How much do you know about illegal poachers who are hated by the whole world?

Let's first look at some data:

In 2014, the price of rhino horn was $60,000 per kilogram;

Ivory (wild): US$2,142 per kilogram;

Ivory (China): USD 730 per kilogram.

Yes, these wildlife parts are very expensive, so the illegal wildlife trade is worth tens of billions of dollars every year.

What this has led to is a sharp decline in the numbers of hundreds of species, including tigers, bears, elephants, and rhinos.

At the same time, poachers and criminal groups have made huge profits.

Behind the illegal wildlife trade is a group of people - wildlife poachers.

A wildlife poacher is someone who illegally captures and kills wild animals.

So how do these poachers operate? Let's take a look today.

Poachers can actually be divided into several categories:

01 Local residents forced to make a living

In many areas, there are still places where humans and wildlife coexist.

In order to make a living, these local residents still rely on hunting like their ancient ancestors.

They don't care what the animals they kill are, nor do they care how much the animals are worth. They only care about whether there is meat on their table today.

02 Commercial Poachers

This is a large group of poachers who are after money.

They sell wildlife parts such as feathers, skins, teeth, claws and other parts suitable as souvenirs to out-of-town tourists who are unsure of the origin of the items.

In addition, commercial poachers are also keen on extremely rare species.

Clouded leopard - an Asian big cat living in Indonesia, originally distributed in Taiwan Province of my country and Singapore.

However, a few decades ago, all clouded leopards in Taiwan Province and Singapore became extinct, and currently the total number of clouded leopards in the world is only about 10,000.

Unfortunately, they lost another member of their family not long ago when a poacher openly posted photos of killing a clouded leopard on Facebook.

In the photo, one person is pinching the clouded leopard's neck, and another is grabbing its tail. The clouded leopard's head hangs down weakly, and it seems to be dead.

The poachers were laughing wildly.

03 Criminal Group

These are the top poachers who don't do the poaching themselves.

Criminal gangs typically buy up prey captured by commercial poachers and sell them to domestic and international buyers.

Many of these wildlife products are used to bribe corporate executives and government officials at all levels.

In 2015, Ugandan authorities seized three boxes of smuggled goods in a shipment to Amsterdam.

This includes 2,000 kilograms of pangolin scales and about 700 kilograms of ivory.

In Africa and Asia, high-value targets are elephant tusks, rhino horns and leopard skins.

The targets of Asian poachers include Asian black bear bile, clouded leopard and South China tiger skins and bones.

Among the people, bear bile is considered an indispensable traditional medicine;

Bear paws and tiger bones are also considered to be very nutritious, so these species are inhumanely hunted.

According to BBC statistics, more than 200 Indian rhinos were killed by poachers between 2006 and 2017.

(Number of rhinos poached in India from 2006 to 2017)

In many national parks in Kenya, the poaching situation of rhinos is also not optimistic.

(Number of rhinos poached in Kenya from 2006 to 2018)

Leopards are even more pitiful because the spots on their skin are called rosettes.

A few centuries ago, when India was still under British colonial rule.

At that time, the Queen of England was very fond of various ornaments made from leopard skins, so hunting big cats became a tradition in India.

Now we have a seller and the goods, but we still need one more thing, and that is a buyer.

Without buyers, poachers cannot make money from the wild animals they illegally capture.

Take the tiger as an example.

China's trade in tiger parts (skins, bones, penises, etc.) officially ended in 1993.

However, in foreign countries such as Southeast Asia, medicines and products related to tiger parts are still produced.

The main export destinations are India, Russia, Indonesia, China and Cambodia.

Since ancient times, the Chinese have been full of reverence for tigers and are very fond of tiger parts such as tiger skin, tiger bones, tiger meat, tiger penis, etc.

In 2014, China publicly stated that it would allow the trade in tiger skins, but tiger bones are still banned.

In the 1990s, the main tiger bone importers were Belgium, Canada, Japan, Malaysia and the United States.

Among them, Japan and the United States are the countries with the largest import volumes.

Tiger bones are mainly used to make "tiger bone wine", which is said to be a traditional Chinese medicine with health benefits, but its effectiveness is unknown (I haven't tried it, and I can't afford it).

In 2007, Qinhuangdao Wildlife Park was exposed for selling so-called tiger bone wine directly to tourists, priced at US$83 per 250 ml bottle.

However, it was later confirmed that what they were selling was not tiger bone wine, but tiger skin.

It may be difficult for us to stop poachers from poaching, but we can boycott wildlife products and cut off their dreams of getting rich!