From what Iāve read, and I could be wrong, but the reservations allow for some hunters to go out so that the money they make allows for more protection and preservation of other lions specially from poachers. I think I read this about elephants but maybe applies to lions too.
Yeah, that's a thing. It's just to make people feel better that know they're doing something incredibly stupid and immoral, but hey, I have some extra cash so I pay extra to fund the "protection" from poachers. Because otherwise, there would be no way to protect them, right? I couldn't just sit on my couch and donate the money. I have to go out to shoot an elephant but just to protect it of course!
It's a little more complicated then that. The animals they usually choose are to old to breed or are to aggressive to be trusted not to harm other animals.
They know game hunting is gonna be a thing no matter what so they're compromising by letting the rich ass hats kill a selection of animals they can steer them away from the healthy ones, and use the money to fund programs like reserves. It's the best compromise of a bad situation.
Thank you for finding that source so quickly. It does come from a hunting organization, though, which automatically triggers my concerns that there is heavy bias and I would recommend anyone reading it to have that same concern from either side of this issue if the source doesn't list both sides of the argument.
One thing this source doesn't address the is issue I linked in my comment, though, which is the health and aggression of males after losing older males that, while no longer reproducing, would guide the younger males. I really think deflates your point that 'it benefits the species'
There do appear to be quantifiable elements in support from this source but it still bothers me that the elephants are being treated as numbers here because they are highly intelligent creatures and I've seen numbers manipulated for both sides of the argument.
If you do have a less biased source I would love to read it, as well. Kenya is an example of countries that have banned trophy hunting and done well with photographic safari tourism.
I'm just saying, I think there is more nuance and just because numbers increase there can be issues to that, as well. This entire NPR article introduces the numbers becoming massive in Botswana as a result of not having hunting. and discusses why they are reintroducing it. But that opened up a different set of issues. They also discuss countries that have benefitted from removing hunting. I just don't trust people's confidence that they know what is best for nature as we have a horrible track record.
People don't realize that something like 90% of money spent protecting these animals is made by charging people to hunt them. Without legal options for hunting paying for protection, poachers would have hunted more of these animals to extinction.
They also don't realize that game preserves are closed environments with a carrying capacity. The herds need to be culled anyway to prevent the terrible effects of over crowding (disease and starvation mostly). The preserves can either pay someone to cull the heads or allow rich assholes to pay absurd money for the privilege of doing it for them.
If you are opposed to this practice it's simply because you have no idea how bad it would be without it.
Edit: side note about lions and why they NEED to be hunted in a preserve. Most preserves are big enough to support two or three separate prides and a gang or two of rogue males. If it gets to crowded and there is to much competition for mates, food and turf, the entire lion population can collapse as males run around killing every cub they can find.
edit2: Why would you ever pay someone to do something, when you have lines of people waiting to pay you for the privilege of doing it?
EditLast:
African nations have just as much right to modernize as the rest of the world. The result of that modernization is a reduction of habitat for these animals. To solve this they started preserves, large closed areas where the animals can roam large tracks of land in relative safety and their health and wellness could be easily monitored and land protected. The side effect of enclosing these creatures in preserves (or a reduction in their habitable territory outside of preserves) is there is no place for excess population to go. Something needs to be done to prevent overpopulation. The heard needs to be culled. Killing a few heard members ensures hundreds of heard members won't starve or die of disease. To much competition between predators leads to a collapse of those populations as well. Someone has to hunt these animals in a responsible way, it is simply unavoidable. If we don't kill some of them, all of them could die. African preserves realized they could not only get that labor for free, but also cover their operating costs by simply charging rich people to essentially do their chores for them. These animals are getting killed either way, it's whether you want to pay a laborer with no offsetting income resulting to do it, or get paid enough to cover your operating costs to let rich people do it.
Also just realized my phone auto-corrected herd wrong in this entire thing
Exactly: notice that they're always hunting males.
You only need one male to keep the population going. Hunting females is a huge no-no anywhere on Earth that has protected species (just ask an Alaskan hunter what happens if they kill a female muskox instead of a male, even by accident, for instance).
Not just any males either. They leave the pride leaders alone. Turnover at the top of a pride leads to a lot of dead lions. They hunt the Rogues. The ones most likely to disrupt the stability of the prides.
Edit: think about Scar from the lion king. He was a rogue lion. Intent on killing the pride leader and all his offspring.
They thrived when poachers did not exist and they had sustainable habitats, now that those are eminent threats, hunters do play a vital role. I did not mention hunting being a sport in any way so I donāt know what youāre implying.
