Mr Jonga said the demand needed to be met and not shunned, adding that there were ways of doing this without driving the rhino population to extinction.

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But the overall eel population is not in danger of extinction (though some individual species are), so the authorities decline to protect them.

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They are just tired of being hectored by scientists proclaiming certain apocalypses that never pan out: Examples include acid rain and the death of the forest, asteroids, the population bomb, and a catastrophic extinction of species that has eluded detection.

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