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I have known about illegal animal trading for a long time but I never really thought about it. When this project was introduced, where we were told to pick a problem in the world to research and become an expert on; it was hard for me to find what topic I would pick. I finally concluded on doing my project on illegal animal trading. I would not be able to even imagine a world without animals and the fact that many of them are becoming extinct makes me really sad. I thought that I should try to bring awareness to people. When buying products in a foreign country, tourists can sometimes be the contributors to the illegal animal trade as they buy an exotic animal or something made from animal. After doing some research, I found out that animals are smuggled in all different ways and that endangered animals are more popular since they are more rare.

Animal products being illegally sold in in China’s Laomeng Market. Photo credit: Alpha. 7

Animals that are endangered have a higher demand in illegal trading. According to the, Official Web Page of the U S Fish and Wildlife Service, “Illegal wildlife trade is also often unsustainable, harming wild populations of animals and plants and pushing endangered species toward extinction. Endangered animals and plants are often the target of wildlife crime because of their rarity and increased economic value.” The fact that endangered animals are the most wanted in illegal trading, causes endangered animals to be even more vulnerable. This can bring them to the brink of extinction and also makes it harder for conservation organizations to help raise the population numbers of endangered animals as they are either killed or traded off.

The reason why illegal animal trading is such a massive industry is because of the low risk the task pertains. The World Wildlife Fund says, “Corruption, toothless laws, weak judicial systems and light sentences allow criminal networks to keep plundering wildlife with little regard to consequences. These factors make illegal wildlife trade a low risk business with high returns. The poachers—often poor locals—are the usually the only ones caught, leaving the real masterminds and their network safe and operational with the ability to strike again.” The big organizations rarely get caught trading illegally because local people are the ones selling illegal products and who end up getting caught. As reported by The U.S. Department of the Interior, “Poaching wildlife is viable because the monetary gain often exceeds the income that would be available from legitimate sources. Last spring, the Associated Press reported that a poacher can earn $180 for the tusks of a forest elephant and $6,000 for its meat in an area where the average legally earned income is $1 a day.” Traders that work for big corporations usually live in countries with low income, where their income can increase by them trading animals.

When animals are traded they are treated really bad as they are hidden in many different ways. As stated by Smithsonian, “Animals ripped from their habitat suffer, of course. They are smuggled in thermoses and nylon stockings, stuffed into toilet paper tubes, hair curlers and hubcaps.” Traders hide animals in all different ways to be smuggled and transported to be sold. Even when alive, the animals are put in uncomfortable situations so that they are not found.

Yellow-crested cockatoos hidden in plastic water bottles. (Image: Jefta Images / Barcroft Media)

Live turtles being illegally shipped in potato sacks in Vietnam. (© CI/photo by Peter Paul van Dijk)

Illegal animal trafficking is a big problem that contributes to the declining of animal populations and to species to extinction. Big corporations employ people from countries of low income to work for them and sell animals. When animals are transported, they are stuffed into all kinds of places so that they are not heard or seen, which often causes injuries and the death of these animals. Illegal trafficking is one of the main factors driving wild species to risk of extinction. While was looking for pictures to put in my post, I ran across many that showed animals being shoved in all different places, and rhinos with their horns cut off. It was really heartbreaking to see how these animals were being treated. I hope that this will change because even though this problem seems like a circle hard to break, we can help by avoiding buying illegal wildlife animal products.

It was 2017 in the late afternoon. I was in 8th grade, it was the 3rd day of spring break. I was hanging out with some friends near my old school’s playground. We were all just chilling doing what kids normally do. Then all of the sudden, I see a gang of 16 kids attacking a kid. I didn't want stand there and watch a helpless kid get beaten up, so I intervened by telling them to stop. What happened next was a blur. I felt a sharp pain on the left side of my face. The world was spinning, everything was spinning, I felt more pain on my face and a group of people surrounding me. They were taking turn, swinging punches at me. When it felt like forever, they stopped and fled the scene. I was then escorted to my friend’s house, my face and shirt cover with stains of blood. After I was cleaned up, I realized that none of the other people around us helped, they just watched. I thought to myself: “Why were we the only ones helping the poor child? Why didn't they help out when we started to become the victim?” That when I became interested in the bystander effect. My goal is to learn why bystanders just watch something bad goes down when they can easily intervene to prevent something bad from happening. So I decided to investigate more about the bystanders effect in my “You & the World Project”.

Many people have become victims to the bystanders effect each and everyday. Bullying happens in front of a crowd 88% of the time. Student do not like to see a bullying happen 90% of the time, but only 20% percent of the time people from that crowd actually take action to help stop it. Why is there only a low percentage of people help prevent bullying from happening, if almost everybody does not support what they see? Well for one thing, people fear of becoming the next victim. They don’t want the attacker targeting them and get harmed. Some bystanders actually join the bullying and making it worse. Some people would keep on encouraging it and with the digital age, we put it down on tape and posted it on social media.  People also think that it none of their business to engage and it not affecting them. People believe that they are powerless and have no idea what to do when trying to help someone out.

Bystanders can also be influenced by the number of people around the situation. People are more likely to intervene when there a few people to no one. But the more people their are, the less they are to intervene. When people don't react, other people think it is okay to do the same.

This line graph shows how the fewer the people around the person who needs aid, the more likely they will jump in and help them.

What I hope to learn as I dive deeper into this project is to understand what going on in the minds of bystanders. I want to interview people who have witness someone who needed aid but never did anything.  I want to know what they are thinking as they see this. I want to know why did they choose to either act or not act at all. Finally, I wanted to conduct a survey seeing how many people had recently been a bystander.  

In the Supreme Court case Whitney v. People of State of California

(1927), the Supreme Court judges upheld Charlotte Whitney’s case under the grounds of freedom of speech. The Supreme Court stated that “If there be time to expose through discussion the falsehood and fallacies, to avert the evil by the processes of education, the remedy to be applied is more speech, not enforced silence.” This quote brings me to the topic of my project: the erosion of free speech on college campuses. My general goals are to interview college students in University City about their thoughts on free speech, hate speech, and dissenting views on college campuses.

I am interested in this topic because I, like most anyone in the world, have some unpopular opinions. It is concerning, to say the least, that colleges and college students are so intolerant to those views that there are riots and cancellations when people come to speak. I want to spread the message that words are not violence, therefore should not be retaliated with violence.

The Brookings Institute gathered data from college campuses and it isn’t surprising what they found, but it was still disturbing. According to the Brookings Institute, 41% of Democrats thought that hate speech was NOT protected by the 1st Amendment, even though it is. Another 15% of Democrats don’t know whether it is or whether it isn’t. That 56% of Democrats being misinformed is what I want to help change. I want to inform people on what their rights are and what is and what isn’t protected speech.

A story I would like to share exposes how far this has gone. At Evergreen State College in Washington last year, the administration asked white people to leave the campus. Biology Professor Bret Weinstein objected to an involuntary “Day of Absence” because he felt it was racist and inflicted on his freedom of speech. He said, “On a college campus, one’s right to speak - or to be - must never be based on skin color.” Professor Weinstein was met with 50 students yelling over him, asking him to resign, calling him racist, and even a Nazi. The students blocked him when he tried to leave and blocked the entrances to the college president’s office with furniture. This story and Professor Weinstein’s interviews led me to look into the statistics and other research about student intolerance.

My research has quantified what I already knew. I knew people were uninformed about the 1st Amendment, but the research has made it evident. I hope to learn more about ways to increase tolerance and nonviolence.

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