The NYT published a guest op-ed by a doctoral student from Zimbabwe that provides an alternative view of the Cecil the Lion flap. The author was made aware of the incident when American friends started offering him condolences on the death of Cecil via social media. He was puzzled:
In my village in Zimbabwe, surrounded by wildlife conservation areas, no lion has ever been beloved, or granted an affectionate nickname. They are objects of terror.
When I was 9 years old, a solitary lion prowled villages near my home. After it killed a few chickens, some goats and finally a cow, we were warned to walk to school in groups and stop playing outside. My sisters no longer went alone to the river to collect water or wash dishes; my mother waited for my father and older brothers, armed with machetes, axes and spears, to escort her into the bush to collect firewood.
A week later, my mother gathered me with nine of my siblings to explain that her uncle had been attacked but escaped with nothing more than an injured leg. The lion sucked the life out of the village: No one socialized by fires at night; no one dared stroll over to a neighbor’s homestead.
When the lion was finally killed, no one cared whether its murderer was a local person or a white trophy hunter, whether it was poached or killed legally. We danced and sang about the vanquishing of the fearsome beast and our escape from serious harm.
None of this makes the Great White Tooth-Drillin’ Hunter who killed Cecil the Lion any less of a gigantic, leaky douchecanoe. But it’s an interesting perspective.
Open thread!
WJS
This is because they have their own culture and perspective, and they don’t want anything to do with us. Let’s invade and build them a new nation! Yay!
Trentrunner
Well, if we wanted colonies’ perspective on what empires are doing with them, we’d ask for it.
Calouste
Considering how well the NYT checked the credentials of the people who accused Clinton, it wouldn’t surprise me if this article came courtesy of more than a little nudge by Safari Club International or people like that. Have a professional write an article, call your poacher contacts in Zimbabwe to see if they have a friend or relative in the US would could be the front, and presto, you’re in the NYT.
aimai
Thanks for publishing this. Its ridiculous for people to get sentimental over an apex predator and start posting romanticized and anthropomorphized articles about how “gentle” and loveable he was or how his “brother” is going to “take care of his babies.” (Saw that on Dkos). But its nothing new–people have been in the business of romanticizing and anthropomorphizing and just generally fantasizing about distant monsters and celebreties for thousands of years. Its nothing new. How is dreaming about how Cecil is/would be your pet any different from imagining that famous person X could be your best friend?
Has nothing to do with whether smugglers and poachers should be reined in or arrested. They should.
schrodinger's cat
Its churlish and trollish but since it is the NYT, the trolling is of higher quality than Balloon Juice.
slag
We can’t all run around killing all the things that scare us. That’s how wars in the Middle East get started.
LongHairedWeirdo
If a trophy hunter stalked a lion in the wild and killed it (lawfully), I wouldn’t have a problem with that. That really is a sport, after a fashion. If that lion was a potential people eater (and failing to have the one eye and one horn normally required for such designation), so much the better.
“I CAN HAZ LIONTROFEE! okay, I missed my shot and had to make people spend many hours chasing down a dangerous wounded animal” doesn’t impress me.
(ETA: talk about constructed language issues. I know that LIONTROFEE is spelled wrong, but I haven’t a clue as to the correct lolspeak spelling.)
beltane
It’s really the rich douchebag angle, and not the lion that struck a chord with people. These wealthy Americans who travel around the world killing endangered species seem to be cut from the same cloth as the wealthy Americans who travel around the world seeking child prostitutes. It’s the depravity, not the lion.
NotMax
78 rpm version from 1939, with pretty pictures.
Patricia Kayden
@schrodinger’s cat: Seems trollish to me too. So the author is saying that because a lion once stalked his village, it’s okay for the lion population to be decimated by poachers and rich Western hunters? Lions should be protected just like other endangered species. Wonder if the author has gotten any $$$ for this opinion article, which pretty much is a “F” you to those who oppose trophy hunting.
Germy Shoemangler
open thread:
The statue of liberty looked pretty weird in the middle of Paris
I like the PUCK editorial cartoon, suggesting ways to fund the construction of the statue.
Advertising!
beltane
@Patricia Kayden: A couple of weeks ago, the NYRB published a similarly self-serving rebuttal to the NYT story about the exploitation of workers at nail salons. Even in the so-called elite media, it’s getting difficult to distinguish between the real journalism and the paid infomercials.
Belafon
When I was five years old, my parents put brussel sprouts on the table. I ran screaming until they proved to me that they had been removed.
Ban all brussel sprouts!!!
Germy Shoemangler
@aimai:
Very true. Adele would probably maul me to death.
