Replies

Capturing individual elephants out of family groups, especially for so disgusting a purpose as letting some pseudo-macho tourist shoot the animal while it's still drugged and disoriented, is immoral. If culling needs to be done, it should be done to whole family groups so as not to traumatize elephants who are not being culled. And nobody should be doing it for fun or as an ego trip. Unwanted dogs and cats have to be euthanized every day at animal shelters, but we recognize that this is sad state of affairs, and we wouldn't stand for the shelters inviting people to come and pay for the opportunity to torment the animals and then kill them for fun.

Culling entire family group may not be an option. Removing a few large animals may be all that is needed to bring the herd back to a size that the habitat can support. Your original post about culling the entire family group talked about elephants running around trying to protect their calves and dead elephants laying everywhere. That sounds pretty traumatic to me, right up till the last elephant gets a bullet. Another possibility is that they did remove the entire family group. Non-dominant bulls are not tolerated by the dominant bull, and often form small bachelor groups that function on there own away from the main herd. The three bulls that were sold might have been an entire bachelor group.

I'll say it again, I'm no fan of canned hunts. However, if culling needs to be done, it might as well be done in a method that lets the park make some much needed money. It is absurd to say that shooting an entire herd of elephants from a helicopter is more "moral" than a game farm selling canned elephant hunts.