LETTER: The Covid-19 crisis, besides having a deep socio-economic impact, might profoundly affect wildlife conservation, with potentially long-lasting effects. During the lockdown, large parts of the country lacked patrolling and monitoring from scientists, rangers or tourists.
This severely reduced the likelihood of detecting threats and probably fostered opportunities to exploit endangered wildlife species. The reduction of enforcement could cause a surge of illegal killing of wildlife.
The absence of rangers and tourists effectively opens more territory and increases the available stock of the target resource for poachers. Poaching is the illegal hunting, killing, or capturing of wild animals, in violation of local, state, federal or international law.
Activities that are considered poaching include killing an animal out of season, without a licence, with a prohibited weapon, or in a prohibited manner. Wildlife poaching has negative side effects that affect local communities, wildlife populations and the environment.
It is a crime fuelled by a lucrative black market trade of animal parts. The animal parts are sold as novelty items and for their "medicinal" properties. Poachers sometimes kill trophy wildlife with the intent of selling it. It can be a lucrative enterprise since trophy heads from rare wildlife may be worth thousands of dollars on the black market.
Trophy hunting is the activity of killing animals in order to display part or all of their bodies as trophies. Some poachers like to shoot unsuspecting animals dead with powerful rifles from a safe distance and then pose with the remains of these poor creatures in order to flaunt their supposed virility.
We have no idea why these people consider such acts of cowardice and callous brutality to be a show of manliness. To these poachers, trophy hunting is essentially recreational big game hunting, a competition to see who can bag the most impressive, ornamental animal head.
These hunters may think that all they do is kill individual animals. Yet, trophy hunters can drive entire species extinct. According to researchers, by targeting high-quality males because of their prominent ornaments like large horns or antlers, trophy hunters can diminish the gene pools of wild populations.
And that can pose a significant risk when environmental factors also play a part in putting pressure on a species. Because these high-quality males with large secondary sexual traits tend to father a high proportion of the offspring, their "good genes" can spread rapidly, so populations of strongly sexually selected animals can adapt quickly to new environments.
Removing these males reverses this effect and could have serious and unintended consequences. Our ecosystems are sensitive and must be preserved. The economic challenges of a community can lead to poaching, which in turn can lead to endangerment (and in the worst cases, extinction) of different species.
We need various species of flora and fauna in our environmental ecosystems to ensure a healthy balance. The survival of our own species depends on it. Ironically, the Covid-19 pandemic and the measures put in place to contain its diffusion are taking a toll on wildlife conservation.
OSWALD TIMOTHY EDWARD
Senior Lecturer
Faculty of Business & Management
UiTM, Johor