#38 Animal Investigators by Laurel A. Neme

[missingvolume]

The full title is Animal Investigators: How the World's First Wildlife Forensics Lab Is Catching Poachers, Solving Crimes, and Saving Endangered Species. I had heard an interview with the author and decided to pick this up and give it a try. The book covers a few completely different cases in the US that the lab worked on. They discuss how they came up with different ways to tell how a walrus died in order to show they were killed only for their ivory. the book doesn't get into the hard science that much but it was a rather interesting peek into the world of wildlife protection.

 

Comments

[mrmeval.livejournal.com]

They go after poachers with a vengeance here. Our game animal population was almost gone prior to conservation laws and taxes. Now there are abundant to excess. I have tried to buy a hunting license every year even though I don't hunt because my state does such a good job at it. That and the taxes on guns, ammo have funded conservation efforts. Poachers don't pay what is required and take too much, they screw up the game counts, commit trespass and can be dangerous to people.

We have so many deer now. More than can be documented to have existed in the past. Squirrels have fallen in recent years due to some seasonal issue so they've restricted their hunting. But we still have more than my grandfather would seen.

If we could apply the same conservation methods to walrus, whale, seals and other marine life I think the same would happen.

And then there are domesticated livestock that can't go extinct until we do.

ASIG.

[missingvolume.livejournal.com]

When I was a kid we had a problem of jerks hunting on land you knew they didn't have permission to hunt on and shooting towards our house. s we would go out and shoot nearby which would actually get them to SEE the house and then they would mumble something ans stomp off. Was useless to call the county since response time would be 30 minutes or more for anything bad and 6 or more hours for low priority stuff.

The problem with marine is the area is so big and under international waters and you can't get everyone on board.

[mrmeval.livejournal.com]

There were several incidents where poachers with high power rifles were shot. High power is illegal here. The land owner did not suffer for the shooting.

[missingvolume.livejournal.com]

How sad for the poachers. NOT!