A report from Washington says the international illegal trade in wildlife and wildlife products is growing exponentially and may now be worth as much as $23-billion, or R345-billion, a year.
It states that the trade is outpacing the other ‘Big Five’ in international illegal trade: prostitution, arms, drugs, human trafficking and money laundering, largely because the profits are high and the risks comparatively low.
ALSO READ: From my Hide – Illegal wildlife trade rivals human trafficking, drugs and weapons
It says illegal products are still being openly displayed in shop windows and just about anything is available via the internet and so-called social media.
This includes elephant ivory, rhino horn, rare lizards, whole tiger skeletons and even live bears, which may be delivered to be slaughtered, butchered and prepared in the kitchen according to your fancy.
One last little snippet from the report, powdered rhino horn mixed into a drink the next day is supposed to cure a hangover.* So many aspects of the illegal wildlife trade are simply bizarre – a live bear delivered to your kitchen, rhino horn for a hangover?
It is seldom one picks up a new book that is immediately a delight. The book is called The Game Ranger, the Knife, the Lion and the Sheep: 20 Tales about Curious Characters from Southern Africa’. David Bristow and his writing hardly need an introduction to South Africa readers, or those much further afield, and this book is a gem.
I have so enjoyed meeting or re-meeting some of these characters, having known some of them and even interviewed them. It is the depth of Bristow’s research that is such a pleasure to read, and his writing style of course, and the newly unearthed slices of famous (and infamous) lives and legends, often a very fresh look at our history.
Think of the title and then the range of characters featured, from the origins of rain-makers going back many hundreds of years to the first settlement of the Cape in 1652, and then fast forward to Anthony Hall-Martin, elephant man, who died just four years ago.
Featured are rain queens and young Xhosa prophetesses of doom, Victorian explorers, big game hunters, soldiers, paleoanthropologists and bird artists, there has to be someone here to tickle your fancy.
It’s a book to pick up and read a story at a time, probably, as I did, starting with your favourites. Mine were Eugené Marais and David Livingstone, and best, some new thinking about each of them.**
*Sources: the Smithsonian Institute in Washington and the Save the Elephants News Service.
**The Game Ranger: the Knife, the Lion and the Sheep; 20 Tales about Curious Characters from Southern Africa, David Bristow, Jacana, Johannesburg, 2018.
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