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Unsustainable use and poaching are on the rise worldwide, and
have been growing problems since the early 1990s. Indeed, af-
ter a drop following the “poacher wars” in Africa in the 1960s to
early 1980s, poaching gradually started again as enforcement
went down, such as in the Serengeti (Metzger
et al.
, 2010).
Poaching also increased again in Central Asia and neighbour-
ing China following the changes in the former USSR, and it
has been particularly high since the mid-1990s. In Southeast
Asia, as well as across Africa and Latin America, there has been
an increase in poaching since the mid-2000s.
In Africa and Southeast Asia, the ivory trade and demand for
Rhino horn has increased substantially. In September 2011,
WWF reported that poachers had killed 287 rhinos in South
Africa in 2011 alone (WWF, 2011; CNN, 2011), including six-
teen critically endangered black rhinos, and the rhino is prob-
ably extinct in the Democratic Republic of Congo (UNEP,
2010a). A shift has also been noted towards substantial
poaching on the forest elephant in central and western Africa
Poaching
Figure 7:
Major smuggling routes for rhino horn to and from
Nepal (UNEP, 2010b)
.
(UNEP, 2010b). Many other migratory ungulate species are
also exposed to poaching.
Overexploitation is the primary threat to large herbivores in
central Eurasia. The dramatic decline of the Saiga antelope
(
Saiga tatarica
) from approximately 1 million animals to less
than 50,000 within a decade following the collapse of the So-
viet Union is probably the fastest population crash of a large
mammal in the last hundred years. This long-distance migrant
is valuable for its meat and horn, the latter of which is used in
Traditional Chinese Medicine. Poachers target the saiga males
since only these bear the precious horn (see photos), which in
turn has led to a reproductive collapse and the species becom-
ing Critically Endangered (Milner-Gulland
et al.
, 2003).
In this vast region, poaching rose dramatically during the
1990s to mid-2000s. Chiru antelopes (
Pantholops hodgsonii
),
which are wanted for their highly valuable Shahtoosh wool,
were exposed to heavy poaching and dropped from an estimat-
Source: Field investigation, Christian Nellemann, UNEP-GRID/Arendal.
Rhino horn
Ivory
Smuggling routes
CHINA
INDIA
YEMEN
OMAN
INDONESIA
SOUTH
KOREA
AND JAPAN