Will Poachers Use Scientific Tagging To Hunt Endangered Animals

Canadian scientist Steven Cooke is concerned that people
will hack into scientific tracking devices on animals to
harm or kill the animals. 

It seems like every day, I find new ways in which bad people use good technology to do something horrible.

The other day I wrote about the possibility of people making fake news out of virtual people to blackmail, destroy reputations or worse.

Today, I came across another one:
Scientists and researchers often put electronic tags on wild and endangered animals so they can track their movements, behavior and habitat to learn how to keep them safe and prevent them from going extinct.

That, of course, is wonderful.

Now,  however, we learn that scientists are worried that poachers will gain access to this tracking data to learn where animals are in real time, so they can hunt them down.

Nothing like the corpse of an endangered wild animal to prove you're a real he-man. Especially when you cheat and use technology to illegally kill the animal

According to Phys.org,  Carleton University (Ottawa, Canada) biology professor has found lots of ancedotal evidence that tools scientists use to study and protect animals are being hijacked to cause harm or exploit animals and fish.

Cooke is the lead author of a a paper on this subject that appeared in the journal Conservation Biology.

Complicating the issue is many scientists get government funding, and people who want to access the tracking devices say that since public funds are being used to conduct the studies, the public should have access to the data.

Plus, scientists are usually eager to share data with colleagues to advance knowledge about the subject at hand, which is usually a good thing.

However, even as scientists use and share the data to gain more understanding of the natural world, others get access so they can destroy that natural world for fun and profit.

For instance, Phys.org says, anglers in Minnesota petitioned for access to data on northern pike movements, arguing that the data was publicly funded. (The anglers wanted to use the data to find the pike and gain prize catches.)

In India, there were attempts to hack GPS data on endangered Bengal tigers to engage in what's being called "cyber poaching."

Cooke said ranchers were interfering with tracking data as wolves were being re-introduced in Yellowstone National Park and divers in the Bahamas were removing satellite tags from sharks.

Phys.org said Cooke got the idea to look into this issue when he took his family on a vacation to Banff National Park in Canada last summer.

There, park rangers banned VHF radio receivers after they learned photographers used telemetry to track tagged animals.

True, the photographers did not intend to harm the animals, but the park rangers worried that too much human interaction would make the animals spooked, stressed or habituated to people.

Once again, then, we have people using technology to be total creeps.

Cooke told the CBC the issue is a wake-up calland he hopes the scientific community can discuss strategies for working with animal tracking data that advances science, protects animals and preserves the interests of the public as well.

Outrage: Elephants Poisoned, Killed So Morons Can Make Male Sex Pills That Don't Work

Worst person on earth nominees now include at least six people in Zimbabwe who poisoned a watering hole with cyanide so that elephants would drink the water and die.

Why are there so many people in the world who
think the only thing these beautiful animals are
good for is ugly jewelry and fake sex pills
for stupid, horny old men?  

And die they did. At least 41 elephants died, and many more animals that came in contact with the water, or the elephants also died. 

Why did these idiots kill the elephants, especially in such an awful way? The usual illegal trade in ivory from the elephants' tusks.

A lot of that ivory ends up in "medication," mostly in Asia, where some men think the stuff makes them virile and manly men.

Of course, the people taking these pills likely know on some level the ivory came from elephants that had been killed brutally and illegally. With that knowledge, I can't fathom how these guys can be called real men in any sense of the word.

The ivory is also made into jewelry and knick knacks. So scummy women wear the ivory jewelry too, or have the stuff in their houses, even though they know the background on the ivory. They deserve a place in hell, too.

I can hear people asking me why I'm so outraged about elephants being gassed and poisoned while I'm silent on how the Syrian government has apparently been busily gassing its own citizens.

Yep, the Syrian attacks on its citizens are indeed even worse than the elephant slaughter in Zimbabwe. But the two tragedies are cut from exactly the same cloth. They reflect the deepest possible disdain for life in trying to achieve some of the dumbest, most selfish goals humanly possible.

The Syrian leadership's struggle to stay in power, even if it means gassing its own citizen, to me is just as dumb and just as arrogant as killing elephants to make ugly jewelry and fake sex pills for narcisstic, self-entitled scumbags.

I'm not holier than thou, and I'm sure many of my consumer buying decisions hurt people or animals all over the world. I'm just the same as most people in that regard. My hands aren't clean.

But I'm amazed that the arrogant and the power hungry never stop to consider the enormous crimes they commit -- the families they're wiping out, or the majestic, fascinating and smart animals they're killing for their unimportant personal satisfaction.

Hey, if I can live in a palace and buy ugly, rare jewelry, so what if a few hundred people or elephants die?

I don't have a good solution for either the Syrian problem or the elephant slaughter in Africa. Syria has got worldwide politics in tangles, and has inspired petty arguments over what to do. It seems hopeless to me.

In regards to the elephants, I don't have any good ideas, either. According to the Mail and Guardian of Africa, about 25,000 elephants were killed for their tusks in the past year. 

Governments around the world are trying to combat the poaching trade, but there are not enough resources, not enough effort to stop it, and make the purchase of ivory toxic to anyone attempting it.

Salon reported that even things like the sequestration budget cuts in the United States are hurting enforcement, since U.S. Fish and Wildlife now can't afford to fill vacant positions for investigation into illegal worldwide elephant and rhino tusk trade.  

Of course, we'll never be able to stamp out greedy, stupid people in the world, I know that. But the nasty side of my brain wishes we could force the poachers to drink cyanide, or gas the people gassing citizens in Syria.

But that would just bring us down to their miserable level, won't it?