The day will come where people like me will look at the murder of animals in the same way as the murder of human beings.

Is it thus necessary to wait five hundred years before agreeing with Léonardo de Vinci and having man finally deign to recognize the fact that poaching is a barbarous act?

Do five hundred years have to pass so that steps are taken beyond this realization, and that men finally take decisions which are essential in terms of protection of the wild life?

For those who have never seen the slow death of a live elephant, cut up by its torturers in order to extract its tusks, or the long anguish of a dying rhinoceros in a pool of blood, that feels the vultures approaching, waiting for its demise, imagine this excess of pain which these animals go through, and how cruel human beigns can be towards Nature, which gave them everything.

All this suffering, this violence, for a few kilos of ivory, which will decorate the dusty offices of the rich , or will end up as powder in a deep lie of a practice which is claimed medicine!

We have became insane. And our limitless folly takes us down a terrible path of destriuction. Murder of large animals, such as dolphins in Japan, Bengal tigers, African elephants and rhinoceros, is yet another step in our contempt of what is authentic and alive, with only a search for profit, in our idealization of money.

For mankind, Nature, with its forests, oceans and air, is not a pertinent parameter in its financial equation, and therefore negligible.

I do not know when humanity will finally understand that it is time to put an end to this alienation, by protecting the natural world from man’s insanity.

What I know is that it is time to act! The time has come to go in the field and meet the men and women who fight every day to allow the last representatives of wild species survive a few days more.

The world will not be destroyed by those who do evil, but by those who look upon it without doing anything.

Einstein, by his words, brings us to our responsibilities. Can we accept that our descendants reproache us one day, of our knowledge of what is taking place without doing anything about it? We are all informed of the massacres of the rhinoceros, elephant and deer populations. If we don't do anything, we are not accomplices to these assassins but actors ourselves of these écocides, this contemptible crime aiming at the systematic destruction of these beautiful creatures that Nature has created, in the name of profit.

When Gandhi said that we can judge the size of a nation by the way animals are treated in it, what can we say of our countries, of our governments’ behaviour?

It is still possible to protect and save the wildlife that is in danger. It is necessary to believe in it and invest in it savagely. The hour is not for discussions and sterile reflections. The hour is for action. Like Nelson Mandela in his cell in Robben Island, certain that he would one day control his destiny and that of his people too, let us be sure that tomorrow, by our united actions, we will be able to change the world for the greatest benefit of biodiversity!

Sergio Lopez