How do you view trophy hunting (poll)

I'm sure they are exceptionally well trained and I would like to think that they would be more rational and intelligent in decision making and strategy than the more macho "rambo" type of units.

Certainly when you look around the world at all female combat units (outside of conservation) there are some interesting and encouraging examples of this strategy in practice like for example the Kurdish YPJ and their defeats of ISIS and other jihadi millitant groups.

But ultimately militarization within conservation is a very complex situation and I think though it is often necessary it can just as easily go wrong.

I think the main issue though is more the conceptual underpinnings of conservation strategies that involve militarization such as "fortress style conservation".

 

Personally I am a proponent of some forms of fortress-style conservation. I believe there are species that just don't mix well with humans, and conserving them will necessitate setting aside tracts of land where most human activities such as agriculture are minimized. Doing this without resorting to military-like strategies however requires a conservation infrastructure that is most often absent or toothless because of the lack of political will - even if the richest countries. This is what makes me pessimistic about the conservation of a good portion of the world's remaining megafauna outside of small plots set aside for tourism. In that sense, the future for elephants, rhinos and tigers seems to lay perhaps entirely in managed settings, which is a truly sad thought.

 

Thank you for sharing @Mr. Zootycoon, thats an interesting view and you make some very pertinent points.

From what I've seen and read I am not really a proponent of fortress-style conservation per se, although I do think that there are situations where it could and should be used provisionally on a case by case basis.

Here in Brazil in the Amazon for example I strongly believe that the situation at the moment with land grabs and invasion by squatters and loggers of indigenous reserves (leading to mass killing of indigenous peoples who are the only communities who should be inhabiting these areas) and deforestation and burning of forest should be dealt with by a strong millitary response and a shoot to kill policy.

I think the situation I mentioned above is the strongest example I can think of for the need for a millitarized response to conservation but I'm sure there are others around the world.

When it comes to Sub-Saharan Africa and particularly East-Africa it is a really complicated situation because many of the protected areas established since the 1950's where fortress-style conservation have actually always had a human presence and been modified by traditional nomadic pastoralism to some extent.

I am disgusted by the news coming out of Equatorial Africa about WWF's abuse, torture and killings of indigenous Baka peoples by this organization's Bantu forest guard thugs and I can't for the life of me understand why they did not employ the Baka in this role as they are the real stewards of the forest and the stakeholders with the know-how to conserve this ecosystem.

The problem is that when traditional and indigenous communities are excluded from these lands that they have always occupied it is a situation that can lead to working in the favour of poaching activities and just complicate things even further (and the cynical part of me thinks that this escalation also financially benefits a militarization of conservation complex).

There is a great BBC documentary on this topic which I'll post below:

 

On the subject of trophy hunting and elephants in Africa here is an interesting podcast that covers both sides of the argument :

Pasha 105: Two academics weigh in on Botswana allowing elephant hunting

 

I often hear hunters say how wrong animal rights activists are, but I believe that they are their own worst enemy since they do (and I'm just talking about North America) a lot of things that may make people want it to be illegal. Killing contests, acting like ungulates belong to them, and incidents such as this. Four cited, one warned after hunters fire into elk herd in Meagher County

 

I see what you mean @Pantheraman , thanks for sharing !

I'm not the biggest fan of animal rights activists and I do think there is a place in conservation for subsistence, therapeutic and possibly even recreational hunting (though as I've said my thoughts are undecided on trophy hunting).

However, I truly despise habits such as overexploitation of game, hunting out of season, causing unnecessary suffering of game animals and above all of persecution by hunters of apex predators such as wolves, raptors etc.

When hunters engage in the above activities they are indeed their own worst enemies.

 

Where I live, it isn’t hard to find a hunter who admits to shooting grackles, even though this is illegal. In the US grackles are perceived as bad or evil, so they are under pretty intense stress from shooting in some areas.

 

Isn't there some other common motive for shooting them ?

As a crop pest ? as a pest for livestock ?

 

Why do people think they bad or evil?

 

The reason is simply that people don’t like them, I’m not sure why.

 

This is from a site called "Bird notes" on common reasons for the persecution of the common grackle :

"Grackles prefer open landscapes with scattered trees, and their numbers peaked as eastern forests were cleared for agriculture in the 18th and 19th Centuries. As eastern forests grew back in the 20th Century, Common Grackle habitat shrank. A far more alarming cause is active persecution. Grackles gather in large roosts near humans, and because they are perceived as agricultural pests, they are routinely exterminated in large numbers."

 

If you ask hunters why they shoot them, most will say they just don't like them. Reasons vary from person to person I'm sure, but I've heard everything to not liking their calls to thinking they were a non-native invasive species.

 

Yes, but it is the same with these kinds of attitudes towards a species in all parts of the world in the sense that people don't just start collectively shooting a species dead because "they don't like them".

People may not explicitly be able to articulate why exactly they don't like an animal but if you dig deep enough there is always some underlying cultural motive for this persecution.

It could be for many reasons, for concern of spread of disease, a historic reason / custom, a cultural or religious taboo or negative folklores / myths.

 

At this point I would assume most people do it because that's what they were taught by their parents and mentors, ect. So it probably does come back to grackles supposedly being crop pests, even if most of the people shooting grackles don't even know it.

 

Exactly, it probably is due to some historic custom that was practiced a long time ago like a misconception that they are an agricultural pest or an omen of bad luck and this has likely been passed down the generations to the present day.

 

For the non-native part, I've heard something similar from deer hunters who believe state wildlife agencies transplanted coyotes in places like Ohio and Pennslyvania to control the deer population. Dumb of course, but it's a very common belief.

 

Something else I should've said earlier, but there is something else commonly said by the hunting community. "Human hunters can replace predators" or "humans can fill the role of top predators".

This is something I find problematic.

When predators are on the hunt they target the old, weak, slow, sick, or other animals that aren't 100% healthy. Human hunters, because they typically want to eat wild meat, target healthy animals because we humans cannot eat the meat of a sick animal. Chronic Wasting Disease is spreading across North America despite efforts by humans to control the spread. just recently mi home state of Ohio just recorded the first two cases of it in wild deer.

When predators are hunting prey, the prey responds to using the landscape in a way that allows them to avoid being killed which is what happened in Yellowstone. Hunters do not fully accomplish this because they're active seasonally. Outside of the hunting season, prey can go wherever they want whenever they want.

On a side note, conservationists always talk about how each species is important and that's one reason we must protect them. Then we say human hunters can replace predators, now in some people's minds, predators become less important. So do we really want what?

 

Coyotes have increased their range dramatically in the 20th century due to adapting superbly to anthropogenic environments but they haven't been translocated.

I think these sorts of claims / urban legends told by deer hunters are probably down to a combination of a suspicion / dislike of federal authorities and an intense hatred of a predatory competitor which preys upon "their" quarry / game.

 

I'm curious about how you draw your opinion of "highly against trophy hunting" from sources like this graph? As far as I can tell, the graph doesn't really indicate anything different than what I said: that some species are negatively impacted by it and that it is often not managed properly, but that doesn't automatically make the entire system bad. If anything, the lack of measurable declines for most species seems to indicate mixed results at worst.

This is interesting, but I'm curious about what the revenue stream actually is? Who pays the Akashinga rangers, for what reason, and is that kind of financial model sustainable and applicable in most regions/countries?

 

Akashinga is part of the IAPF which appears to be funded by donations from people across the globe, people making fundraisers, they can get corporate partners, basically from people in or out of Africa. Currently, it's just in Zimbabwe but it's been really successful so far in former hunting areas so I don't see why it wouldn't work.