Cervantes
@NotMax:
That’s Solomon Linda & The Evening Birds.
Good stuff.
Elizabelle
Much like a shooter on the loose can do, in this country. Do you have a tiny frisson of worry in a movie theater now?
Or watching Fox News all the time — its effect: why talk to anyone else? It’s dangerous out there.
Not to belittle rural Africans: living among wild animals that would like to eat you is serious business.
But TV and guns and nasty people are as scary and disruptive as Cecil is.
And he lived IN A PRESERVE. He was not roaming village streets. Humans should be stewards of animals and their habitat, which is fast being encroached.
I’d bet Americans at the turn of the century took passenger pigeons and vast herds of buffalo for granted too. Doesn’t mean the world is better without them.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
I have never seriously thought of leaving this country because of politics (and personal circumstances make it impossible for foreseeable future), but this is making me reconsider
scav
@beltane: No, the lion helps a bit, rather along the Panda being the icon instead of any endangered warthog or reptile. More beanie baby friendly.
But, as we can get supporters on record about the absolute and utter need to summarily execute black men at traffic stops because of dangerdangerdanger, I’m not surprised we can find someone that supports taking out nearby lions in Africa, probably with even more cause (Elephants can be really unpleasant neighbors is the exact example I’m more familiar with).
slag
@aimai:
Humans have been romanticizing humanity for long enough we might as well include other animals in on the action.
How many articles have I read in which science deeply considers the possibility that animals have “feelings”? But wait. Those “feelings” aren’t like our feelings, of course. Our feelings are special! Until we find out they’re not…
Cervantes
@beltane:
The NYRB item you’re talking about was by Richard Bernstein. The Times responded; and then Bernstein wrote again.
(See here.)
beltane
@scav: I’ve got some very unpleasant redneck neighbors. What to do, what to do.
Elizabelle
@Germy Shoemangler: And they were dissing New Jersey in the 19th century too.
Great find. Will look at it some more. Gives better sense of the scale.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@Germy Shoemangler: That is so much cooler than the Eiffel Tower
Germy Shoemangler
@Elizabelle: This quote jumped out at me. (complaining about the cost of the statue of liberty):
Germy Shoemangler
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: I can’t imagine anything like it being attempted today.
NotMax
@Germy Shoemangler
Trivia: Bartholdi used his mother’s face as a template. It has been reported that she was a particularly nasty woman who was universally disliked, even hated, by her neighbors and others who knew her.
Trivia #2: On top of a building not far from Columbus Circle in Manhattan sits a scale model of the complete statue, one which was displayed to raise funds for the full-size version. So, technically, NYC can boast of having two originals of the Statue of Liberty.
Germy Shoemangler
@efgoldman: NY Times: “Whatever it is, we’re against it”
Chyron HR
BRAVO NYT
R
A
V
O
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Y
T
beltane
@efgoldman: Even then, they were longing for a giant, bronze Ronald Reagan on a horse.
mikej
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: All others pay cash.
Germy Shoemangler
@NotMax: There is a small statue of liberty in Schenectady, near the old GE plant. A perfect replica, except her face looks like a grinning 1950 woman.
schrodinger's cat
@beltane: You can get think tank whores to defend almost anything, colonial exploitation, slavery, you name it.
Roger Moore
@schrodinger’s cat:
It seems to me that the view of somebody living in a random village somewhere is likely to be different from the view of somebody living next to a national park. To random villager, a lion is a fearsome predator who threatens his way of life. To national park villager, a lion is a powerful tourist attraction who enables his way of life. Also, too, national park lion has probably become habituated to human visitors and sees them differently from random village lion. The perspective is interesting, but it isn’t very informative. Maybe they should have gotten one of the villagers who actually knew Cecil to comment.
Gin & Tonic
R.I.P., Robert Conquest.
schrodinger's cat
@Roger Moore: The overall tone of the op-ed was, Stupid Americans is Stupid.
beltane
@Roger Moore: In any case, the idea that African villagers cannot deal with their lion problems without the intervention of Rich White Men is more than a little offensive.
slag
@efgoldman: It may be perfectly rational to get sentimental over the wanton destruction of living creatures. They play a necessary part in this world too. Maybe it’s this sentimentality that has prevented us from decimating them altogether, and it’s this preservation that keeps our own species alive. In that sense, sentimentality is a perfectly valid—and maybe even evolutionarily necessary—response to these situations.
Evolution isn’t all kill or be killed. It’s also live and let live.
Roger Moore
@Germy Shoemangler:
There are worse ways to go.
