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Kaziranga: The park that shoots people to protect rhinos
Kaziranga: The park that shoots people to protect rhinos - BBC News
The authorities at a national park in India protect the wildlife by shooting suspected poachers dead. But has the war against poaching gone too far? Kaziranga National Park is an incredible story of conservation success. There were just a handful of Indian one-horned rhinoceros left when the park was set up a century ago in Assam, in India's far east.
Very interesting article about the successes and failings of using lethal force to protect endangered species. I, for one, feel that giving rangers permission to fire on poachers is a dangerous action but probably necessary.




If ordinary police can use lethal force, park rangers should also be allowed to use lethal force. The poachers are as potentially dangerous as any other kind of criminal. What concerns me is that they don't seem to have good protocols on use of force. It seems like they're just shooting at people without giving them a chance to surrender. The allegations of torture are also quite disturbing.
I see the poaching problem as economic. So long as the surrounding villagers are poor and the rhino horns are in high demand, poaching will continue, no matter how many people the rangers shoot. Any solution to the poaching problem must involve the villagers themselves. Perhaps if they made the park more of a tourist site and hired the villagers as tourism workers, the villagers would also have an incentive to protect the animals from the poachers.