Eco Criminals

Eco criminals are those who commit offenses such as killing wildlife, dumping pesticides into nature, importing wildlife, disposing of hazardous waste, selling migratory bird parts, and more. Hunters who try to get ivory tusks off of elephants, those who go after endangered tigers, even people who hunt wolves in Alaska, are all guilty of eco-crimes against humanity as well as nature. The other sorts of eco criminals such as people who think water is not a human right to have like Nestle, are still those who do the environment harm. In Africa, they still go around hunting elephants for their tusks.

CNN’s article is about the 100,000 elephants killed in 2010-2012, because of the rising demand for ivory in Asia. All this over ivory? Why do we have to even have this discussion in 2018? Angola was going to take steps to shut down the markets when this article was published, in 2016. Criminal gangs, rebel groups, as well as white-collar criminals, they all have a piece of the profit when it comes to destroying ecosystem’s whose crime to deserve this was simply exist, getting in the way of making a profit.

Environmental crime makes $91 billion and $258 billion, in 2016, 26 percent higher than estimated in 2014. The victims of environmental crime are forests, marine ecosystems, animals, plants, coral reefs, and rivers. The victims cannot always fight back. Civil wars get their financial backing from environmental crimes. Illegal gold mining in Colombia is seen as a great way to money launder Colombia's drug trade. At least the United Nations is launching their public awareness of eco crimes campaign, encouraging others to spread the word. Eco-criminality cannot be solved overnight. As a species, we have a lot of work to do. There is a reason why people are talking about a plastic straw ban, which would be hard on disabled people who need plastic straws

Indeed, all the pollution on this planet from plastic alone is a huge eco crime by itself. We can’t take care of the plastic pollution in landfills, all in one day, much less a week or a year. Eco criminals aren’t just those who pollute, they are also animal killers even if plastic also does its fair share of animal killing when it is found in the ocean, seeping into the water, into the fish, and into the ecosystem. Repopulating animal species is difficult. Our seas are polluted, and we are also affecting marine life with our plastic in the ocean. The term “eco criminal” not only refers to illegal poachers but also to “eco-terrorists”, who do things like burn down ski resorts.

An eco-terrorist group called “The Family” was responsible for the $26 million dollar arson attack on the Vail Ski Resort. They are affiliated with the “Earth Liberation Front” and had made threats to them in 1998 by wanting to curtail the expansion of Vail Ski Resort. This is what looks like an ecocrime in the United States, while in Africa it goes back to rhinoceroses being poached for their horns, horns that can command hundreds of thousands of dollars. To solve this problem, researches in South Africa managed to start a database, which allowed them to match a horn to a body.

Park rangers were taught to collect blood, tissue or hair samples from the body. The database has been modeled after Codis, the FBI criminal database, but the South Africans named their database Rhodis. We can’t solve all world problems just by thinking about it. As of January 19th, 2018, the article states that 7,000 rhinos have been killed in the last 10 -years. The World Wildlife Fund estimates that 20,000 to 30,000 African elephants are killed each year for the tusks. Elephant tusks had sold for $1,000 a kilo as of January 2018. This means that the death toll times the price is $20,000-30,000. If that doesn’t disgust you, then what else will?

Works Cited

http://www.cnn.com/2008/CRIME/11/19/fbi.ecoterrorism/index.html

https://www.cnn.com/2016/06/06/opinions/tackling-environmental-crime-steiner/index.html

https://www.independent.co.uk/news/long_reads/how-a-poaching-scene-is-a-crime-scene-a8150006.html

https://www.mnn.com/earth-matters/politics/blogs/seven-eco-criminals-getting-pardoned-by-president-bush