Kaziranga National Park in India is home to over 2,500 one horned rhinos i.e. over 2/3rd of the world’s one horned rhino population.
Every year, a whole bunch of Rhinos would get killed by poachers. For example, in 2014 (10 years ago), 35 rhinos were killed by poachers. These rhinos are poached for their horn.
In many other wildlife sanctuaries, there are no rhinos left because of poachers. In Laokhowa Wildlife Sanctuary, the entire rhino population was hunted down by poachers.
Most of it is China and Vietnam’s fault because they think using rhino horn in their traditional medicine helps cures fevers and nosebleeds (literally). It’s also a status symbol in China and Vietnam to have a rhino horn so rich Chinese people pay good money to get them.
Chinese money is pretty much responsible for this poaching problem because they make it so lucrative for poor people to go and kill rhinos and sell the horn.
These poachers are not good people. They are merciless. They will typically tranquilize the rhino and then pull the horn off. The rhino will then wake up some time later and bleed to death slowly and painfully.
Most of the time, they don’t even do the dirty work directly. They hire poor villagers to do the work for them.
Often these poachers would shoot and kill forest guards (also known as rangers) if they couldn’t bribe them into letting them poach.
It was a huge problem and you’d hear about a rhino bleeding to death every few weeks.
What did Kaziranga National Park do to address the poacher problem?
A few years ago, the authorities there issued shoot at sight orders for any poacher who is spotted inside the park.
The rangers/guards were granted immunity for any killing of poachers inside the park.
The actual process looks like this: When poachers are spotted inside the National Park’s territory, there’s a warning shot fired and the poachers are asked to surrender and be arrested. If they don’t surrender or if the ranger thinks the rhino is under threat of imminent harm, they can kill the poacher.
What this resulted in is that the rangers went from being the hunted to becoming the hunters. Every year, the rangers at Kaziranga National Park shoot down a bunch of poachers and have turned poaching there into a very deadly activity.
Right now, if you try to kill a rhino in Kaziranga, you are more likely to get shot than you are to shoot a rhino.
In 2022, can you guess how many rhinos were poached in Kaziranga?
ZERO.
0.
Yep. You read that right.
The lesson is simple: You have to fight fire with fire.
When it was safe and easy to hunt rhinos, they were being shot dead every few weeks.
Now it is deadly to fuck with rhinos at Kaziranga National Park, poachers don’t go there.
It pays to be dangerous.
If you are weak, everyone will take advantage of you.
If you are dangerous, people will not fuck with you.
Be big. Be strong. Learn to fight. Have money in the bank. Have a good lawyer. Most of all, don’t take shit and be willing to put up a fight. (Except meaningless ones like street fights)
If you are willing and able to fight, most of the time, no one will pick a fight with you. You won’t be worth the hassle.
When people want to bully someone, they pick people who cannot or aren’t willing to fight back (be it in high school or a journalist defaming some poor citizen).
When you are capable of fighting back and demonstrate that you will fight back, bullies will leave you alone.
