Wildlife......

We read that orangutans will be extinct in the wild soon........that poachers in Africa continue to kill Rhinos and sell their horn to be used in Chinese aphrodisiacs...that soon there will be no jaguars in the Brazilian jungles.... desperately sad...yet..........Britain was a forested country some three hundred or so years ago. There were wolves and bears and wild boar.....all gone...along with the forest. the land is now cultivated and there is no room for larger wild creatures who threaten or compete with us. What right do we have to lecture the developing world ? How can we tell them not to exploit the timber or clear the forests to grow crops to sell or destroy animals that attack their livestock?
In fact, if the West wants wildlife preserved...then it has to be paid for........How about a system where in any given area, we had an official count/census of wildlife and agreed to pay a bounty to each local person based on the number of animals counted...? For example...if there were 6 orangutans in a district one year and then 8 the next...the west would pay... say...10 dollars to everyone who lived in the area...... obviously numbers/scale etc would need checking/negotiating... but the principle of paying local people to protect and enhance their local wildlife would surely make the people on the spot guard it...take care of it..report poachers etc......??? Faced with appalling poverty...we really cannot expect people to stop trying to exploit wildlife in any way they can...we must simply make it more profitable alive than dead.