Naive to think hunting helps these populations
So called animal rights activists are out of their minds to begin with.
Really?! I'm an animal rights activist, donate to charities, and don't like seeing animals killed for sport - that includes dog fighting, using live dogs on fishhooks as shark bait, cock fighting, and other horrible treatment of animals. So, I guess I'm "out of my mind?"
Paying to go on a "big game hunt" to shoot and kill an animal desperate for survival is on par with the above. Your "sport" is the suffering and death of a majestic creature, and simply inexcusable.
Just today, illegal tusks representing about 370 dead elephants were confiscated.
http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/storie...ME&TEMPLATE=DEFAULT&CTIME=2015-04-20-08-04-57
BANGKOK (AP) -- Thailand seized 4 tons of ivory hidden in bean sacks tracked from Congo in what authorities said was the biggest bust in the country's history, customs officials said Monday.
The 739 elephant tusks, bound for Laos, were seized upon arrival at a port in Bangkok on Saturday after the authorities received a tip-off and had tracked the containers from Congo, the Customs Department's director-general Somchai Sujjapongse told reporters....
"We have been following the (shipment) for two months. Intelligence reports said ivory from Africa might be smuggled with other products to go through the Laotian border," Somchai said.
Thailand is one of the top destinations for African ivory smuggling in Asia and could face international sanctions soon if it doesn't show progress in combatting the problem....
Poachers have killed tens of thousands of African elephants for their tusks in recent years to meet demand for ivory in Asia. China has imposed a one-year ban on ivory imports amid criticism that its citizens' huge appetite for ivory threatens the existence of Africa's elephants.
If hunting led to conservation, then all of those extinct animals hunted into extinction would still be around. Trophy hunts, and the marginal income it generates, won't do a thing to stop this. This takes government intervention on a grand scale.
Yes, let's consider hunting bald eagles for "conservation."
If the bald eagles had limited habitat range, and their numbers were too large for the range they existed, and they told you which birds, specifically you could shoot - surplus males, or animals too old to reproduce - it would be beneficial.
The ONLY way to save these populations is to prohibit their hunting, and make hunting them or possession of their carcasses punishable by very severe sentences.
Many of the hunted animals, including elephants, have large territorial ranges and are migratory for food and water and biological needs. Humans simply need to be less encroaching and more protecting of these creatures.
People can also help on an individual level by ending the desire to kill these beautiful animals, ending the desire of possessing things like hides and ivory (which is barbaric given what they represent), etc.
I'm sorry, but there's nothing very "manly" about taking your $5000 scoped rifle on a drive into the bush with a paid guide, sitting in wait, and shooting a beautiful creature and ending it's life for your "sport." More enlightened people will see that for the barbarism that it is... I may be the voice of "dissent" on a gun board on this topic, but it's a valid viewpoint. Think about what you are doing. You are putting a bullet into a creature, who's numbers are suffering, for sport. If you take pleasure in seeing a creature suffer and die, which is really what we are talking about here, that's simply not right. No apologies if that hurts your feelings.
Hunting them for "conservation" is just an excuse to hunt them. If "hunters" were really interested in conserving them, they'd take that big pile of money otherwise spent on a hunting trip, and just give to a conservation cause instead. But they don't because that's not what this is about. This is about some thrill of killing a huge animal with a rifle. And that is frankly disturbing when considered on both the micro and macro levels, given the ramifications. Some day, those populations could be gone, and "hunters" here will have taken one of them. That is very upsetting and sad.
Meanwhile, populations of these majestic creatures reaches near extinction and I see no logic in killing a single one of them.