Real conservation individuals would NOT kill the creature and just donate to the cause.
Well, in a world where you get to decide how words are defined and what constitutes real conservation individuals, maybe that would be true. That's not the way the world works.
In your opinion, "real conservation individuals would NOT kill the creature and just donate to the cause." That's one opinion, however given that there is ample evidence to indicate that real conservation can and does take the form of properly implemented government managed sport hunting, your opinion is difficult to support factually.
This ALL boils back to the greed of a hunter for his trophy, versus a desire to save a species.
A false dichotomy. It is possible to do both. Properly implemented, government managed sport hunting has been tremendously successful at preserving--even RESTORING species--and not just based on a few anecdotes or cherry-picked data sets.
And given that humans have caused the extinction and decline of dozens of species THROUGH HUNTING we are obviously not very good at saving species...
Name one species hunted to extinction through government managed sport hunting.
The species that have been driven into extinction by "hunting" were either species subject to eradication efforts, those that were hunted commercially, or hunted for subsistence without government management.
By modern definitions, it would probably be far more accurate to state that those species were poached into extinction.
It was the lessons learned from those tragedies, in fact, that have helped us become very good at saving species through controlled hunting.
The species remains threatened by illegal hunting for meat and ivory, habitat loss and human-elephant conflict. Most range states do not have adequate capacity to protect and manage their herds. If conservation action is not forthcoming, elephants may become locally extinct in some parts of Africa within 50 years.
There are two VERY interesting and telling points in this quote.
1. There is no mention of legal hunting being a threat to the species. That's because it's not. Controlled legal hunting is, in fact, beneficial to species because it provides strong incentives for locals to report poaching, to avoid poaching themselves, it gives the elephants and their range commercial value which provides the government with money to help manage & preserve the species and the land on which they live.
2. It calls for conservation action. Historically, the most effective long term conservation actions have been controlled legal sport hunting programs.
The only difference between legal and illegal is that some human bureaucrat has granted an arbitrary license and heavily profited from it. It's the same end result, a dead creature.
Absolutely incorrect, misleading and totally bankrupt in the logic department. In fact, it's hard for me to imagine that someone could pack more misinformation, logical fallacy and nonsense into fewer words.
I think we all know that looking at two end results and seeing that they're the same doesn't mean that there's no difference between how those two results were obtained or that the two end results are equally preferable. By your logic, if two men walk out of a bank with $100,000 then there's no difference between them and no reason to ask them what happened inside. The fact that one stole the money and killed a teller in the process of getting the money in his hand while the other one withdrew the money from his own account is apparently irrelevant--they're both leaving the same bank with the same amount of money so the end result is the same and therefore must be equally preferable. Hogwash.
So even if it were true that the end result is the same, it is certainly not true that two processes are equally preferable simply because the end result is similar.
With that out of the way, it's not even the same end result. In one case the number and age/sex of elephants killed is tightly controlled while in the other case the only restriction is how much the poachers can get away with killing--basically indiscriminate killing in terms of numbers and sex. Clearly two different end results.
And, of course, there is a HUGE difference between an elephant being killed by a poacher using expedient weapons (often snares and small caliber rifles) with no attempt made to effect a humane kill and an elephant being killed with a minimum legal caliber with a professional hunter standing by to insure that the elephant doesn't escape wounded or suffer needlessly.
It's also true that legal hunting, by law, makes complete use of the animal. The meat is generally distributed to locals who need it, the other parts of the animal are used for commercial purposes, usually to support the local economy. Illegally killed elephants are usually left to rot with the exception of small amounts of meat and the ivory.
The idea that "some human bureaucrat" (as opposed to a non-human bureaucrat, I suppose
) is the only one who profits from legal hunting is ridiculous. The locals profit in the form of revenues from hunters, in the form of meat, from the control of the elephants damaging their subsistence farming and from jobs in the hunting profession. The professional hunters obviously profit. The government profits. But most of all, the elephants profit because the money from hunting makes preserving their range financially viable, helps pay for anti-poaching efforts, incentivizes the local population to be anti-poaching, and helps control populations to insure healthy herds.
The licenses are not issued "arbitrarily". The number sold and the type of animal to be taken are typically based on the results of surveying the herds and deciding what is best in terms of maintaining a viable population, dealing with depredating or dangerous animals, etc.
One more point worth noting. Elephants have no natural predators. If they are not killed by hunters they typically die of starvation when their last set of teeth wears out and they can no longer effectively grind up the vegetable material that makes up their diet. There's a pretty good argument to be made that a quick death by a legal hunter shooting a minimum caliber weapon, supervised by a professional hunter to insure that the kill is humane, is about the best possible way for an elephant to pass out of this world. There's no question that it's a better way than having poachers kill them by trapping/snaring them and/or filling them full of bullets from small caliber weapon until they can't stand up any longer.
There are many differences between legal and illegal hunting and the overall difference is tremendous.
Could someone explain why they want to hunt large game, elephant giraffe etc. As I said I don't buy the conservation argument if peoples motive was to help they would just donate money. If they enjoy killing animals and collecting trophies just say that.
The beauty of it is that even if the hunters don't really want to support conservation efforts (although most clearly do) the money they pay for hunting permits, the fees paid to professional hunters, the tourism expenses and the products from the animal itself still benefit those efforts.
As to why some people enjoy hunting--I suspect that there have been volumes written on the topic. In the simplest analysis, I suppose that it's a way to challenge to one's self--just as people challenge themselves with other outdoor activities. Why do some people mountain climb while others play croquet, why do some jump out of airplanes while others are rockhounds? Different people enjoy different types and levels of challenges.
