article related to wild fur

[Lil Dragonfly]

Environmental Ethics and Trophy Hunting

 

http://muse.jhu.edu/journals/ethics_and_the_environment/v006/6.1gunn.html

[White Fox]

The only feasible strategy to protect the interests of both wildlife and people is one that integrates conservation and development

 

Interesting. At least some people are thinking on this one. Not just plunging blindly ahead like PETA freaks. Article would take some real dedicated time to read fully though. It is aimed at education and not common bar stool talk, and is a bit hard to digest the first time through.

 

One thing I did notice was the comment about 30% of elephants being without tusks now in one area. I thought that they were removing tusks from elephants now to try to protect them as that is the only part that the hunters want. Apparently that is not the case.

 

W

[AKcoyote]

One thing I did notice was the comment about 30% of elephants being without tusks now in one area. I thought that they were removing tusks from elephants now to try to protect them as that is the only part that the hunters want. Apparently that is not the case.

If I recall correctly, the most likely theory is that the killing of all the big tusk specimens has removed the genes for large tusks from the gene pool.

[Worker 11811]

I haven't read the whole article but I read the summary at the beginning:

 

Nowhere in the literature, so far as I am aware, is hunting for fun, for the enjoyment of killing, or for the acquisition of trophies defended. However, as I argue towards the end of this paper, trophy hunting is essential in parts of Africa for the survival of both people and wildlife.

(Emphasis added.)

 

Even though hunting of certain species in Africa has been banned for years, it has been shown, on several grounds, that limited hunting of endangered species actually HELPS.

 

Take the cheetah. Hunting of cheetahs is illegal and, for the most part, should be.

 

However, farmers in Africa kill cheetahs when they have to defend their livestock. The farmers don't give a hoot about the law. If a cheetah kills their cattle, they kill the cheetah. Officials often find dead cheetahs lying in the bush only to have all the farmers stand around and shrug their shoulders, "I don't know who did it..."

 

If you allowed limited culling of cheetahs you would stop farmers killing them.

 

Second, if the government issued permits to kill a limited number of cheetahs each year and they charged a fee for said permit, the cheetah would become a commodity to be protected. There would be MORE cheetahs around because at, $10,000 a head people would have a vested interest in breeding more of them.

 

In fact, the government of Venezuela has petitioned for the permission to kill 20-30 jaguars, in exception to the international CITES treaties which currently ban such killing for sport.

 

http://www.american.edu/TED/jaguar.htm

 

In 1997 Venezuela petitioned to amend the CITES agreement to allow limited sport hunting (20 to 30 animals per year) of jaguars for export beginning in the year 2000. If this amendment becomes law, what effect will it have on the survival of the species? Currently jaguars and all big cats are protected from sport hunting for trade purposes by CITES, the Convention on International Trade of Endangered Flora and Fauna. Venezuela claims it is seeking the trophy hunting quota because currently a certain number of jaguars are killed annually by domestic land owners to control predation of livestock. In theory, allowing foreign hunters to take some animals would encourage domestic landowners to allow the jaguar to remain on private lands since the foreign sport hunters would be taking the "nuisance animals" from private lands.

(Emphasis added.)

 

Now, let's say that the government of Venezuela charged $10,000 for a permit to kill a Jaguar for sport.

The could give half the money to the community where the farmer lived and keep half to use for conservation efforts.

 

What would YOU do if you were a Venezuelan farmer and you knew that you could make $5,000 for letting some American come down and pop a cap in a Jaguar's ass?

 

I'd be like... "Here kitty... kitty... kitty!"

[White Fox]

kill 20-30 jaguars

 

Kill Jaguars. Oh my God NO!!! Those are sure beautiful cars!!!

 

Sorry Worker. Could not resist.

 

The problem we have here is that humans have lost their position in the food chain. We have big guns that shoot a long distance killing everything in site. But we have no way to replicate the human with maybe a club against the large animal. That is why all these problems. That is why our population so high. How do we truly replicate the human's place in the chain when you also consider relevance of being able to catch other animals in the wild as well, and bring rabies into the picture, etc.

 

Probably the "limited culls" are as close to that as you can get. But, once you upset that food chain it is very difficult for to get it back in stride. For instance, if we kill all of something in the middle of the food chain we affect the animals above. Affect them and we in turn affect everything below that those animals eat. And, it just keeps growing.

 

Right now there are huge numbers of deer in the wild where I live. In just a maybe 35 by 35 kilometer area, there are almost two collisions a day where cars run into them. And those collisions are major! The deer comes right through the windshield, etc. Generally the car can get back off the road, but they do in odd times result in the death of the people in the car. I myself only narrowly avoided one with two deer one night a few months back. To this day I don't know how I missed them as they were so close and I was travelling at close to 100 km/hr. There are a number of factors in a relationship here, including ground hogs, foxes, coyotes, and rabies.

 

Interesting topic though indeed.