I can't reply to kleinbl00 directly, but I'd just like to chime in and say that he seems to have read a different article from me. On the one hand, he tells us that Buzzfeed "managed to find only four crimes across twenty years." Except a tiny way in we're told: We apparently have a different definition of "crime." (edit to fix typo) Villagers have been whipped with belts, attacked with machetes, beaten unconscious with bamboo sticks, sexually assaulted, shot, and murdered by WWF-supported anti-poaching units, according to reports and documents obtained by BuzzFeed News.
The charity’s field staff in Asia and Africa have organised anti-poaching missions with notoriously vicious shock troops, and signed off on a proposal to kill trespassers penned by a park director who presided over the killings of dozens of people.
WWF has provided paramilitary forces with salaries, training, and supplies — including knives, night vision binoculars, riot gear, and batons — and funded raids on villages. In one African country, it embroiled itself in a botched arms deal to buy assault rifles from a brutal army that has paraded the streets with the severed heads of alleged “criminals.”
The charity has operated like a global spymaster, organizing, financing, and running dangerous and secretive networks of informants motivated by “fear” and “revenge,” including within indigenous communities, to provide park officials with intelligence — all while publicly denying working with informants.
In which Buzzfeed News profiles an NGO operating in extraordinarily sketchy corners of the world that has committed four catalogued transgressions across 20 years Make more work like this possible by becoming a BuzzFeed News member today. Conservation has always been portrayed as a 1st World vs. 3rd World problem - one need look no further than Bear's Ears to determine the political landscape. This is Cliven Bundy shit: "We need to eat those Spotted Owls!" At a basic level, conservationism argues that critters are worth more than people. And let's be honest: if you're a subsistence farmer in the Central African Republic, the world has decided your life isn't worth much. Sigourney Weaver ain't starring in Ngbandi tribespeople in the Mist. Frankly, I'm kind of amazed that WWF doesn't recruit directly from Soldier of Fortune considering where the world's endangered species tend to live. That Buzzfeed managed to find only four crimes across twenty years either indicates Buzzfeed has no journalistic acumen or the WWF is squeaky fucking clean. That's $1700. Yeah - that's high. I can buy a crate of 7.62x39 out of Oklahoma for $360 shipped. So... a wildlife protection organization got scammed for about 3 grand in an arms deal. Keep in mind USCENTCOM managed to lose $40b.
In the coming days, BuzzFeed News will reveal how the charity has continued funding and equipping rangers, even after higher-ups became aware of evidence of serious human rights abuses.
An AK assault rifle “should cost us” 266,666 Central African francs (around $615), the employee wrote, “so for 15” weapons “it reaches 4 million.” If so, he wrote, that would leave about 2 million francs unaccounted for: “Does that mean that two boxes of ammunition cost 1 million each?”
