Posted on 11/20/2017 3:59:15 AM PST by marktwain
Well then let's get busy and kill more lions.
It is called management. It is why white tail deer and elk have made such a come back in the U.S.A.
East of the Mississippi we killed off all the predator species and hunting is not as prevalent as in times past. Deer etc. are running around with nothing to control the pollution. In the era of the iphone the idea of sitting in the woods for hours on end is too boring.
“Environmentalist” vs. “Conservationist.”
When you have X land and that land can healthily support Y lions and you have Y + 1 lions the pride has to be culled by 1.
Enviro:
Why kill such a magnificent animal. (Meanwhile Y + 1 goes to Y + 20 and then all the lions starve.)
Conservation:
2 Options:
1) Park rangers kill a a lion
2) Hunter pays the $50,000 License fee, hires 20 locals for a couple of weeks for wages exceeding their normal salaries for a year and injects about $150,000 into the local economy.
Killing for food is one thing...but killing for the thrill of killing, I don’t understand.
Big game hunting reminds me of sex tourism.
It is pretty hypocritical for any American to critique wild life management in Africa. Our track record is horrible. We virtually wiped out every grey wolf in the lower 48 and tried to kill every mountain lion and bear but were less successful. It’s not for trying though. If the wolf population was at pre Colombian levels to you think feral pigs would be running loose everywhere?
See #5
Open your mind and understand.
On top of that the license fees pay for anti poaching efforts. Poachers don’t care about the math involved. They can take Y to Y - Y = 0. Conservation means keeping a pride or herd at Y... what the land X can support.
Either a park ranger kills a lion or a hunter. A hunter boost the local economy and pays for conservation measures. Almost all hunters are staunch conservationists. An out of control population decimates the environment or even worse leads to a population crash.
There are organized anti-poacher volunteer groups that come from all over the world into Africa and basically performed paramilitary anti-poaching Patrols.
I kmow a couple of lawyers who do this as their vacation into the bush. Plenty of wildlife to be seen while deterring illegal and harmful poaching activities.
Contrary to your low opinion of my critical thinking skills, I think what you wrote makes perfect sense. My problem is with the person who will pay that much to kill for the sake of killing.
Oh and I know of what I speak. My uncle had a 2000 hectare hunting preserve in South Africa in norther Transvaal just south of Zimbabwe. (I am a RSA expat) He would base hunting fees on which population needed culled. Employed 10 people, one a professor to determine which herds/prides were Y +. If the Rinos were Y - for example, they were not huntable at any price.
I don’t get that either, but people are different. In prehistoric times I would have been the fire maker, the tool maker, the planner and not the hunter. Thank God there are hunters because otherwise you and I would have starved.
For the sake of killing, or for the sake travelling to an exotic location with all the romance associated to pursue a goal that men throughout the ages have pursued, to pit yourself against the instincts of dangerous prey? I’ve never been anything of a hunter and I’ve certainly never gone on safari, but there’s much more to the whole affair than just paying for a killshot.
Personally, I'd rather the hunter paying the bribe take the risk that the bribe taker will also want the reward for identifying a poacher and end up shot by the anti-poaching patrols.
Of course, the prevailing theory is that if people have plenty of money they should also have exceptions without any risks because, well, they have plenty of money. As far as the 50k going to protecting lions, it's Africa and the but that 50k won't almost all vanish into the pockets of politicians and connected folks, yeah, gotcha.
It's a nice theory, but unfortunately, reality doesn't dance to that theoretical tune in Africa.
I was once on a cross-country flight seated next to a South African safari guide. He was quite interesting. I asked about animal populations and he absolutely confirmed that African countries that ban hunting have drastic endangerment while those that has managed hunting have strong and growing populations.
He strongly implies that the safari guides take care of business themselves when they come across poachers.
I was sickened when the former seatwarmer in the White House has $20,000,000 in Ivory crushed into dust. A far smarter decision would have been to release it for sale, thus raising supply and lowering the price of Ivory. All proceeds could have been given directly to anti-poaching efforts in the African countries, but alas, he had a teachable moment and squandered it.
Read my other posts on this issue. As far as the fees go, there isn’t that much corruption in the conservation movement. It isn’t like these people want to kill the goose that lays golden eggs. Not being corrupt is entirely in their self interest. Everything else in Africa is corrupt as hell. Conservation is way at the bottom of the scale.
I’m guessing cutting off their tusks isn’t an option here.
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