Reflection - the figures prove it, the leopard doesn't have many friends
While illegal wildlife trade is not the leopard's only problem in a human dominated world, targeted poaching is a deadly killer.
A few days ago at higher altitudes I had some time to reflect as I had several hours walking while gathering coordinates for placement of wildlife monitoring tech for a supply to the Annapurna Conservation Area Project (ACAP). LeopardEye is slowly but surely gathering momentum but there’s a long way to go before we’re anywhere the scale we need to be.
That reflection, well, now that I’m at my laptop working on the end of year ‘Blood of the Leopard’ report, I still, after all these years can’t get my head around just how many leopards have been killed for illegal wildlife trade.
And I still can’t get my head around why more people don’t care about this.
At Facebook, along with the screenshot at the top of this page, I’ve just posted:
These are figures from a previous report I did, I'm currently preparing material for the 'Blood of the Leopard' report at the end of the year. The trajectory continues at the same rate so the overall figures for the first quarter of the century are at a level of carnage a lot more people should care about - yet they don't, exposing a serious hypocrisy. In the middle of this month I go into this more deeply at my Substack coinciding with website updates. We're at a critical stage with all this, illegal wildlife trade in general, as I've mentioned before the apathy around it reminds me so much of climate change awareness in the early days, people did not take notice until it was too late. For thousands of leopards and a staggering number of other wild animals, it's already too late. Right now, we can only protect what we can.
As mentioned in that post, I’m only a week or so away from a more detailed reflection here at Substack but I will be monitoring engagement of the post at Facebook. We live in a very superficial world. I can put a stupid picture of my face covered in festival coloring and get hundreds of responses but a post like the one above? The reaction? I’m telling you now it will be minimal.
Do we really care that leopards are slaughtered brutally in such numbers? Do we care about illegal wildlife trade in general?
I know I do.
This afternoon I’ll be working on #AntiSnare tech, something which I find easier than writing reports yet it is for the same cause. Maybe it’s because I don’t have to face the numbers on my screen.
But they are always on my mind…
Targeted poaching of leopards is a deadly, brutal, ongoing horror story. I know we live in a challenging world right now with a lot of alarming things happening but if you can just contemplate that sentence for a few seconds, in the context of individual leopards, so many other wild animals, illegal wildlife trade in general, I’d appreciate it.
The leopard doesn’t have many friends. Please consider being one.