Donkey Trade, Climate Change and Rural Poor.
The diminishing population of Donkeys coupled with climate change in Northern Nigeria presents a potent danger to Northern rural life where almost half the population is rural and thus agrarian based. The donkey is central as a source of virtually free labor in transportation, tilling of the land, power for borehole and irrigation. The donkey is soo central to rural life. The added dimension of sale of donkeys to merchants served to decimate the population. The Chinese have been fingered in the poaching industry which led a catastrophic decline of many Africa's wildlife with consequences to the ecosystem. Government has banned the trade, it can also, alternatively, regulate. Research should be undertaken to produce bigger, faster, stronger and tamer breed which can greatly aid the rural poor. The threat of Climate change, manifest in desert encroachment, reduction in watering and grazing grounds coupled with a 'belt of instability' across the Sahel Savanah belt of Afri