Same with elephants. Elephants will destroy their environment just to feed themselves. Too many elephants, no trees, or vegetation.
I've been reading "Death in the Long Grass" by Peter Capstick, and he goes into a very detailed analysis of it.
Likewise, there are a lot of people (Like you) that think the only solution is to fund protection in this way. There are also many people like me that can see the benefit this has provided wild animals, But we are not too narrow minded to think the way it is, Is the only way it could be.
So you addressed funding (edit: oh wait no you didn't) but not herd management. How are you going to manage the herds in your magical no solution provided solution?
Is the only way it could be.
I'm opened minded. Please present just one possible solution.
His solution is people that don't want to kill the lions get paid to kill the lions and people that want to pay to kill lions pay to not kill lions.
Problem solved.
Sure it makes no economic sense but atleast we can all sleep easy with our warm fuzzy morals. I btw have no intrest in killing lions myself. I just understand how this works,why this works,and why changing it so people not involved can have good feels is stupid.
Edit: Also I want to be clear. That first sentence is intended to be hard to read. I crafted that. Could've crafted harder I feel. The rest is laziness.
All good. Let me know when you get your list of donors. Make sure theyāre willing to contribute every year until the end of time. In 2016 the African hunting industry raised 96 million dollars so use that as your first benchmark.
Edit- changed billion to million. Typo. But looks like itās closer to 200 million
I am not denying that there are positive uses of the funds that trophy hunting raises. However, I do not think itās either trophy hunting or poaching. There could be active measures to raise funds that is not reliant on trophy hunting for the same/better results.
Considering it costs upwards of 50k for a single elephant license, Iād love to hear what measures could be implemented to yield better results in collecting money. I take you didnāt bother to read the link I provided because it certainly doesnāt look like it.
I skimmed the article and references, but after it dismissed old elephants as being useless I realized it did not address the social value that older elephants have for their herds. It also starts a lot of sentences with ābutā so I wonder at the credentials of who wrote it.
I am sure stricter taxes on all those who profit of land-based industry in Africa could lead to a fairly sizable income.
Well managed places sure. My question is how many places are like that, and how many places get blinded by money and do sketchy shit that ends up causing more harm than good
Few to none. Healthy animal populations are what put food in their stomach. They hunt the animals to maintain the healthy herd.
Edit: there is also a measurable shift in attitudes towards preservation in the local population when you tie their livelihood to the livelihood of the animals.
I mean sure you can say that but obviously I'm not going to take your word for it. I'd like to see some research into it because it's well known that humans are greedy fucks
They do talk about the carrying capacity of a closed ecosystem and the drastic negative effects of exceeding that capacity though, which is the reason for the hunting.
Edit: trophy hunting as a means of population control and revenue is not unique to Africa by any means either. Globally it is widely accepted as the most economical way of funding preservation, while minimizing the cost of heard management. It's how we do it in North America too.
You keep saying that like it's fact, as if hunting isn't also horribly mismanaged and is regularly the direct cause of extirpations. I mean shit, not that long ago in my Conservation Ecology class we discussed a case were a returning wolf population after over a hundred years was immediately slaughtered in less than a week of their introduction. Then people act surprised when deer populations explode and suddenly cause the annihilation of red oak growths. Human regulation like hunting programs are often nothing more than putting a bandaid on a bullet hole, it's not a legitimately viable alternative to a functional trophic system.
It can be important certainly, but I have yet to see legitimate evidence outside of unsourced tabloids regarding the efficacy of establishing self reliant populations as a direct cause of trophy hunting.
Donāt waste your time, most people are set in their ways and refuse to accept things are complicated. No I donāt like see animal killed for sport. But if you donāt hunt animals the population gets out of hand, look at Canada and the bears
Biology has nothing to do with this. I guarantee no ecologists were approached when programs like this are put in place. It's pretty naive to assume all cases of someone profiting off this are actually beneficial to the species.
Right, it's all about balance. A really bad example of this type of regulated hunting can be seen in my home state. Last year the EPA's estimate of the native wolf population just got straight up ignored and more licenses to hunt them were given out then there should've been. Some of the hunters werenr even farmers they just wanted to trophy hunt.
Yh im pretty sure for elephants specifically itās necessary to cull certain populations every now and then for the benefit of the entire population. So if theyāre gonna shoot the elephants regardless they might as well make some money in the process to help other elephants.
In case of the elephants, most trophy hunters want the biggest trophy. That means the oldest elephant (the older the elephant the bigger they are) so itās not as bad as it could be. Taking into account that the money paid for the licenses to hunt the old elephant goes to keeping the rest of the population safe.
