Operation Lock and the War on Rhino Poaching

Operation Lock and the War on Rhino Poaching

Author: John Hanks

Publisher: Penguin Random House South Africa

Published: 2015-05-08

Total Pages: 393

ISBN-13: 177022730X

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The aggressive poaching of rhinos needs to be countered with equal aggression. So argued Prince Bernhard of the Netherlands, the founder president of the World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF), at a 1987 meeting with John Hanks, conservation expert and WWF’s head in Africa. The result was Operation Lock, a secret initiative funded by Prince Bernhard and staffed by former SAS operatives. Operation Lock set up headquarters in Johannesburg and extended its reach into neighbouring states: Namibia, Zambia, Botswana, Swaziland and Mozambique. Its operatives planned to train game rangers, to pose as rhino horn traders in order to entrap buyers, and to expose the kingpins who were driving the trade. It was a controversial approach, all the more because it was working within apartheid South Africa in the late 1980s. When the existence of the project was finally leaked, WWF denied any involvement, and John Hanks took the fall. In Operation Lock and the War on Rhino Poaching, John Hanks finally tells the story of these explosive events from 25 years ago. As a leading international authority on conservation, he also deals with the scourge of rhino poaching up to the present, and gives powerful and controversial criticism of some of the current policies to curb poaching.


Killing for Profit

Killing for Profit

Author: Julian Rademeyer

Publisher: Penguin Random House South Africa

Published: 2012

Total Pages: 0

ISBN-13: 9781770223349

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If you are concerned about the survival of an endangered animal species and the environment in general, this is the one book you'll want to read this year.


Security and Conservation

Security and Conservation

Author: Rosaleen Duffy

Publisher: Yale University Press

Published: 2022-01-01

Total Pages: 302

ISBN-13: 0300230184

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An exploration of the scale, practical reality, and future implications of the growing integration of biodiversity conservation with global security concerns "There are few keener observers of international biodiversity conservation than Rosaleen Duffy. With a ferocity of purpose, she investigates the tenuous connection and nuances among illegal wildlife trade, terrorism threats, and national security."--Steven R. Brechin, Rutgers University, New Brunswick Debates regarding environmental security risks have generally focused on climate change and geopolitical water conflicts. Biodiversity conservation, however, is increasingly identified as a critical contributor to national and global security. The illegal wildlife trade is often articulated as a driver of biodiversity losses, and as a source of finance for organized crime networks, armed groups, and even terrorist networks. Conservationists, international organizations, and national governments have raised concerns about "convergence" of wildlife trafficking with other serious offenses, including theft, fraud, corruption, drugs and human trafficking, counterfeiting, firearms smuggling, and money laundering. In Security and Conservation, Rosaleen Duffy examines the scale, practical reality, and future implications of the growing integration of biodiversity conservation with global security concerns. Duffy takes a political ecology approach to develop a deeper understanding of how and why wildlife conservation turned toward security-oriented approaches to tackle the illegal wildlife trade.


The Last Two

The Last Two

Author: Bostjan Videmsek

Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield

Published: 2023-08-15

Total Pages: 249

ISBN-13: 1538178478

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This is the story of the last two northern white rhinos, Najin and Fatu, as the species has fallen victim to poaching, wars, climate change, and Asian economic boom to become functionally extinct, as well as the story of the scientists and conservationists around the world fighting to save the species through scientific innovation.


Great Tuskers of Africa

Great Tuskers of Africa

Author: Johan Marais

Publisher:

Published: 2012

Total Pages: 222

ISBN-13: 9780143530466

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There was a time when the African elephant roamed the entire continent at will and was able to live out its long life in harmony with its environment. The bull elephants who became known as great tuskers, the hundred-pounders of colonial times, were plentiful. But throughout the ages man has relentlessly hunted these majestic beasts for their ivory and this, combined with the loss of its habitat to ever-increasing human populations, brought of the continent. In the twenty-first century a great tusker will only be found in a conservation area, and it will be a rare and unforgettable sighting. In Great Tuskers of Africa Johan Marais and David Hadaway share their passion for the giants of the wilderness providing a celebration in words and pictures of past and present tuskers, and capturing the grace and dignity, and the mystery and romance of these extraordinary animals. '. . . a grand parade of the rarest of the elephants, the magnificent old tuskers of Africa . . . ' Iain Douglas-Hamilton


