The scourge of terrorism is not endangering humans alone. Individuals and syndicates across the world are displaying a horrific eagerness to plumb the depths of human nature to profiteer from vulnerable wildlife.
Their fathomless cruelty to animals — snaring them in iron traps till they die a painful, often gangrenous death, clubbing them to death when ensnared, and then skinning them, at times when some are still breathing — has been delivering rich dividends for them.
The brutality reached a nadir when forest guards at India’s famed Kaziranga National Park who heard gunshots just a distance away from the forest lodge where Britain’s Prince William and Catherine Middleton had halted just hours earlier in April found an adult male rhinoceros riddled with bullets fired by poachers from AK-47 assault rifles. The animal’s horn had been wrenched off and as many as 88 empty AK-47 cartridges were found scattered at the bloodied spot.
A rhino’s horn fetches Rs500,000 (about A$10,000) in the local market and goes up to Rs2,000,000 (about A$40,000) by the time it is consumed as aphrodisiac in China or Vietnam. Eleven rhinos have fallen to poachers in Kaziranga this year and 17 were killed last year, bringing the toll to 200 over the past 15 years. Twenty-six more died in the heavy flooding during the current monsoon. A rhino’s ‘horn’ does not grow out of its skull, but is actually agglutinated hair that can be knocked off by a sharp blow…Click HERE to read full article.