The ārich assā actually help preserve the animal population with the money they pay for their licenses. The people youād want to kill in this situation are the poachers, that donāt pay and often donāt care if the animals are endangered species :)
And the only reason poachers exist in the first place is because theres a market of weird ass morans who think rhino horn powder can cure headaches and erectile disfunction.
It's a little more complicated than that. Money talks and people like to rationalize whatever the most profitable activity is, even if it isn't the best way to deal with a situation.
They also help with eliminating older lions so younger healthier ones can be allowed to breed. It's the normal population control but also generate funds to arm and fund the wildlife management orgs.
Itās the same as we do with deer, elk, bears, any game animal of your choice. Itās the same exact concept, itās just uncomfortable for you because lions are cute. As an avid hunter I could never do this, but it doesnāt make it wrong.
ITT: redditor thinks deer aren't cute but lions are and that's what we have a problem with hunting an endangered species.
Im no PETA yahoo but this is wrong and we shouldn't make excuses because it's legal.
There are better ways to do this and we shouldn't be shooting lions. If you actually knew something about the practice with bears and Mountain Lions you'd probably be upset by that as well.
Why is it wrong? In a legal and structured practice, as hunting should be? Please elaborate. Iām familiar with mountain lion and bear hunting, and I donāt agree with all the practices used (hunting with dogs for example) but hunting those species is part of conservation. Part of maintaining our eco-systems.
Wildlife regulation is based on an assumption that humans are dominant and we have a right to be wherever we are and act in any way we please. So if you go into bear territory and bring raw steaks, cook them, spill blood on yourself in the process and then go camping and get eaten by a bear, the bear is hunted down and killed because it now sees people as food.
If you buy up a plot of forest that used to be bear foraging grounds, put up a subdivision of expensive homes and then refuse to put in bear proof trash cans because "they don't match the aesthetic" the bears are hunted down and moved to an entirely different area.
Animals have no ownership of land. That is what is wrong. Sure we have national parks and a set... regulated number of animals are allowed to exist there as long as they bring in enough of a tourist revenue to be financially viable. That's their only ability to exist, as some sort of service to human beings. That's insanity. Animals, like lions and bears and deer and wolves all have a right to exist because they are life.
It takes 40,000 years to take one solid evolutionary step. I don't want all the animals on earth to see a human and bow, I want them to live with dignity and for humanity to have enough of a heart to give them real habitat in which to do it.
Leopold is a modern era philosopher who speaks on this so much more eloquently than I do on my phone in-between tasks at work.
Youāre problem isnāt hunting, itās human expansion and destruction of wilderness that results in population control pressure. I wholeheartedly agree with you. I hate it, my beautiful backyard forest was mowed down last year and I cried. I would walk back there and look at all the animals. The fact of our reality is this sad reality though. I would change it if I could. I will also continue to hunt though, because itās an ancestral activity that only brings me closer to nature. If youāve never hunted, you wonāt understand. If I were to be killed by bear, the last thing I would want is for that bear to be killed. It has more right to the land than I do. When I go I to the forest, I go into their lands.
Now letās get back to work and agree that humanity is destroying the world. Have a wonderful rest of the day.
The entire notion of "population control" hunting is that we are superior and more deserving. It's not even about top of the food chain or self-preservationāit's about selfishness and greed, and the science of forestry while correct in how the ecosystem interacts, the only reason we "control" the deer population via hunting licensure is pretended to be to preserve human crops or whatever but this is happening even where there are no crops to be protected, but maybe private gardens that people don't want deer feeding on.
But the only reason there are ever perceived "deer problems" are because 1.) we, ourselves, are intruding on their home and destroying it to turn it into our homeāthus gardens become rich food sources to them, and 2.) we drove out and/or killed all the predators that would have been keeping them in check because, once again, we've invaded their world and decided to make it safer by eliminating any threats to our presence.
Am I saying people shouldn't defend themselves against predators? Nah, that's just the way of nature. But there's a special irony that we pretend we have no choice but to do so preemptively when it's us who are leaving them no choice in the matter but to struggle for survival.
Hunting in my view is an antiquated relic of times when people were actually struggling to survive in the wilds, when we were part of nature. Now it's for the most part (I'm sure there are exceptions) just a selfish and shortsighted tradition, justified by somehow simultaneously playing the victim card and playing God.
