Kaziranga park: conservation success by killing poachers

Second Summer

Second Summer

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Kaziranga National Park is an incredible story of conservation success. [...]

But the way the park protects the animals is controversial. Its rangers have been given the kind of powers to shoot and kill normally only conferred on armed forces policing civil unrest.

At one stage the park rangers were killing an average of two people every month - more than 20 people a year. Indeed, in 2015 more people were shot dead by park guards than rhinos were killed by poachers.
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More: Kaziranga: The park that shoots people to protect rhinos - BBC News (10. Feb. 2017)

It says innocent villagers have also been caught up in the conflict, and now they are also being evicted from their homes because the park is being expanded.
 
I'm sure it must be possible to improve the conservation efforts so that the risk of injuring innocent villagers is much lowered. For example, there should be fences to prevent livestock from wandering onto the park land, and to clearly mark what is park land and not.

That said, there are 7 billion humans, but only a couple of thousand of these rhinos. Who is more valuable to biodiversity? I think the rhinos win.

So in principle I also agree with expanding the park and removing villagers, but I don't condone the authorities' methods.
 
Indian Summer said:
That said, there are 7 billion humans, but only a couple of thousand of these rhinos. Who is more valuable to biodiversity? I think the rhinos win.
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In theory this would be correct, but it's a slippery slope to devalue the lives of innocent people simply to ensure a system that punishes evil people stays in place.

Let's say there's a city bus transporting twenty people from one location to another. Thirteen of those twenty people are a terrorist group planning to shoot up a mall the next day. Would you approve sending that bus off a bridge, causing the death of everyone onboard, to ensure that something heinous doesn't happen? Numerically you might save more innocent lives, but is it truly worth the collateral?
 
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