Emma
@aimai: There are romanticizers (is that a word?) attached to almost every good cause. It happens in Michigan too when deer season comes. There no apex predator for deer, so the herds have to be culled or the deer die of starvation. By culling some of the adults, the younger deer get a chance at food. But the thing is, most of the hunters are hunting for food. I find nothing wrong with that. I would have found nothing wrong with killing Cecil if he had gone rogue and started hunting humans.
Traveling round the world to kill a beautiful animal so you can hang the head on your wall? Not so much.
Mike G
If the lion was stalking patients at his Minnesota dental practice, I wouldn’t have a problem with him killing it in self-defense.
Going to Africa to specifically lure a lion out of protected area to kill it for trophy/bragging rights is more than a little different.
NonyNony
@beltane:
I doubt it. See the earlier post with the Cecil the Lion Beanie Baby for one very solid artifact for why I doubt it.
People in America don’t hate rich douchebags – people in America aspire to be rich douchebags. It’s why we can’t have nice things.
I attribute a lot of this to our “founding DNA”. Our Founders were mostly a bunch of rich douchebags who wanted to steal land that wasn’t theirs and dodge out on their taxes. Or if they couldn’t dodge their taxes entirely at least have their tax dollars going back into their own pockets rather than to the pockets of rich douchebags in the mother country. See Hamilton, Alexander for the most obvious example, but the rest were mostly no better or worse than he. He was just more crass about it.
Betty Cracker
@schrodinger’s cat: One of the commenters to the op-ed pushed back as follows:
Some truth to that, I think.
beltane
@Mike G: If the lion was stalking his patients in Minnesota, this guy probably wouldn’t give a damn unless it was service he could bill for. Protecting others would be way too altruistic for someone of his ilk.
beltane
@NonyNony: Yes, but not all Americans like rich douchebags. The ones who do have been defending this guy.
Mnemosyne (iPhone)
@aimai:
Like other people here, I see a big difference between killing a lion that’s roaming on streets where people live and luring a lion out of a protected area where no humans live (other than trained park rangers). You sound like the ranchers who want all of the wolves in our national parks to be killed just in case they decide to attack their cattle, though at least the ranchers have an economic rationale for that.
And, yes, I live in an area with apex predators. There is a mountain lion that lives in the wilderness park less than 2 miles from my apartment. We also have black bears that show up fairly often here in urban Los Angeles. But we don’t let big game hunters go into protected areas and kill nonthreatening animals just because they’re the same species.
ETA: And when I say “wilderness park,” I mean this place:
http://www.laparks.org/dos/parks/griffithpk/
beltane
The aesthetic qualities that endear lions to the American public also make them attractive to American trophy hunters. Do not kid yourselves, many of these people would be perfectly thrilled to adorn their walls with the heads of African villagers placed alongside those of lions, leopards and giraffes.
hitchhiker
This bit is the part that struck me:
Sisters getting water and doing the dishes, mom collecting the firewood, boys complaining ’cause they couldn’t go out to play, men complaining ’cause they had to be bothered protecting the firewood-getter.
I was the eldest daughter in a big Catholic family with lots of lazy brothers, can you tell?
srv
This story really goes to the heart of the differences between conservatives and liberals. One lives in reality, the other lives in Disneyland.
beltane
@Mnemosyne (iPhone): I live in bear country. Bears often prowl around within yards of my house in springtime. I am personally afraid of bears. I do not support their wanton slaughter. I detest the bear hunters with their dogs (usually mistreated beagles) who chase terrified bears through the woods just for the fun of it. I have no problem with the game warden dispatching problem bears. Not all bears are problem bears. Wildlife management is not the same thing as unrestricted sport hunting.
trollhattan
@slag:
Believe the late Manute Bol remains the only NBA player to have killed a lion, which he did as a youth. Using a fucking spear, making the hunt and the kill a far more even proposition than the great dentist and his zillion-buck compound bow and carbon fiber arrow. Which he still botched, failing to make the kill and leaving that to “his” people. Ain’t nobody resurrecting this douche’s reputation and patching the hole in the leaky trophy hunter boat is going to take more than this feeble effort.
The theoretical NYT African village needed their own Manute Bol. Could they not recruit one?
slag
@Betty Cracker:
This makes sense only if you equate “logical, scientific” thinking with short-sighted, unconcerned thinking.
If the thing that makes humans special (debatable) is that we know ourselves and our place in the universe better than any other animal, then there is nothing logical or scientific about killing other species just because we can. Even if we’re afraid of them. A true scientist solves the big picture problem by studying it. And a true logician recognizes the only long-term solution is to find a way for all species to coexist.
