Last week I shared an article about an emerging threat to jaguars: the Traditional Asian Medicine (TAM) trade. This post generated quite a stir, and I was asked if I would be willing to talk more about it on a forum I belong to.
When I say talk, I literally mean talk. I was asked if I would be willing to do a blogcast, which is an audio recording of a vocal discussion. That blogcast went live today, and if you would like to hear it you may do so by following this link.
While there is some overlap between this blogcast and the post I released last week, they are not identical. In the blogcast I go into more detail about what you and I can do to address TAM-related poaching of jaguars. I am more specific about how to raise awareness about this topic, as well as how we can help TAM practitioners choose to not buy threatened animal parts. I particularly emphasize the importance of using love-based messaging to build concern for wild felids. For most people, communications that center around love encourage pro-conservation behavior more effectively than those which emphasize need or fear (Gillespie, 2015).
Click here to be taken to the blogcast. I cannot post it here because my subscription does not allow it.
Lastly, I want to make it clear that TAM practitioners are not solely responsible for the illegal wildlife trade. The demand for exotic pets in countries like the United States is another major contributor to this epidemic. I have included links to two good posts on this topic in the Further Reading section below.
Further Reading:
Big Paws, Bad Pets. Why Would Anyone Want to Have a Pet Big Cat?
The Big Cat Facts About The Big Cat Public Safety Act
The Jaguar 
Hello again Josh. I hope to hear more from you in the future. Very nicely put. Keep up the great work. Dan
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Thanks Dan! There’s so much to cover on this topic, I’m sure I’ll be discussing it again.
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Hello Josh. I think you touch on a very important point here in terms of the protection of species. When we see these amazing photographs of the Big Cats, we are in awe of their beauty, their power, their presence, their aura – their design/s! Yet, we do not feel connected enough to animals in the wild to care enough about their extinction, to be swayed to get practically involved in their preservation.
I think this also extends to the environment in general. The missing link, as you rightly point out – is Love. Love for other species and love for our habitat which we share with them. We need to return to an understanding of the sacredness within everything. In ancient times as you pointed out in your previous post, jaguars were killed for their energetic capacities. Due to the low density of human populations and higher volumes of wild animals, the environment could probably sustain low amounts of these “traditional poaching” methods back then – and there was no global demand for animal parts, etc.
I read in a book recently (“The Voice of the Earth” by Theodore Roszak), that many rituals of forgiveness to the universe had to be practised when any sacred animals were killed for rituals by traditional peoples. That was history, but now it has become something different. The trade of rare animal parts is simply not sustainable in the global context – and this knowledge – that we (as humans) may cause the extinction of these animals which we revere so highly and Love so much – may help us to simply stop doing it – out of compassion and understanding of the sacredness of the concept of preservation itself. I think we (people in general) had this understanding, but it has been lost.
No doubt, we have a difficult task though, because spirituality is generally quite low worldwide, but I feel that that will change progressively in the coming years – as it has been predicted. We are just too far away from The Source and the centre of everything right now – (but not for long) but, as a collective we are about to return, so we may as well get the ball rolling now.
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Wow, thank you for this thoughtful and informed comment. I think it’s important that you brought up the fact that the killing of sacred animals used to be accompanied by a deep sense of reverence and responsibility. I think many of the problems with the modern exploitation of wildlife (apart from the sheer scale of the demand) comes down to the fact that these creatures are viewed simply as resources. We do not view them as sentient beings that we are inexorably connected to.
I also find it interesting that although we appear to come at this topic from two different angles, you seem to have a strong spiritual bend whereas I’m more focused on science, we arrived at the same conclusion: people need to feel more love for the natural world. Science and spirituality are often described as opposing forces, so I wonder if there’s something important about this synergy? I don’t have the answer to this question, but it might be worth thinking about.
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I really enjoyed listening to the blogcast! Nice work Josh!
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Thank you!
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