I can understand hunting for food. I eat meat, I am under no delusions. But taking pleasure in killing? At point-blank range? That’s just sick.
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I understand hunting for food, I grew up in a rural, impoverished part of the country where game was the primary source of protein, because grocery store meat was too expensive. I’ve hunted myself, although not for many years and never for a trophy. I can only describe what I just saw as “disgusting”, and an embarrassment to the entire human race.
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I did an internship for a group of wildlife biologists who managed the hunting program for a state in Appalachia.
When you are managing a wildlife population, sometimes you need to maintain hunting pressure on the population for various population control and behavioral reasons. In endangered species, sometimes these controls are still needed.
Normally, a conservation officer would take the shot to put down the animal, if required.
With the elephant and lion populations, they occasionally identify particular individuals within the population that are needed to be killed for these reasons. They have found that people are willing to pay a whole lot of money to do this. So what they do it the conservation officer leads them to the animal that needs to be killed, then they let the “hunter” fire the shot that kills the animal, then the conservation officer lets them celebrate a little bit before they do whatever with the animal that they needed to do. (The meat is normally eaten by locals, per local tradition; if any science is needed then it is done, and the hunter normally gets to take some inconsequential trophies.)
I am very concerned that with the funding for the conservation effort being generated via the hunts, that they may fudge the science and identify too many members of the population for a death sentence. There are better ways of doing it; but with the resource constraints of most of the areas where the animals are located…
To be honest, I’m also kind of concerned about a bunch of white European people from half the world away telling the local governments that they are doing it wrong based on our feelings and culture instead of science… we’ve fucked over Africa enough, thanksmuch.
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The main issue I have with this is the insanely cruel method of letting some jackass outsider who, as we see here, can’t hit the broadside of a barn take potshots at the animal until one manages to be fatal. We know that elephants are both sentient and sapient. This is a disgusting way to manage their numbers.
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This is utterly monstrous. Nauseous right now.
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And that’s the thing. Africa is not Appalachia, and “occasionally” or “a part of” is not the same as “the only thing”. “we have a problem lion” is not " give us a hundred grand and we’ll find you two elephants".
The sort of animals we do a bit of this with in North America tend not to be the same level of globally endangered as large African mammals or big cats globally. And we still have issues with over application of the idea. Shooting recently reintroduced wolves from Helicopters and all that.
It’s important that the people pushing this idea with regards to trophy hunting in developing countries don’t usually point at that either.
Instead they’re drawing on a couple things.
First the long history of hunting and outdoor groups in conservation. Probably the biggest example is Ducks Unlimited who are superficially a water fowl hunting advocacy group, and sometimes touted as actually being what the NRA claims it is. But are actually one of the worlds largest wetland preservation and restoration groups. They really have leveraged a large membership of mostly hunters to fund the protection or restoration of millions of acres of fresh water wetlands in North America (and are generally opposed to the hunting of endangered species).
The other one is the success of other models in other parts of Africa and South Asia. Where preserves and eco tourism provide a lot of funding and economic opportunity. Especially where subsistence farmers or pastorialist populations can incorporate basically being wildlife workers into their traditional life style. Offering a better paying alternative to tearing shit up to farm soy beans or poaching.
Managed hunts in specific circumstances is part of that model. But the money it generates is a drop in the bucket of the whole thing. And it does like 100 times more in jobs, GDP growth and funding dollars that programs focused on trophy hunting.
That’s why the argument is bullshit rather than lies. It’s got that little grain of truth in it.
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This video left me utterly disgusted. What despicable people.
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but not about Susan LaPierre and her elephant killing, apparently
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What an absolutely disgusting pair of human beings. Absolute trash souls. Cowards and positively the bastions of absolute pathetic losers who need multiple point blank shots to kill a beautiful creature. Grotesque. They deserve a life of misery. Entitled. What right do they have to kill off a majestic breed that is going extinct. They are part of our world and not their right to kill. These guided amusement kill outings should be outlawed. What miserable, dead souls these fuckers have.
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You can find a similar photo of Donald Trump Jr with a tiny knife and severed elephant tail. (Among other disgusting trophy hunt photos and not just because the Trump children are in them.)
I’d rather keep the elephants.
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You certainly can. And you don’t have to travel far to find it!
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