Posted on 07/29/2015 6:06:15 PM PDT by ScottWalkerForPresident2016
As part of the celebrations for his 91st birthday next Saturday, Zimbabwean President Robert Mugabe will be served a feast featuring five impala, two buffalo, two elephants, two sables, and one lion. According to a report in Zimbabwe's The Chronicle, the menagerie was donated by Tendai Musasa, owner of the prominent Woodlands Farm near the Elephant Hills Resort at Victoria Falls, where the 20,000-person shindig will take place.
While you'd think that eating elephants and lions, icons of wildlife conservation, would be illegal, it turns out it's notneither under Zimbabwean nor international law. As of 1997, elephant populations in Botswana, Namibia, South Africa, and Zimbabwe were deemed healthy enough to allow regulated hunts and the export of pachyderm products, like meat, which some say tastes of elk or moose. Zimbabwe even argues that it has more elephants than it can support, and accordingly encourages culls and consumption. Yet conservationists seem to believe that state officials have inflated these numbers and are shooting themselves in the foot by destroying the country's heritage, biodiversity, and draw for the vital tourism industry. The US, for its part, banned Zimbabwean elephant products in 2014 for fears about insufficient poaching controls, but this has no bearing on local or international laws.
Lion, as a threatened but not critically endangered species, is fair game for controlled hunts in Africa and even breeders in America, who kill big cats for trophies or food.
(Excerpt) Read more at vice.com ...
I always thought the rule of thumb is don't eat predators or carrion feeders; eat animals that eat fruits or plants. The meat of the animal takes on the flavors of what it eats, and an animal that eats dead animals is going to taste like rotten flesh.
I don’t think it’s a good idea to eat carnivorous mammals, most of whom are scavengers.
I remember reading in “A Cabin In The Woods” that pioneer settlers in the midwest savored the rare treat of black bear when one would wander into the area. I’m to understand that the meat was quite strongly flavored and greasy - a fatty treat, I suppose, after the drudgery of lean, stringy game or tough old turkeys. The book is a quasi-biography set in Indianapolis in the late 1800’s, I believe, so it’s not that far removed from modern times and customs.
Ironically, the bear hunt story took place near what is now the site of the current state fairgrounds, which is now probably the last place you’d expect to find a bear. Crack and heroin, sure, but bear? Nah.
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