Have any of you ever been to Africa? It’s a shithole for most people. Big game hunting brings in big bucks and stimulates the economy.
This is what I have posted to all of my FB asshole friends (which is why there’s no cursing)
My brother in law used to be a professional hunter in Zimbabwe. It is an incredibly lucrative industry that brings in important foreign exchange. Americans will pay over $50 000US for an elephant. No animals are shot that are endangered. It would be against their best interests to let their clients shoot endangered animals. Professional hunting brings much needed employment in a country that has an unemployment rate of over 90%. Professional hunting also helps to stop poaching. Most of the animals shot are butchered and eaten (except leopard which doesn’t taste very nice, I’m told - it’s usually fed to the dogs). No parts of the animals are wasted. Unless you are a total vegetarian and have never worn leather, then it’s a little hypocritical for any of us to say that it is wrong to kill animals. The professional hunters have a vested interest in the wildlife of their country - don’t you think they are doing whatever they can to keep it protected? Believe me that money goes a long way to protecting endangered species. Read this article, it’s very interesting.
There seems to be a strain of animal-rights activism that simply acts as if it has already won the public-relations battle and writes commentary from an alternate universe where everyone understands that killing animals for any reason is horrible. I guess when you never leave your bubble of professional activism about a non-issue you can convince yourself that “everyone I knew voted for McGovern” and put out these every-damn-week dispatches from the upside-down zone…
People in the comments keep saying that leopards are endangered. They are not endangered in sub-Saharan Africa. In fact they are thriving there. From Wikipedia: Within sub-Saharan Africa, the species is still numerous and even thriving in marginal habitats where other large cats have disappeared.
I also know someone who has done a lot of hunting in Africa. The ridiculous money paid for a license also helps keep the preserves and parks in operation.
Can we still make fun of them for wanting to prove their manhood by getting ferried around to shoot leopards from the back of a truck while three or four assistants stand at the ready with trank guns?
The thing is, everyone that’s posted it on FB is saying how disgusting it is too. It’s like they live in their lovely little bubbles where all wild animals are cute wittle fluffy bunnies and they should all be protected. Every single one of them. I’m pretty sure they even want to intervene when a leopard takes out an impala not thinking of the implications that the leopard would starve.
I just wish people would take the time to educate themselves about situations in countries like Zimbabwe where people are literally starving to death.
And on preview, yes Normal Phase please do make fun of them because they’re rich white privileged assholes
Yeah, this is more my take. I’m not against it because I think they’re killing endangered animals or whatever, I’m against it because they’re taking a gun and shooting animals. I’d be against it on any continent and with any animal.
I respect your opinion on it, but I feel the same way about people hunting ducks or deer or bears right here in the US…so there’s that.
Well… first, I am a vegetarian, and I have been to Africa- and don’t, incidently, consider the entire continent a ‘shithole’.
I don’t like hunting there, and I don’t think it brings very much to the local economy at all- most of the money just goes straight to the -often foreign, and almost always rich- landowners, not actually to local people who are in need of employment. The hunting ‘reserves’ do pretty much fuck all for conservation, despite often claiming such, only ‘preserving’ the very few species people are willing to pay to kill, in unbalanced, inbred groups. They also often take up needed farm or grazing land- even the official preserves often allow grazing, but not the fenced shooting ranges.
What I said was it’s a shithole for a lot of people. I was born in South Africa and raised in Zimbabwe. I love Africa, it’s one of the most beautiful continents on earth. I was lucky enough to be born white and privileged. There are many millions of people in Africa who cannot say the same. And while I agree with you that most of the money goes to the rich landowners it’s the same everywhere in the world.
Have you seen how overgrazed most of Zimbabwe is? At least the fenced shooting ranges are still natural. I personally know quite a few of the hunting farms that pay the villagers around them to help stop poachers.
I’m not remotely against hunting as such, however much I like to make fun of the ‘great white hunter’ wannabes, and I’ll leave discussions of the actual ecological impact of hunting preserves to those better informed, but it is possible to be a complete doof in the opposite direction of “ooh the fuzzy wuzzies”, you know.
Seconded. It’s one thing to need to kill another living being, for yourself or others to eat or to protect yourself/your property. But IMO liking to kill anything, taking actual joy in the snuffing of another life, is a sign of serious mental illness.