Defending wildlife from poachers

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Michael Pflanz

Damien Mander stands with four rangers he has trained to prevent poaching in Zimbabwe.

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Mike Pflanz

Chelepele Phiri, the head antipoaching ranger in the Stanley and Livingstone Private Game Reserve in Zimbabwe, wears a camouflage suit during patrols.

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Binsar Bakkara/AP

Activists from the Orangutan Information Center (OIC) stabilize a tranquilized orangutan they rescued from a palm oil plantation in Padang Tualang, North Sumatra, Indonesia, July 21, 2013. Orangutans in Indonesia's Borneo and Sumatra island are facing severe threats from habitat loss, illegal logging, fires, and poaching.

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Ben Curtis/AP

A herd of adult and baby elephants walks in the dawn light in Amboseli National Park in southern Kenya as Mount Kilimanjaro, Africa's highest mountain, looms in the background.

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James Morgan/WWF-Canon/AP

Two convicted elephant poachers are handcuffed at the jail in Oyem, Gabon, June 25, 2012. Poverty and a lack of jobs are key drivers for people to get involved in poaching. While there is big money in the trade of illegal wildlife, it is the crime syndicates that profit - almost never the poacher who takes the risks in the field or faces jail time. The illicit trade in wildlife is worth at least $19 billion, making it the fourth largest illegal global criminal activity after narcotics, counterfeiting, and human trafficking, according to a report commissioned by the World Wildlife Fund.

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Philimon Bulawayo/Reuters

A Zimbabwe National Parks and Wildlife Management official checks ivory inside a storeroom in Harare, Aug. 22, 2012. Zimbabwe has accumulated 50 tons of ivory, which it wants to auction off and use the money to fund animal conservation efforts. The ivory has been confiscated from poachers or recovered as a result of natural deaths or government-sanctioned elephant culls.

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Vivek Prakash/Reuters

Green turtles swim in a tank at a hatchery in Kosgoda, Sri Lanka, on July 7, 2009. Sri Lanka is home to five of the world's eight turtle species. Turtle hatcheries along the coast provide jobs and a way to help combat the poaching of turtle eggs.

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Joseph Okanga/Reuters

Members of the public help to move one of the three turtles killed by poachers at a beach in Mombasa, Kenya, on Dec. 3, 2012.

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James Morgan/WWF-Canon/AP

A white rhino lounges in Nairobi National Park on Sep. 19, 2012. Well-armed and well-organized poaching crime syndicates are systematically hunting the rhinos for the big money their horns can bring on the global black market.

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Siphiwe Sibeko/Reuters

An antipoaching aircraft named Seeker is shown to reporters at the Kruger National Park in South African on Dec. 4, 2012. South Africa, home to nearly all the continent's rhinos, has taken its war against rhino poaching to the skies by deploying a high-tech, low-speed reconnaissance aircraft to detect illegal hunters before they strike. The plane is equipped with sophisticated heat sensors to detect animals and humans on the ground.

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China Daily/Reuters

An oriental white stork spreads its wings on a box before it was released into the wild by its rescuers, who saved it after it was poisoned in Tianjin, China, on Nov. 21, 2012. The endangered storks grabbed headlines when 20 of the birds died of poisoning in northern China. According to Xinhua News Agency, poachers poisoned the wild birds within a wetland nature reserve, where 20 were found dead and 13 others sickened, sparking a public outcry for intensified protection of wild animals and harsher punishments for those behind their deaths.

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Mike Groll/AP

Captain Michael Van Durme of the New York State Department of Environmental Conservation holds a box turtle at a news conference in Albany, N.Y., on March 19, 2009. An undercover investigation into poaching and illegal sales of New York's native turtles, snakes, and salamanders led to charges against 25 people.

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Kyle Grantham/Star-Tribune/AP

State wildlife officials in Casper, Wyo., displayed seized elk and antelope mounts on Oct. 3, 2012.

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Dita Alangkara/AP

Activists at the Center for Orangutan Protection had their faces painted during a protest demanding better treatment of the animals by the government at the Ragunan Zoo in Jakarta, Indonesia, on Aug. 4, 2011. The activists accused the zoo of not providing a decent living environment for their orangutans, causing them to fall into depression. Orangutan populations in Indonesia's Borneo and Sumatra islands are facing severe threats from habitat loss, illegal logging, fires, and poaching.

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Reuters

A male Sumatran tiger is kept in a cage while awaiting transfer from the Natural Resources Conservation Center in Aceh province to a safari park in West Java April 26, 2010. The World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF) has warned that the Sumatran tiger could be extinct within a decade due to poaching and illegal logging.

Defending wildlife from poachers

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