"Canned" lion hunts and Chinese tiger parks:

Great Debates
1

Let me start by saying I am an avid animal lover. I don’t have anything against hunting, though personally I could never have the heart to kill a defenseless animal. In other words, Im OK if YOU want to do it, just not something I want to participate in.

Im also have 6 cats. Not lions or tigers, but lets say I have a special affinity for the for family Felidae. I am a volunteer for a cat rescue group.

Here’s where it gets uncomfortable:

Saw the last 20 minutes of an MSNBC special tonight, wishing I had seen the rest, called “Blood Lions”.

In the last 20 minutes, it appeared to be making the case that going out on a true lion hunt costs $70,000, with about a 60% chance of bagging a feline, and averages 21 days.

In Africa, there are these farms that raise tame lions, costing hunter $20,000 with all but a less than 100% chance of shooting Simba in a few days. The special made these “canned” hunting safaris seem even more despicable in that the lions are caged up and tamed natural predators, easier to hunt, and the tour guides try to beef up there hunters manhood making them seem more dangerous than they really are.

AND the “real” lion hunters look down on these “canned” hunts, because you are really not going out in the wild with your gun, and tracking down and shooting a truly dangerous lion.

Here is what got my goat------if I read the stats correctly, theres about 5-7000 of “real” lions in the wild . . . . .while over 15-20,000 live on these “canned” properties!

If I got any of my facts wrong I apologize, but am I wrong in thinking that if you are a big enough of a douche to shoot a lion, at the very least, if you go to one of these farms where the lions are in abundance isn’t that better than shooting one in the wild? Is it really THAT much less manly since you are shooting the poor bastard with a gun anyway?

I saw a similar special on Chinese tiger parks. The Chinese appreantely have a affinity for tiger body parts because of their supposed medicinal purposes. These tiger parks are notorious for the poor starvation conditions of the tigers (if you watched videos, its heartbreaking) who are eventually butchered for their body parts. Animal rights activists are rightfully outraged.

But I saw one expert who had a great idea----these parks are unregulated. You’ll never stop the Chinese from using tiger body parts for alternative medicinal purposes—why not regulate the tiger parks, make sure the tigers are treated humanely until they can be euthanized humanely, then harvest their body parts for sale----rather than fostering a black market that continually threatens the survival of endangers wild tigers.

Thoughts? Good, the bad or the ugly.

2

To a greater or lesser extent, I think we can ethically say that most non-human animals deserve better treatment than plants or fungus, but have less ethically imposed standards of care than humans.

To put that in layman’s terms, while I would feel no remorse about uprooting and chipping a juniper bush in my yard just to make my yard look nicer, I’d feel bad about running a family of chipmunks through the woodchipper, even if it was accidental, and if I ran a person through the woodchipper, I probably deserve to spend the rest of my life in prison.

On the other side of things, we farm and harvest all kinds of animals already, and I’m not planning on giving up my cheeseburgers, pork chops, and fried chicken anytime soon. So I don’t per se have a problem with farming animals themselves for their meat.

I’m comfortable saying that tigers and lions are on a similar ethical level as cows and pigs. I don’t have a problem with raising cows and pigs to get slaughtered for their meat/skin/whatever, so I can’t reasonably have a problem with doing the same to lions and tigers. At the same time, I don’t want cows and pigs to be mistreated on their way to becoming my dinner, so I want the farmed lions and tigers to be treated humanely as well.

Would I support better conditions for animals being raised for slaughter? Sure. Would I support raising animals for slaughter so their wild counterparts can continue existing? Sure. Do I personally want to hunt a lion or drink liquefied tiger testicles? No, but I have a hard time arguing that’s less morally supportable than me grilling an enormous steak that came from Betsy the cow.

3

Tame lions? Seems to me some famous individual, perhaps in Nevada, discovered that’s not a real thing. Or was that tame tiger? At any rate, is there really such a thing as a tame lion?

4

I’m not sure if you’re thinking of Roy Horn, of Siegfried and Roy, who was injured by a tiger in a stage show in Vegas (which the duo claims was the tiger noticing that Roy was having a stroke and trying to take him to safe place like you would do to a cub), or to the Dentist who suffered backlash after killing Cecil the Lion.

Anyway, you can tame just about any animal, especially if you raise it from birth and can control it’s upbringing. There’s a reason “Lion Tamer” is a profession, after all :slight_smile:

I think the outrage over the dentist killing the lion was more social consequences than well-thought out moral reasoning.

5

Not to mention lots of dogs maul humans, yet no one argues this means dogs can’t be “tamed”.

6

Unless it’s for control of varmints (like in many parts of CA the ground squirrel is over populated and spread diseases like the Black Plague), or for food, then you shouldn’t hunt it.

Canned hunts are morally wrong, then, IMHO.

Lions are not endangered, however. *Estimates of the African lion population range between 16,500 and 47,000 living in the wild in 2002–2004. * wiki. But they are a vulnerable species.