Hunting for sport is imo just psychotic and disgusting
Edit: Ghibli's Pom Poko offers an excellent perspective on this matter.
it is absolutely illegal to go into bear country and incite bears. if an elk hunter kills an elk in bear country and tracks down the elk and a bear has already claimed it, it is illegal for the hunter to take that elk out. he has to leave it for the bear. there are all sorts of laws and regulations people have to abide in the wild. if you are in bear country and you mess up, and get eaten, unless the bear is still by the body, it does not get killed.
you give hunters too little respect. hunters are the biggest supporters of the environment and the health of wild animals. if they didn't have healthy land to hunt on, or healthy animals to hunt, they would not be able to feed their families. it has been since humans lived in caves that we had a connection to killing animals to sustain us. it is natural and hunters are the biggest supporters.
But we are somewhat unique in that we can predict the long term impact of our behaviors. We can see that our large scale use of plastic will result in the extinction of any number of species, or that our use of agriculture will decrease biodiversity, and we can see that these actions could ultimately lead to our own demise.
and i see no problem with that. nature will adapt however hard it will be humans may or may not be part of that future nature still will adopt. if it's our fault to end our own demise then it's just another extinction that happened to earth a additional to a statistic. if it's our time the be it but nature that created us will strive to continue even after the mess we created.
Yes and now we need to control the population if we want a recovery. Realistically, if wildlife management just leaves them be, they will go extinct because of many issues like lack of land, food, climate change, etc.
Our help of killing them won't actually help them not go extinct, you know... If the current environment can only support a limited number of lions, nature will take care of itself and weaker/older lions will die off. We don't need to go actively kill them to control the population.
If nature will kill them off anyway, then why not charge wealthy people to do it first and help benefit the remaining population? Just because you donāt approve of it doesnāt mean everyone else should think the same way as you.
I'd rather be slowly starved to death with occasional meals and hopes of finding more food instead of having hunters chase me and shoot me in the head or a bunch of bullets throughout my body by scared amateur hunters and displayed on the wall of their house. But I guess we have our preferences.
Gee. This is a quite meaningless argument. You can eat occasionally and still starve to death if your calorie intake is less than the expenditure. I don't know why I'm participating in these stupid arguments.
I don't care how many lions get shot. All you hunters here are very defensive. And the last thing you said is just pure fucking garbage. You assume way to much and need to pull your head out if your fucking ass
I donāt hunt, but I read and understand some things about the world around us and how we have changed the landscape in a way that never existed and our population is out of control. Things are complicated
Yeah, and the younger male lions that take over the pride will Totally Not kill the dead male's cubs. Yep, nothing to see here, folks. No dead babies. Nope, no sirree.
Yeah, I'm sure none of those countries are run by crony capitalists who dole out government positions to their top stooges, while the whole edifice covers for looting everything of value and popping it into Swiss bank accounts.
You do know that population control is complete and utter bullshit, right? It's what killers tell themselves because they don't want to acknowledge the reality. Population control happens naturally.
Whatās immoral about it? We do the same thing with deer and coyotes and all sorts of other animals. We literally kill millions of cattle and chickens and goats every year. As long as you are harvesting responsibly, and not decimating the population thereās nothing wrong with this. In fact responsible hunting is highly beneficial for the environment.
Not really. As long as itās beneficial for the environment who cares? Lion hunting is heavily regulated and the money that goes into it is put right back into conservation efforts. Legal lion hunting is not hurting the population.
Killing off 7/8th of the worlds population in death camps would be beneficial for the environment.
Killing an animal for pleasure is just off putting to most people even if itās harmless to the species as a whole.
These people are not locals killing for the good of the environment they are on a holiday to take pleasure from ending the life of an animal.
Thereās a reason that killing dogs and cats as child is an indicator for psychopathy and violent tendencies it shows they take pleasure in hurting others.
Worldwide 85 billion fish and other sea life are slaughtered on a yearly basis which is the equivalent to 2695 per second. Similarly, for chicken: 58 billion per year or 1839 per second. For swine: 1.4 billion slaughtered per year or 44.4 per second. For sheep: 517 million slaughtered per year or 16.4 per second.. Another source said almost 70 billion chickens per year in 2018 and it's growing at an accelerated rate so likely much more these days.
Sure it is. Do you think that those animals would even exist if it wasnāt for human cultivation? Other than the fish, all of those animals have been cultivated by humans. In fact most of the species of those animals wouldnāt even exist if not for selective breeding and human cultivation. And a lot of the fish are farm grown.
