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Trophy hunting ban

Discussion in 'Romania' started by vogelcommando, 8 Oct 2016.

  1. vogelcommando

    vogelcommando Well-Known Member 10+ year member

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  2. overread

    overread Well-Known Member

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    Considering how much money it generated for them its a very surprising move indeed; but a very welcome one as it sounds like they were moving closer and closer toward a practice that would rapidly shift from population management into one which was purely for-profit hunting that would likely see populations heavily damaged (if not just in number but in health of species since often as not trophy hunts are for the biggest and the best of the species not the sick/injured/weaker*)

    There are also two really good points raised
    "“But the rural population believe that hunting is the answer, and unless they can be convinced otherwise, people may well start to take the problem into their own hands. The ban is a great step, but we don’t want hunting to be replaced by poaching.”"

    Education; damage subsidies; alternative methods; etc... Are critically needed if people are to accept what is in the end a danger to their income and, sometimes, lives within their habitat. I think there's often a childish view that those who live in the countryside know it like the back of their hand; in truth they know what they need to know to survive and turn a profit from the land they manage. And often changes in practice can result in a loss of skills as newer generations take on new practice. Thus a population that has spent several generations hunting and using killing to heavily control predators will have lost many skills and methods that were used in the past to mitigate or avoid conflict in times when they didn't have guns or the organisation/impact to heavily hunt the disruptive wildlife.


    And then there's this
    "“To some extent, hunting acts as a financial incentive for wildlife management, from preventing poaching to conserving habitats. There is some concern that once you take that away, the government will not invest enough to replace it.”"

    Which is another major concern as. Indeed its my view that a properly regulated hunting system can allow for population management and profit from hunting to run as a joint venture with great success. However it seems to be the kind of thing that can work small scale; but at the larger national scales is very open to abuse or miss management. It's also something that I think needs an area/national level of management not a local level one and which needs new monitoring systems that more accurately judge populations at the area/national and international level; not just at the local level.
    There's also the problem that its an income stream that can be highly lucrative and thus one which people will easily become dependent upon in their annual income; but which is also something that should be possible to cancel for one or many years in reflection of populations and distributions. And its very hard to run even a small scale company/industry/job which can be almost an all or nothing venture each year.

    *Although its been shown that no species breeds perfectly to the "survival of the fittest" and in a healthy system lower "ranks/orders/dominance/individuals" do still manage to breed with good success and thus avoid the situation of having "top" breeders but of very limited number surviving (ergo mimicking what happens in things like pedigree breeding for domestic stock)