Ivory

Ivory

Author: Keith Somerville

Publisher: Oxford University Press

Published: 2019-10-30

Total Pages: 412

ISBN-13: 1787382222

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Half of Tanzania's elephants have been killed for their ivory since 2007. A similar alarming story can be told of the herds in northern Mozambique and across swathes of central Africa, with forest elephants losing almost two-thirds of their numbers to the tusk trade. The huge rise in poaching and ivory smuggling in the new millennium has destroyed the hope that the 1989 ivory trade ban had capped poaching and would lead to a long-term fall in demand. But why the new upsurge? The answer is not simple. Since ancient times, large-scale killing of elephants for their tusks has been driven by demand outside Africa's elephant ranges - from the Egyptian pharaohs through Imperial Rome and industrialising Europe and North America to the new wealthy business class of China. And, who poaches and why do they do it? In recent years lurid press reports have blamed mass poaching on rebel movements and armed militias, especially Somalia's Al Shabaab, tying two together two evils - poaching and terrorism. But does this account stand up to scrutiny? This new and ground-breaking examination of the history and politics of ivory in Africa forensically examines why poaching happens in Africa and why it is corruption, crime and politics, rather than insurgency, that we should worry about.


National Park Science

National Park Science

Author: Jane Carruthers

Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Published: 2017-08-17

Total Pages: 563

ISBN-13: 1107191440

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This book explains the changing philosophies and permutations in research and management of South Africa's national parks during the twentieth century.


Keystone of 22 SAS

Keystone of 22 SAS

Author: Alan Hoe

Publisher: Pen and Sword

Published: 2019-03-30

Total Pages: 364

ISBN-13: 1526745062

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This British military biography tells the full story of the Lieutenant Colonel who helped turn the 22nd SAS into the world’s leading special forces unit. Despite its successes during World War II, the future of the British Army’s Special Air Service was uncertain for years afterward. In the 1950s, it was resurrected as the 22nd SAS Regiment to take part in the Malayan Emergency, and over time evolved into one of the British military’s most important units. This renaissance was brought about by a small group of highly motivated officers. Of these, Lieutenant Colonel John Woodhouse stood out for his energy, expertise, and courage. Written by an SAS insider, this biography demonstrates how Woodhouse played a pivotal role in transforming the 22nd SAS into an elite fighting force. Woodhouse led the regiment through campaigns in Oman, Borneo, Radfan and South Arabia, as it built its unrivaled reputation. After leaving the Army, Woodhouse became a sought-after counter-terrorist consultant taking an advisory and active role in operations worldwide. While Colonel Sir David Stirling publicly acknowledged Woodhouse as a cofounder of the 22nd SAS, the full story of his role has not been widely recognized. As this fascinating book reveals, without his efforts there would probably be no 22nd SAS today.


The Shotgun Conservationist

The Shotgun Conservationist

Author: Brant MacDuff

Publisher: Timber Press

Published: 2023-04-25

Total Pages: 339

ISBN-13: 1643260146

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At the intersection of hunting and conservation, a man shares his personal journey from staunch anti-hunter to compassionate, ethical hunter, weaving together a larger history of humans, animals, the environment, and our food systems. The Shotgun Conservationist doesn’t teach us how to hunt, it explores why we should hunt. As public lands remain imperiled, factory farms pollute the earth and subject animals to inhumane conditions, and global uncertainty presses us all to be more self-sufficient, there has never been a better time to take up hunting. Writer, natural historian, and public speaker Brant MacDuff has done just that. An avid animal lover and raised as a non-hunter, MacDuff started his journey intending to investigate the claim that “hunting is conservation.” So convinced, he now holds a hunting license in four states and gives lectures on the positive impact it has on conservation efforts nationwide. Armed with years of experience in the field and a deep love for the natural world, MacDuff tells the provocative, humorous, and insightful story of how he became a hunter. Along the way, readers meet a cast of colorful characters and learn the firsthand research that helped change Brant’s mind. You may not book a hunting trip after reading The Shotgun Conservationist, but you’ll have a new perspective on and appreciation for those that do.


Safari Nation

Safari Nation

Author: Jacob S. T. Dlamini

Publisher: Ohio University Press

Published: 2020-04-22

Total Pages: 420

ISBN-13: 0821440888

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Safari Nation opens new lines of inquiry in the study of national parks in Africa and the rest of the world. The Kruger National Park is South Africa’s most iconic nature reserve, renowned for its rich flora and fauna. According to author Jacob Dlamini, there is another side to the park, a social history neglected by scholars and popular writers alike in which blacks (meaning Africans, Coloureds, and Indians) occupy center stage. Safari Nation details the ways in which black people devoted energies to conservation and to the park over the course of the twentieth century—engagement that transcends the stock (black) figure of the laborer and the poacher. By exploring the complex and dynamic ways in which blacks of varying class, racial, religious, and social backgrounds related to the Kruger National Park, and with the help of previously unseen archival photographs, Dlamini’s narrative also sheds new light on how and why Africa’s national parks—often derided by scholars as colonial impositions—survived the end of white rule on the continent. Relying on oral histories, photographs, and archival research, Safari Nation engages both with African historiography and with ongoing debates about the “land question,” democracy, and citizenship in South Africa.