Every two years, the International Union for the Conservation of Nature publishes a “red list” of endangered species. This year’s list, just out, names 11,167 species, up 121 since 2000.
One of the species featured on this year’s list is the saiga, an antelope native to central Asia. Ten years ago, there were over a million saiga, today there are an estimated 50,000 in the wild. The saiga are being pushed to extinction by poachers, who are hunting the animal for its meat and its horns, which are used in traditional medicine.
This is extinction done the old-fashioned way, by hunters killing animals one at a time, the way the European lion was driven to extinction in the days when Roman emperors still roamed the Earth or the way Americans shotgunned the passenger pigeon from the skies in the early 20th century.
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Bang Bang, Baby
I saw a wire service report the other day that said military sharpshooters are upset that the Washington, DC serial killer is being referred to as a “sniper.” “Snipers don’t take innocent life,” one sharpshooter said. Is it just me, or is there a lack of perspective in play here? An armed assailant is killing people at random, using a single bullet in each attack, firing from as far as 100 yards away and these guys are on a mission to uphold the good name of snipers.
The police are doing everything they can to apprehend the guilty party or parties, but they’re flying on instruments only. Ballistic forensic experts have been able to determine, within hours of each shooting, that the attacks are linked. By examining the bullet or bullet fragments, it can be determined all the bullets were fired from the same gun. Good information to have, no doubt, but all it tells us is that the killer is a serial murderer, striking again and again. It doesn’t tell us who the murderer is.
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