Sorry: Animal lover here. I love these majestic beasts. Gestation for elephants is over a year and they are highly of intelligent. I hope This is fake news.
Because it was far more humane and caring to have poachers cripple them with AKs enough to catch up and cut their faces off with chainsaws or when villagers shot elephants in the face with shotguns and left the blind animal to starve.
Now the villagers arent poacher guides act as body guards in some of these areas. Less over population stripping resouces and driving them into conflict situations.
“Sorry: Animal lover here. I love these majestic beasts. Gestation for elephants is over a year and they are highly of intelligent. I hope This is fake news.”
Your animal loving rights end where it meets the rights of the hunter.
I too love animals, and elephants in particular intensely capture my interest and imagination. I could never kill one just for “sport.” Yet I eat meat. I am able to accept that, as others point out, trophy hunting can actually help preserve the species. I am in favor of that.
As Teddy Bear noted in #8, the only thing that matters is what the Africans think. Without income from hunting permits, elephants ate just pests that the native farmers would prefer exterminated (much like how many home owners here feel about the suburban deer population).
Hunting gives value to the wildlife. Without value, they will be driven out or exterminated by the farmers.
If you love animals, then you should support legal management of the herds. Post 8 above is accurate in what we've seen in the past. Good management, and local incentives will actually increase herd size and health. When the only way to cull a herd is via poaching, you'll find entire herds destroyed at the behest of locals whose land is encroached by them.
Put into other terms somewhat closer to home, do you know who the largest private owner of wetlands in North America is? Ducks Unlimited. They have been buying wetlands across the entire migratory route of waterfowl from Canda to Mexico and Central America to make sure that there are plenty of waterfowl to hunt. The hunters themselves donate a lot of money for this effort because it's in their own best interests to do so.