Get some engineers in there and build a fucking fence, Goodwell! Urban planners. They exist! Use your goddamned creativity and work within the simple constraint that you don’t get to go around killing anything you fucking feel like.
trollhattan
@srv:
Can’t wait for you to reveal which is which. Holding my breath, here….
pseudonymous in nc
@aimai:
It’s also whacking a fairly big straw man to say that the majority of the responses have anthromorphised the lion.
Mighty Whitey Hunters — who are usually rich professionals doing mundane work — are not performing some kind of fucking community service.
beltane
@trollhattan: How on earth did they survive before the arrival of dipshit American dentists?
Interrobang
How exactly was Cecil threatening anybody? Spot the difference.
slag
@Interrobang: He was a lion. Big. Scary. Kill it! Kill iiiiiittttttt! In the name of science and reason, kill them all!
Roger Moore
@Mnemosyne (iPhone):
There’s apparently a cougar living in the Verdugos, now, too. P41 has apparently found somewhere to cross the 210, because he’s been seen on both sides of it. That’s good for him, since he’s much more likely to find a mate in the San Gabriels.
trollhattan
@beltane:
So very hard to imagine life without lions and gum stimulators.
Punchy
Maybe if these villagers weren’t living in the lion’s habitat, I’d be more sympathetic. But since humans are pretty much encroaching on damn near every ecosystem everywhere sans the central Antarctic, I’d have to say the lion was where he belonged and the humans deserved to be eaten.
Betty Cracker
@Mnemosyne (iPhone): Where do you get the idea that Aimai is saying apex predators should be preemptively wiped out? I took her comment to mean she agreed with the Zimbabwean’s criticism of the sentimentality about the lion, not that she’s “anti-lion” per se.
The apex predators in my neck of the woods are alligators, which are more of a threat to pets than people but still something that’s always in the back of my mind when I dive into a lake or river or fetch an errant drive near a pond. When I was a kid and alligator shoes and handbags were all the rage, we didn’t have gators turning up in every other ditch. Now you can’t swing a cat without a gator popping out of a bush to snatch it out of your hand. (I keeed!)
Anyhoo, I thought the op-ed gave an interesting perspective on the sentimentalization of Cecil. Others seem to think it was advocating wholesale slaughter of big cats, which I didn’t see at all. That mileage keeps right on varying!
dedc79
Last I checked, there are close to the same number of players on the Florida Panthers as there are wild panthers left in Florida. So, we don’t have much of a leg to stand on lecturing other countries about how to manage their predators in the animal kingdom. That said, virtually no country is doing a good job at conservation/preservation, so if we’re going to enforce some kind of purity test for exerting international pressure on environmental issues, we might as well just all quit now and resign ourselves to a world where wildlife means: rats, mice, pigeons, seagulls, Canada geese, deer, coyote, feral cats and dogs and not much else.
ETA: And lots of bugs, but not some of the most important ones.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
This is a switch from yesterday, when Israel was quoted as saying he would work to block the deal
I wonder if Nancy called him up and said, that’s a nice barn you have in the 3rd district….
Roger Moore
@Punchy:
I would argue that if there’s anywhere that’s humans’ native environment, it’s Africa. We’ve been there since before we were Homo sapiens. You could make a pretty good case that we belong in most of the places that were covered by glaciers in the last ice age, since we moved into the areas being vacated by the ice as fast as anyone. We certainly weren’t spoiling some pristine, perfectly balanced ecosystem in those places.
beltane
@dedc79: Funny how it’s the microscopic critters who pose the biggest threat to us.
Howlin Wolfe
@efgoldman: Yes, I agree. Just because I am saddened and outraged by the wanton, brutal slaying of a protected lion doesn’t mean I dream of him being my pet. We can empathize by imagining our own pet being lured to its death by some asshole with sexual insecurities. But that doesn’t mean we are hopeless, ignorant daydreamers. Some people don’t have any feelings for animals. They don’t understand the affection humans can feel for their pets, which is a definite family affection. That feeling doesn’t deserve ridicule.
ruemara
Um, this is 2 distinct situations. One, a lion on a preserve that was tracked and accustomed to people, the other a real wild lion who was hunting villagers. Now, if Cecil was hunting villagers, ok, I see the point, but otherwise, naw.
beltane
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: It is infuriating that any Democrats at all are working to oppose Obama on this. Screw them.
