to survive poaching. Unfortunately, governments are slow to adopt technologic approaches that might help, and there is fierce resistence in NGOs to do so. The Rhino is a classical example of that case [2].
[1] http://goo.gl/c8iQZs
Panel on Conservation through Technology, New Harvest Conference.
Demand side control of hard drugs hasn't worked in the US and Europe which people by and large take knowing possible harmful effects. So why would demand side control of something people believe to be actually good work? Panda population was brought back as far as we know largely by supply side interventions - a combination of investment plus as someone else mentions, death penalty for poachers.
The only instance of demand side control I remember actually working was when Greenpeace and the like mass broadcast ads of cute seal pups being clubbed to death but and models wearing fur coats trailing blood etc.
Maybe, the appropriate imagery needs to be found for the causes of Rhinos and drugs by the activists.
You should add shark (fin soup) to the list as well. Sharks take a long time to reproduce and grow to full size and, as apex predators, provide an essential function to our marine ecosystems. The practice of finning to make soup is a huge problem, and China is the largest offender.
Rhino horn is a much harder problem. Economically, the demand is overwhelmingly for the pandas' survival, because the way people 'consume' pandas is by seeing them live. But demand for rhino horns for medicine or other purposes mean they must die.
oh come on, how about stopping trophy hunting of lions?
it annoys me that some western people are so apt to play the game of blaming China, just to take the moral high ground, but not to actually solve problems.
I'm not saying that China is not blamable. it is. but so is any other country, group, even individual. the media bias is just disgusting. can we please try to understand each other and figure out ways to solve problems?
I'm from Africa, and very aware that there is a lot of blame to go around, not the least of which are local poachers who sell our heritage.
But while we're understanding each other, imagine if Africans were a large source of demand for dead Pandas for use in traditional medicine? The emotional response would be off the charts.
Or maybe 'cause the countries with rhinos are generally poor, while China is relatively filthy rich? (at least if you divide the wealth by the number of people with power, not by the "entire total").
When you have malaria, AIDS, racial wars, budget problems etc. it's kind of hard to prioritize endangered species.
I wouldn't let anyone off the hook so easily, even if it is a poor African country.
As long as Rhino horn trade is not a mayor income source for the government then how much does it cost them to introduce harsh punishments for this?
China was also very poor when they started implementing policies to save the Panda bear. It's not that long ago that millions of Chinese starved to death, that's how poor they were back then.
China is capable of doing this now that they have wrenched themselves out of poverty. Africa has hardly even begun to make significant progress and that is largely a prerequisite for these conservation programs to be functional. They need both capital and strong rule of law to enforce it.
Poaching and black markets are quite effective in dysfunctional states and/or places with questionable ethical bases of cultures in regards to animal exploitation (traditional justifications, deprioritization towards longstanding human issues, rerouting of funding to corrupt officials, etc, etc).
Hopefully Congo and other surrounding countries manages to deal with this problem. Gorillas are some of the most interesting and intelligent animals on the planet and heavily relevant to us understanding our own human history.
Maybe there aren't many people like Jane Goodall left with influence in the local governments to protect them like in the old British colonial days. I remember reading how she married a local politician who invested quite a bit in creating large Gorilla habitats.
This is great news, but mountain gorillas were also moved from endangered to critically endangered status by IUCN. ALL of humanity's closest relatives are either critically endangered (the two species of orangutans and two species of gorillas), or endangered (bonbos and chmipanzees).
I'm not sure our settings for considering endangered species are quite right. Someone told me a long time ago that "[...] like any other wild animals, their biggest threat comes from mankind". With 2000 giant pandas alive and 7.5 billion bipeds, yeah, that's about right.
I think we've profoundly failed as a species. Apart from bringing almost all living things on the brink of extinction, and nudge about every stable ecosystem that was prospering before us, what have we done? What kind of prowess have we achieved? Did we land on another planet yet? Did we built a cohesive hive mind shared between every individuals alive?
Earth doesn't more humans, and if we could shave around 2 or 3 billion right now, that would be alright. Problem is, humans tends to get nervous when you apply natural selection to them. Eating cows? No problem. Getting chased by something with large teeth? Nope nope nope nope.
Extinction happens not because people consume the animal but because they don’t. For example, the cow and the chicken are at no risk of going extinct because they are consumed.
Was primarily a source of food. Went extinct because preservation was not a priority (or, I assume, farming them since chickens might have been easier).
A better understanding of how to get them to breed in captivity has been a big part of growing the population. I guess bootstrapping a population to be used for meat would be wildly unpopular, but it could probably be done in a way that didn't have much impact on the wild population or captive population that is used for conservation.
Which I'm not arguing it is a good idea, just pointing out that growing the population partly involved figuring out better panda husbandry, which is the same knowledge you need to produce meat.
Yeah, a good example would be bison. They almost went extinct, and there are only a few thousands of wild bison, and yet bison meat is commercially produced.
Oh I agree that it wouldn't be a very interesting enterprise as far as making money, I just think you could do it without having much negative impact on the conservation efforts.
Other countries can definitely share the blame, but I would imagine China would be more sensitive to the issue since they have their own endangered species that we all celebrate.