yego.me
💡 Stop wasting time. Read Youtube instead of watch. Download Chrome Extension

Voodoo Market Reveals Wildlife Trafficking’s Grim Reality | National Geographic


2m read
·Nov 11, 2024

So if you care about wildlife crime, you have to understand culturally how a country thinks about wildlife. You know, and, uh, one of the unique aspects of Togo is the voodoo is real and alive here. This fetish market is known around the world. They told me the first time all our animals are roadkill; they've died of natural causes. And of course, you don't really believe that, but you don't want to disbelieve it. You want to say, "Okay, there's a mix." There isn't the pain behind these animals. This is a cultural anthropological moment for me.

They've got dozens and dozens and dozens of white-faced owls, these beautiful little birds you might read about in Harry Potter. And now they're laid out. They're not laid out for the Togolese religious practitioners; they're laid out for tourists, like I was the first time I came. You know, they charge a fee as you come in, and they're recycling these animals.

When they weren't paying attention to me, I walked behind these rows into one of the little huts. Immediately, a boy came up to me carrying a live chameleon. I said, "Ah!" I just showed the smallest interest, and he pulled me over. He had a bucket full of live chameleons. I knew they were about to; they were going to kill those chameleons. I said, "What else do you have?" They pulled out boxes that people had been sitting on, covered with rags.

They pulled up the rags, full of tortoises about to be killed. There was a Pangolin pulled from a back room. The Pangolin was already dead, but not dead long. They kept it in the back room, which told me they knew that's a trafficked animal. It makes me wonder if there is ivory back there as well. This is one of the painful things about being a wildlife investigator: you learn the truth behind lots of things that have this sort of novelty.

More Articles

View All
Model Context Protocol (MCP), clearly explained (why it matters)
Greg: Everyone is talking about mcps, it’s gone completely viral, but the reality is most people have no idea what mcps are and what they mean and what are the startup opportunities associated with it. So in this episode I brought Professor Ross Mike who …
Fundamental theorem to evaluate derivative
Let’s say that I were to walk up to you on the street and said, “All right, I have this function g of x which I’m going to define as the definite integral from 19 to x of the cube root of t dt.” And then I were to ask you, “What is the derivative of g ev…
Unchaining Captive Elephants in Nepal | National Geographic
I think the most memorable release that I was ever present at is when we put five elephants into a brand new 4-acre Corral. The elephants moved forward by a few feet, all tight together, with the babies underneath them. Then the babies started squealing, …
Threats to the U.S system and what we need to do
Would you agree with this? We have the greatest system of government ever since the beginning of time. The Constitution and the Bill of Rights have a lot of safeguards built in. As Churchill said, when it comes down to it, we try everything else, but we e…
Bill Belichick & Ray Dalio on Toughness: Part 2
Um, there’s a toughness to run into, you know, two or three guys that outweighing by a hundred pounds or so. At the line of scrimmage, knowing that they got to fight for that extra yard, half yard, whatever it is to get a first down. So, um, then there’s…
Two Champions, One Family: Hear Their Inspiring Story | Short Film Showcase
[Music] I think the secret of my longevity is that I haven’t really been hit that much. My style of fighting is that of a boxer, which is more movement-based, and I don’t brawl with a person, so I’m not really exchanging these punches and getting hit a lo…