| Topic: | Re:Re:Re:Re:Re:Re:Whats the pleasure in killing a Lion? | |
| Posted by: | Anuj Gupta | |
| Date/Time: | 30/07/15 22:33:00 |
| I'm sorry that you find my blunt writing style offensive. I was trying to formulate a serious answer to what is a serious question. I will try to make my posts more grammatically correct. I'm not a dyed-in-the-wool treehugger who equates all hunters with pedophiles. While I find it personally repugnant, I do believe that hunting, when well regulated, can and does assist in conservation. Poaching is a huge problem for elephants and rhinos (in the countries that are lucky enough to have them). For these animals, hunting plays an absolutely crucial role in terms of anti-poaching patrols, because professional hunters have an incentive to stamp out poaching in the GMAs. There was a famous case from Hwange a couple of years ago, when poachers decided to dispense with guns and instead laced a water pool with cyanide killing over 20 elephants. In that case it was the hunters who organized patrols and even flew drones over the park to ultimately find the offenders. It is a perverse incentive, but it works. For lions I'd be much more worried about the herder with 10,000 heads of cattle, whose livestock absolutely decimate the habitat for the lion's natural prey. The lion retaliates by killing a cow, and the village then turns out to kill the lion. A sad circle. Does hunting have an image problem? Of course it does. Does it have a class problem? Quite possibly. Does it have a race problem? Photos that routinely send Twitter users into meltdown are usually those of gloating, pasty white men (and occasionally women), whose aggregate emotional intelligence quotient sums up to precisely zero. You can decide for yourself. It's unfortunate that Cecil was killed, but what makes me incandescent with rage is the manner in which it was done. There is lots of informed opinion and debate out there, it's relatively easy to find. Finally, to address your point about angling. My wife is a committed vegetarian because she finds "lambs too cute". She has no such reservations about fish because she doesn't feel a "tangible connection". Maybe it's just that simple. I suspect that's why whales are another matter entirely. |