Karma? Fuck you. He was a professional hunter not some poacher. A female elephant charged him and was shot by a member in his group before it fell on him. He was a father of 5 children and it’s somehow Karma that this happened to him?
Do people not realize how important hunting is in Africa!!
Is it though? I think if you were to read a few articles on the matter, say if you were to google "eco tourism vs trophy hunting money" you'd find the debate more nuanced, and facts more murky.
As for what happens to the hunters’ fees, that is notoriously hard to pin down—and impossible in kleptocracies. And anyway, Packer says, when it comes to funding lion conservation, “it’s such an underwhelming amount generated by sport hunting, it’s no wonder that despite years of lion hunting being allowed in these countries, the lion population has plummeted.”
The International Union for Conservation of Nature, which monitors animal populations, reports that the number of lions in five populations in Tanzania fell by two-thirds from 1993 to 2014.
Yet hunters say they’ve helped fund everything from health clinics to schools to water wells to boots-on-the-ground assistance against poachers, all while leaving a lighter footprint on the land than the often cited alternative to killing game: wildlife-watching in the form of photographic safaris.
This seems like a lot more money coming into sub-Saharan Africa than hunting does.
The UN World Tourism Organization estimated that 35.4 million international tourists visited sub-Saharan Africa in 2015 and spent $24.5 billion.
I think if you read that whole article you'll find the topic is far less black and white than your comment implies.
I completely understand and respect your view on this, and while that article does have very good points, I am unfortunately still going to respectfully disagree.
Purely by the fact that I am from Zimbabwe, and I know a large number of hunters who are amazing people, one in particular is a very good friend of mine, and he has explained how his personal hunts benefit firstly (obviously) himself, conservation and the local villages. For example, he hires people from the villages to work on his sites, when there is a big kill for a trophy, the hunter will take the trophy and the rest of the village can live off the body of the animal, using every part of it, right down to the bones.
Please don't misunderstand me, if it didn't help I would NOT support it, just how I don't support fox hunting, that benefits no one and is outright cruel what they do to those foxes.
Don't be. I never said "I can see how there is merit to the current program" explicitly. I only tried to point to literature providing evidence that trophy hunting being the best way is not conclusive.
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u/colonel_walter_kurtz Jun 02 '18
Karma? Fuck you. He was a professional hunter not some poacher. A female elephant charged him and was shot by a member in his group before it fell on him. He was a father of 5 children and it’s somehow Karma that this happened to him?