4 Arrested for Rhino Poaching including SANparks Employee

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4 Poachers were arrested in Kruger National Park in South Africa including a South African National Parks employee. The four men were found to be in possession of freshly cut rhino horns, rifles and ammunition attempting to flee the park before being caught. Rangers were tipped off and managed to block the perpetrators from leaving essentially arresting them and confiscating their vehicles and possessions. 

A representative for SANpark said that they are always upset when an employee is involved in these sorts of poaching activities but it is unfortunately commonplace. Rhino horns are worth a significant amount of money and poachers will often risk their lives to obtain these horns in hopes of financial gain. What's especially disturbing is that employees of the SANpark organization will attempt to get hired solely for the purpose of slipping under the radar and gaining access to these beautiful animals.  

Rhino poaching is slowly declining thanks to the efforts of rangers and conservation authorities who literally risk their lives to protect these animals every day. Although it is declining, it doesn't mean this fight is over. As this story indicates, there are still people out there who fail to see the value of these animals' lives over their value in death and will continue to poach them trying to make big dollars. Rhinos are an endangered species and what these assholes don't realize is that once they go out and shoot all of these rhinos, there will be absolutely no way to continue making this money they're after. They have absolutely no common sense in my opinion.

Greed is such a horrible trait attributed to humans because it will push us to do awful things without thinking. Obviously, the idea of wiping a species off of the planet is not enough of a deterrence so you have to wonder, what other things are these awful people capable of? I've had a lot of personal experience with greed and I know for a fact that it always leads to negative outcomes. Don't get me wrong, I've also always been very giving and eager to help my friends or family when they needed it but I know first hand the dangers of greed and the poisonous effect it has on us. Always longing for more despite having what we need will cause us to go out of our way to do things that are almost always wrong and will have negative outcomes. Greed is such a big motivating factor when it comes to poaching because the dream of getting rich trumps any common sense or logic about a situation making it one of the most dangerous of the seven deadly sins.

As I said, rhino poaching has seen a decline thanks to the hard work of everyone who fights daily to protect them but this fight is far from over. What I think we need to see is countries that are sourcing this ivory taking a stand and banning it entirely. These places that are taking in the ivory are just as guilty as those who go out and poach the rhinos because without demand there would be no need for poaching. As I said, this greed is a continuous loop of problems that will only end when either ivory is banned globally or when there are absolutely no rhinos left and we inevitably go to synthetics to create the goods we currently use ivory for. Knowing this, why are these countries not swapping out ivory now in place of synthetics because if they continue down this path, that will be the inevitable outcome.

Anyways, I hope these 4 men get exactly what they deserve and end up in prison for what they're done but I also hope that the people and places who are searching for ivory will get their heads out of their asses and realize that ivory is for rhinos and elephants and not for stupid trinkets, statues, and jewelry. 

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