I actually don't disagree with your general point, but the idea (and the fact that your fist thought was) that the rangers will turn around and start poaching rhinos themselves seems like a really odd argument to be making if your aim is the capitalists who create and uphold the industry in the first place.

E: like, you focusing on the rangers is exactly the same as other people focusing on the poachers - neither are in charge and both are there making money for people who would never get their hands dirty.

[–] emergencyfood@sh.itjust.works 3 points 1 year ago (1 children)

I'm Indian, although I live hundreds of kilometres away from the place in question. My very first thought was that these rangers are going to kill innocent people and frame them as poachers. My second thought was that at least a few of them might start poaching themselves.

I hope I'm wrong, maybe this is one of the few such programmes that actually works out, but the history of the Indian forest department does not inspire much confidence. The Forest department was created by the British to protect game from local people, and even today far too many officials treat the indigenous tribals as enemies, rather than as allies in conservation.

If you think I'm being too cynical or melodramatic, you are welcome to read articles and books by Indian ecologists, historians and conservationists such as Madhav Gadgil, Ullas Karanth and Ram Guha.

[–] masquenox@lemmy.ml 1 points 1 year ago

I hope I’m wrong,

You're not.

[–] masquenox@lemmy.ml 0 points 1 year ago

that the rangers will turn around and start poaching rhinos themselves

None of this is difficult to understand - it's no different than the right-wing death squads the US trained to fight their little "War On Drugs" suddenly and not-so-mysteriously ending up the biggest players in the drug-smuggling business.

Who did you think these "rangers" work for? They are pigs - that's what they are. And like all pigs, profiting from the illegal things they are (supposedly) "preventing" is merely one of the unspoken but universal perks of the job. As long as their violence serves the capitalists that wants to exclusively loot and pillage natural resources, everybody in power will turn a blind eye. And it's not just the trade in animal parts - don't be surprised when it's discovered that these privatized goon squads being lauded in the media for their (supposed) "anti-poaching" activities take their orders from multi-national mining corporations or companies that want to exploit local populations as cheap labor.