An investigation last year found the main driver of the manta ray's decline is rapidly increasing demand from Chinese and other markets for gill rakers - thin filaments that rays use to filter food from water - to be dried and boiled as medicines.
The group's report found gill rakers were fetching on average $US251 a kilogram in Guangzhou in southern China, where 99 per cent of the world's product is sold. Targeted fishing of rays occurs predominantly in India, Sri Lanka, Indonesia, Peru and China.
Goodbye, Manta Rays - 'Cause we out of rhino horns
Stupid, superstitious people need some false hope. You know how it be.
We're Back: A Dinosaur's Story
How many species need to be wiped out before Asians realize none of their voodoo works?
"Happy slaves are the worst enemies of freedom." - Marie Von Ebner
"It was always the women, and above all the young ones, who were the most bigoted adherents of the Party, the swallowers of slogans, the amateur spies..." - Orwell
"It was always the women, and above all the young ones, who were the most bigoted adherents of the Party, the swallowers of slogans, the amateur spies..." - Orwell
Re: Goodbye, Manta Rays - 'Cause we out of rhino horns
You can add pangolins to the list.
Fuck you, dipshits.Chinese officials have seized 3.1 tonnes (more than 3.4 tons) of illegally trafficked pangolin scales from a port in Shanghai, according to state media.
It's the largest such seizure China has ever made, Xinhua News Agency reports.
Pangolins are the world's most widely trafficked mammals — their meat is a delicacy and their scales are used in traditional Chinese medicine.
All eight species of pangolin are facing extinction.
Eat a bag of Ron Jeremy dicks and choke on them.Though pangolins are protected by an international ban on their trade, populations have suffered from illegal trafficking due to unfounded beliefs in East Asia that their ground-up scales can stimulate lactation or cure cancer or asthma. In the past decade there have been numerous seizures of illegally trafficked pangolin and pangolin meat in Asia. In one such incident in April 2013, 10,000 kilograms (11 short tons) of pangolin meat was seized from a Chinese vessel that ran aground in the Philippines. In another case in August 2016, an Indonesian man was arrested after police raided his home and found over 650 pangolins in freezers on his property.
Diogenes of Sinope: "It is not that I am mad, it is only that my head is different from yours."
Arnold Judas Rimmer, BSC, SSC: "Better dead than smeg."
Arnold Judas Rimmer, BSC, SSC: "Better dead than smeg."
Goodbye, Manta Rays - 'Cause we out of rhino horns
Rhino shot inside zoo.
Can we start selling them bogus horn powder made from finely ground hair gathered from barber shops around the world?Just over a decade ago, a rhino horn was just a rhino horn — an innocuous piece of animal body armor made of keratin, the same type of protein that makes up human hair and fingernails. Now a rhino horn is something else entirely for a new generation of wealthy buyers in China and Vietnam: a highly-coveted status symbol and a cancer-curing miracle drug and aphrodisiac whose legend is rooted in pseudoscience.
Might scratch that national debt that's set to explode shortly.... as little as a kilo of rhino horn was worth about $54,000 on the black market in 2015.
Diogenes of Sinope: "It is not that I am mad, it is only that my head is different from yours."
Arnold Judas Rimmer, BSC, SSC: "Better dead than smeg."
Arnold Judas Rimmer, BSC, SSC: "Better dead than smeg."