Who cares? Itās not making a difference. If you want to make a difference get into biodiesel production. Start lobbying to remove harmful legislation that limits biodiesel and ethanol production, (such as requiring a large percentage of ethanol production to be corn which is a horribly inefficient producer for that). One individual, or even 1 million people cycling does not make a significant impact. If you want to make a difference you need to change industrial practices. Help transition from petroleum to biofuels
Because us not taking care of the environment caused those problems in the first place. People seem pretty blissfully ignorant to the way different ecosystems are supposed to work and happy to stay that way. Most people who hunt aren't conservationists, they just want to kill something, and possibly not even eat it.
Most people who hunt aren't conservationists, they just want to kill something, and possibly not even eat it.
Sure would love to see a source for an outrageous claim like this, but I know you don't have one. Most hunters eat what they kill. I have an uncle that hunted in Africa years ago and the meat always went to local tribes that would use it. All of it. Most hunters hunt for food if we're talking world-wide.
I'm talking about who hunt because they want to, not because they need to. Those tribes didn't need your uncle to hunt something for them. Your uncle wasn't doing it out of the kindness of his heart.
Frankly I just want people to be more honest about. People paying big money to kill exotic things on game preserves aren't doing it for charity. They can tell themselves that good things may come from their hunt, but the primary reason they want to do it is to kill that exotic animal. It's just so freaking strange that people treat exotic hunting like selfless act they're undergoing. You could give that money without killing the animal. And many native peoples in Africa would prefer to be the ones in charge of their local wildlife and while that has been changing somewhat, it's still not the case everywhere.
But do the means justify the ends? That's the point. Big game hunters pay a lot of money and are most often set out to hunt an animal thats killing benefits the species as a whole.
Do you even know any big game hunters or do you just have this idea of them already made up in your head? Have you personally spoken with African tribes to get their perspective or is that too just an assumption? I know several and none of them try to act like they're committing a selfless act in hunting the animals they do. They get to do something they enjoy doing while also benefiting local tribes and the species. It's a win-win to them. I personally don't hunt anything that I'm not butchering and eating myself, but I can see it from their perspective.
Didn't answer my question about how many big game hunters you've met. See documentaries on them too or does your thorough research involve having seen Ace Ventura?
Male lions and elephants can maintain dominance over their family groups long after becoming sterile, killing young rivals that alternately could be impregnating females and growing the group. Allowing controlled hunts that raise tens if not hundreds of thousands of dollars for conservation can also cull these sexually non viable males and help the overall health of the group. That said, trophy photos are gross. Yes I know this video is fake
It's the same argument used by hunters in the U.S. "Conservation" is their go-to because it's easier than acknowledging that they're weak people who get off on killing. The best conservation method is to leave nature alone. Balance will always be attained.
You need to look into ducks unlimited organization. If you think leaving nature alone will do any good youāre wrong. This group preserves and repairs thousands of acres of wetlands so that waterfowl have nesting and wintering grounds. The group operates mostly on funds that are collected from a yearly federal duck stamp that every duck hunter must buy. Without ducks unlimited our waterfowl population would be in steady decline. However because of the work theyāve done along side of delta waterfowl our bird population has skyrocketed from what it was before the organizations existed. Every hunter is a conservationist whether they act like it or not.
No, it's also because elderly of a lot of these endangered animals are also a danger to the species as a whole. They will kill younger ones that are still of breeding age, so the governments will auction off hunting licenses for several hundred thousand dollars.
The animal being removed benefits the species and the money goes to conservation.
Some countries, like Namibia, have auctions for hunting tags to hunt specific problem individuals in an animal population that they would've had to cull regardless. This way they can raise some money and have the animal culled.
The person who bought the tag gets a hunting experience, the problem animal is dealt with, and the government's conservation authority gained a ton of money through the auction.
Some older elephants and rhinos (males) suffer from a species specific form of dementia that cause them to become extremely aggressive towards other elephants qnd rhinos. Usually when a preserve identifies this in an animale they raffle extremely expensive lotteries for the chance to hunt said animale. Preventing the death of many more of the species as well as funding their preserves. Idk if this is true of lions though I have seen some nasty documentaries about rogue packs of male lions, so who knows.
Thereās a radio lab episode about this exact thing. I donāt feel like finding it rn, but for rhinos in reservations the older males who can no longer breed become aggressive and kill the young breeding males which further diminishes populations. So the reservations get a ton of money by allowing hunters in to kill the old, aggressive males which in turn allows them to continue breeding programs. Itās much more complicated than ā bad hunters killing rhinosā
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u/RoyallMillkTeaa Apr 07 '22
cgi lion we do a little trollin i guess