7

I’ve always heard that canned lion tastes a bit off, and that fresh is better, but I’ve never tried so not sure. I’d watch out with the Chinese knock off tiger though, since a lot of their food products are adulterated with other stuff, and gods know what you’d get in tinned tiger…

:eek:

8

Re the Chinese, China, and tigers: the above (my bolding) would seem to me, definitely the least-bad response to a bad situation: I could enthusiastically get behind it. Heck, set up tiger parks also in other places than China, to help to supply the Chinese medicinal market (whose demands could, hopefully, in time be at least reduced via education).

I understand that schemes and possibilities have been floated, for non-lethally harvesting elephants for their ivory and rhinos for their horns – in theory, nearest possible to a win-win solution for everyone concerned – but there have proved to be great practical difficulties.

9

The problem with this is, to my understanding, the ‘medicine’ is better, somehow, if the animals are starved, beaten and basically abused. If you raise them well and then let some guy shoot them I’m not sure if the Chinese market would be as keen, though I guess some tiger bone or whatever is better than none so maybe it would work…?

10

As I understand it, the tiger population worldwide is in much more danger than the lion population. Obviously there are local populations/subspecies which are more or less healthy than

Humans have been breeding dogs for millennia to make them more amenable to training. Humans have essentially done zero taming of big cats. S&R’s tigers were trained by them and their staff but they are still wild animals, and the tigers were probably not selectively bred for docility, but rather especially difficult tigers were no longer trained.
One exception to the rule does not make it an invalid rule.

Some game wardens premptively saw off the horns to make them less compelling to poachers. But there are many catches. They’re dangerous animals, so the only way to do this is to tranquilize them. Well in real life that is still dangerous: the animal could wake up, or even their nervous system could have difficulty handling the stress and the animal may never wake up.

11

Regarding parts of endangered animals used for TCM, this article in a mainland China newspaper is a good read.

12

That’s my worry as well. It’s similar to the asian dog meat trade. In western cultures we find the flavor of lactic acid buildup in the muscles to be “gamy” or unpleasant, but I’ve heard that asian cultures like that. So they actively torment the animal prior to slaughter.

This is what I’ve heard volunteering in international dog rescue, though. I honestly can’t tell how much of it is truth and how much is inflated by organizations like PETA. I am kind of odd in the fact that I have no problem with killing and eating any animal as long as it’s humanely raised and slaughtered, so I am always skeptical with claims like this. But if it’s true, it makes my skin crawl.

13

I have no problem raising animals to kill. But hunting is often a less than ideal way to die. It’s acceptable when used to keep populations in check, since it’s better than not doing anything. But that’s not the case here. Doing nothing means these animals never existed in the first place.

And the issue with Cecil was that they didn’t even do what you are suggesting. They went and stole someone else’s lion–one being used for scientific purposes. It’s more akin to someone stealing your dog or cat, taking the collar off of him, keeping him from running away, and shooting them.

Plus, let’s not forget–he only wounded Cecil. So there was a ton of unnecessary suffering. Exactly what I was talking about when saying that hunting is not the most humane killing method.

(I, for one, would love a movement towards hunting turning into capturing animals and humanely killing them.)

14

Cruelty and abuse to the animal to improve the effect for the “end user” (in reality, or imagination) – OK: different cultures see things differently, be wary about being instantly judgemental, etc. – but on this issue, my reaction (and that of other posters here) is like that of Ivan in the novel in Lois McMaster Bujold’s space-opera series: “That’s just wrong”.
I wrote: “I understand that schemes and possibilities have been floated, for non-lethally harvesting elephants for their ivory, and rhinos for their horns – in theory, nearest possible to a win-win solution for everyone concerned – but there have proved to be great practical difficulties.”

thelurkinghorror wrote: “Some game wardens premptively saw off the horns to make them less compelling to poachers. But there are many catches. They’re dangerous animals, so the only way to do this is to tranquilise them. Well in real life that is still dangerous: the animal could wake up, or even their nervous system could have difficulty handling the stress and teh animal may never wake up.”

And with elephants, I understand that there’s a lot more of the tusk than the visible part: it runs deep back into the skull. One unhappily feels that on this scene, the dice are altogether wretchedly loaded against the animals and their survival.
Monty: thanks for link. Kudos to the Chinese authorities for seemingly trying to do something to curb poaching. One would like to take it that the Siberian-tiger park in the subsidiary link, is a “respectable” establishment devoted to conservation, not quack medicine; with the animals therein, being well-treated.

15

I think the problem with having “tiger farms” to feed the traditional medicine market is that having a legitimate market makes it much easier to conceal a black market. If the “farmed” tiger parts could flood the market enough to drive the price down so low that poached tiger parts were simply unprofitable, that’d be effective. But I bet raising tigers is expensive, and by existing they could effectively make poached tiger parts cheaper because they’d lower the risks of collecting/selling THOSE. So it could actually accelerate the rate of tiger poaching.

It’s my understanding that much of the pressure on big cat populations is caused by habitation depletion. Given plenty of space/prey, big cat populations would rebuild pretty quickly. Poaching is a problem not just because there’s so much of it, but because they are going after a population kept so small by this other limitation.