Zimbabwe is in an ongoing war against ivory poachers who are looking to harvest the horns of elephants and rhinos to sell for thousands of dollars. In Africa ivory roughly has the same value of gold and is believed to cure diseases such as cancer. Because of this, the demand of ivory has skyrocketed. Around fifty rhinos where killed in Zimbabwe last year for there horns, so wildlife conservationists set out to solve the problem. They plan on removing horns of the 100 adult rhinos that live in state game parks. Unfortunately it costs over one thousand dollars to sedate a rhino which is required when removing a horn. Horns also grow back each year so one would have to repeat this process each year in order to keep poaching down. This method has actually been proven to drastically reduce the number of rhinos poached all though it does have its flaws. A major flaw to this method is that the horns grow back fairly quickly. This makes this method relatively unsustainable as it is an expensive procedure. This method also does not fundamentally fix the problem Africa is having. Ivory is deeply routed in African societies and has become a source of income for many families. In order to truly fix this problem, one would have to introduce an alternate source of income for many of these families. One would also have to disprove the idea that ivory helps cure diseases. I have heard of ideas about a dye that can be injected into the ivory causing it to be unusable in ivory trade and it is relatively cheap. This is a fantastic idea although again, one would have to provide an alternate source of income to aid with the economic fall from a lack of ivory. http://thescienceexplorer.com/nature/zimbabwe-dehorning-its-rhinos-curb-poaching
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The Passaic River in New Jersey has been polluted with heavy metals, dumped chemicals and pesticides from factories for centuries. Staying away has turned second nature for the residents of Newark, as they know never to fish, swim boat or interact at all with the river to the the carcinogens infesting the water source. The Environmental Protection Agency recently finalized a $1.4 billion plan to restore an 8-mile stretch of the river. Roughly 100 companies are at fault for polluting the river. One unfortunate aspect of this article is that they never present the idea of stopping companies from releasing these pollutants into he water. Some also ague that a simple 8-mile clean up will only be a short temporary fix and that the EPA took an easy way out, with the least financial burden and the least resistance from opposing businesses faulted for polluting the water. The EPA insists that this cleaning will be a big step forward for the ultimate goal of having the entire rive usable by people. Ultimately, it seems as though cleaning an 8-mile stretch of a flowing river will have minimal long term impact. https://www.washingtonpost.com/national/health-science/can-the-epa-clean-up-one-of-americas-most-toxic-rivers/2016/08/19/f9314c74-5829-11e6-831d-0324760ca856_story.html |
Alex Garcia-Environmentalist Archives
December 2016
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