The elephant herds of Africa have taken a direct hit losing 30 percent of the their numbers in the last 15 years. The black rhino hovered close to 70, individuals in Today maybe 5, Was that animal really worth more dead than alive? The outrage against that particular killing was widespread and begs the question: Is this the best humanity can do to preserve its most fragile species? Not that long ago, there were more than 40, tigers in India and maybe 80, in all of Asia.
India now has maybe 1, tigers. I, for one, would rather see the Sistine Chapel fall to pieces, the unique vision of one man, just one man, however talented he may have been, than to lose for all time a single species whether it be the mountain gorilla, elephant, lion, tiger, polar bear or any whale species on this planet.
Economy and ecology have to come together. Photo credit: Cyril Christo and Marie Wilkinson. I asked a priest at a temple in India what would happen to humanity if we lost the tiger.
Buddhist monks used to meditate in caves where tigers patrolled the jungle. If big game hunters were to enter even one of the caves at Bandhavgarh, sit very quietly for an hour in a way Buddhist monks used to 2, years ago, and maybe indulge in a moment of utter tranquility such as most of them have never done before, exit that cave, and stare profoundly into the eyes of a tiger at 20 feet, they would be utterly silenced and irreducibly haunted and transfigured by a vastly more coherent being.
The deer bred in Texas by the thousands for the biggest horns is craven. While no-one is allowed to kill a tiger in India the black market still exists.
One day many species will become as rare as the Bengal, Sumatran tiger or Siberian tiger. But there are those who dream of hunting them. They continue to be poached. With changing monsoon patterns with heat indexes expected to rise across Asia, how will the tiger survive? How will humanity survive?
How on Earth anyone would want to shoot one of the pillars of the world is beyond comprehension. But the estimated value of an elephant over its lifetime may be over 1. When will this come to an end? When will there be only 1, elephants left in the wild protected by electric fences and armed guards?
By then there will be nothing left of the wild. What exactly will it take to come to our senses? We have reached the tail end of morality on this Earth as a species. A few more millimeters and we will have reached the point of no return. The Convention on Biological Diversity seeks to stave off the bleeding of nature while nature still exists in some measure.
But we are running out of time. The Arctic and Antarctic melting are starting to make short work of our vanity. We need to wake up. There may come a time, when teachers will have to explain to their students what Nature was. That Nature came to an end abruptly in the 21st century out of greed and utter arrogance. We have the next four years and maybe this decade, and then it will be over.
I promise. Unless we make an about face. It is why more people are addicted to drugs than ever. Why more people are taking their lives than ever. Why more people are deciding not to have children than ever.
Because not only are they being left behind, the species that gave them a reason to marvel and wonder, are diminishing. We have precisely this decade to turn things around before the possibility of living viably on this Earth disappears. Recently, Sir Ranulph Fiennes, the explorer, was able to convince the WWF to change its endorsement of trophy hunting.
Which speaks volumes about this inimitable explorer and about one of the very largest conservation groups on the planet. Change is possible. Fiennes wrote about Boris Johnson, as the leader of the country that incited trophy hunting more than any other in modern times when he said that he hoped that the prime minister would understand that hunting was about cruelty. Everest and has crossed both polar ice caps summoned by a spirit virtually unmatched in modern times.
Released five years after the killing of Cecil the lion, the book made an impact and especially on the WWF. They were shamed as should every killer, every hunter who wantonly destroys life for fun, not for venison, not for food, but for plain old entertainment. In this extraordinary time of extreme vulnerability, life can no longer be taken for granted. To hold onto antiquated models of human behavior does humanity and Earth a grave injustice. But this is perhaps the most senseless and vile form of animal exploitation of all.
It is people killing animals literally just to amuse themselves. But the greatest argument of all comes of course from science. Incontrovertibly so.
Those with the biggest horns, the largest tusks, if taken out, leave the less fit in the overall population. Trophy hunting is artificial selection. Trophy hunting impairs genetic selection for the hardiest individuals. The article begins…. Hunting the animal is bad enough. Wanting to display the stuffed carcass to basically boast about killing the animal is in some ways worse in my opinion. The link between serial killers and animal cruelty.
This argument seems to make sense, but where are the natural predators of deer? This leaves the female deer population free to carry on having babies. Another argument in favour of trophy hunting is that the income helps to fund anti-poaching efforts. But the positive results of that regime have withered in recent years due to a dramatic escalation of poaching, which has gutted the gains of well-managed licensed hunting.
The main argument is that the income from hunting safaris conserves the land and biodiversity. I am unaware of any species where current trophy hunting is the primary threat to their persistence.
The major threats are overwhelmingly habitat loss, poaching, prey loss and conflict with humans — all of which will be worsened if land used for trophy hunting is converted to agriculture or settlement. It has to be said that this argument does make sense.
And this argument is echoed in many other articles on this topic…. If hunters truly believe that they are aiding conservation efforts, there is no shame or guilt attached to killing. When unscrupulous people see how much money is being made by legal hunting, illegal hunting will necessarily increase. Illegal hunting can result in protected animals being killed. This is what happened in the case of Cecil the Lion killed by an American dentist. Cecil was collared for an Oxford University research project and he was also a major tourist attraction.
And worse yet, the lion had been illegally lured out of its protected reserve for the hunt. Not every hunter is very good at hunting. This means that some animals really suffer after being badly injured and not killed outright. The problem with talking about alternatives to trophy hunting is that the people who take part have a lot of disposable income to play with and therefore probably have a fair bit of influence on lawmakers too. Talking about alternatives with the hunters is pointless in my mind.
We need to be talking about alternative forms of income in order to protect and conserve the land and animals. To make the same amount of income an awful lot more people would need to go on photo safaris. I believe the only alternative is to convince people with money to make very substantial donations every year. That way the income from trophy hunting will no longer be required to conserve the land. There are enough billionaires in the world who could do this, but how can they be convinced?
I do understand why trophy hunting is defended… money makes the world go round, as they say. I will never understand why people want to kill such amazing wildlife. Killing the strongest males may also negatively impact people. When dominant males are killed, juveniles who are more daring, less experienced and prone to killing livestock may move into the area.
Our work in action. Audrey Delsink Read More. Help slam the door on importing trophies into the EU Add your name to stand against this gruesome industry Act Now. More you can do. Protect giraffes under the Endangered Species Act. Sign Now. Save lions from trophy hunting in Zimbabwe. Act Now. Those few losses can be mitigated with humane, cost-effective and non-lethal methods that work—yet only a fraction of cattle and sheep growers in the U. Grizzly Bears.
The truth about trophy hunting. Read about statistics, economics and more that show why trophy hunting is wrong and unnecessary. Glenn Nagel. Alamy Stock Photo. Download Economics Report Native carnivores—including bobcats , coyotes , foxes , and mountain lions —are often killed in barbaric wildlife killing contests.
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