How Illegal Weapons Fuel Poaching—and Poaching Fuels the Illegal Weapons Trade
The free flow of weapons in Africa makes it too easy for poachers to arm themselves.
Gun control is on everyone’s minds at the moment, especially here in the U.S. Could better gun control help stop the elephant and rhino slaughter in Africa too?
A research organization in Switzerland called the Small Arms Survey recently dedicated an entire chapter in its 2015 annual report to weapons trends in elephant and rhino poaching in Africa—from which armed groups are illegally killing animals to which types of guns and ammo they prefer.
The report highlights just how closely the free flow of guns in Africa facilitates poaching, and how poaching, in turn, can facilitate the arms trade.
“The rates of poaching have increased dramatically, so we were interested in looking at some of those issues, including the role of