schrodinger's cat
@Betty Cracker: The op-ed writer’s stance on the killing of Cecil, seems to be, good riddance to bad rubbish because he was terrorized by a lion as boy. That’s hardly a view that’s devoid of sentiment.
catbirdman
“Get some engineers in there and build a fucking fence” is the stupidest comment I’ve read in the entire Cecil saga. If the answers to socio-ecological problems were as simple as building a “fucking fence” we all would be living in Shangri La.
bemused
@slag:
Wolves, unlike lions, rarely attack humans but there is a loud, irrational contingent in northern MN believing every wolf in the state should be slaughtered. Their rage and terror over wolves is quite disturbing, most of them adult white males.
slag
@Betty Cracker:
Sentimentality has a value. A potentially evolutionary value of preventing the wholesale slaughter of big cats. It shrinks the big picture—species preservation—to a size small enough to fit into our tiny human brains. Hooray for sentimentality!
Patrick
Isn’t there an enormous difference between killing a lion that has taken to terrorizing a village versus traveling to the other side of the world to kill something for the fun of it…
Mnemosyne (iPhone)
@beltane:
Exactly. I’m pretty “live and let live” when it comes to apex predators. If they don’t bother me, I won’t bother them.
I was wondering when this first happened how it could possibly be legal to lure an animal out of a preserve and, yep, turns out it’s not legal. Surprise, surprise.
Punchy
@Roger Moore: Yes, if by “we” you mean a few thousand, or even hundreds of thousands, humans. But because we’ve multiplied to over 7 extra large on this planet, I’d say we’ve fucked up pristine and non-pristine ecosystems quite disasterously.
Patrick
@Jim, Foolish Literalist:
Good grief. He is just as deranged as the Republicans. So what the hell is his solution then?
Betty Cracker
@slag: That’s a great point.
beltane
@Patrick: His solution is to defer to whatever Netanyahu wants at the moment. Maybe he will be satisfied with a failed US invasion of Iran.
Roger Moore
@dedc79:
You left out raccoons, skunks, and squirrels, which seem to do fine in suburban environments. Not to mention crows.
trollhattan
@Punchy:
Yup, and while lions do pose some kind of existential thread to humans where their living spaces overlap most the bucket list “gotta kill” critters these hunters pursue are no threat whatsoever. Except hippos. Fuck those guys.
slag
@catbirdman: Sorry. For the metaphorically-challenged: The fence is generally considered to be a symbol of a human’s “special” ability to engineer his own habitat, and thus, to craft his own destiny. You’ve heard of this concept, no? Or is it a bridge too far for you?
Patrick
@beltane:
The same Nethanyahu who Boehner invited to Congress without bothering to tell our President? “Democrats” like Israel makes it so much harder to stay party loyal.
trollhattan
@Roger Moore:
And armadillos with their ricochet-abilities perforating doublewides across the South. All because Obama outlawed cop-killer ammo. Or something.
dedc79
@Roger Moore: All good additions. I had been digging around for a list I had seen awhile back of species that are well-adapted to the “end of nature.” Haven’t been able to track it down though. Starlings have also done well since being introduced in North America.
Patricia Kayden
@Mike G: AMEN.
There is nothing wrong with feeling uneasy about rich men paying to kill endangered animals so they can add to their trophy collections. The author of the NYT’s article seems to think that we are so silly that we don’t know that some lions (like all predators) are dangerous. I am sure that there are Africans who are just as appalled as we are about Cecil’s death and what it represents for endangered species.
Heliopause
Right now CNN, MSNBC, and FOX News are all BREAKING NEWS of that hunk of airplane debris. Honest question: who in the world considers this worthy of more than a ten second mention on the evening news? Are there really that many people who struggle to find something more interesting in this world than random shit that washes up on the beach? Isn’t there some paint drying somewhere that they could go watch?
Roger Moore
@bemused:
Wolves may not attack humans very often, but they have been known to attack livestock, which gets the people who own that livestock bent out of shape. I’m not saying that killing all the wolves is an answer, but it’s not just irrational fear that makes people hate wolves.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@beltane: @Patrick: the same Netanyahu who told us deposing Saddam would bring peace to the ME. and as much as I dislike BiBi, at least he lives in the neighborhood. He’s not trying to rewrite Vietnam or win some kind of video game (“We win!”)
Omnes Omnibus
@dedc79: Who is telling Zimbabwe how to manage its predators (aside from the build a fence comment)?
beltane
@Roger Moore: Some of the ingrained fear of wolves is irrational and based on old-world tales. When I’m hiking or walking in my rural neck of the woods, my main fear is of dogs, who are completely unafraid of humans. Since a neighbor’s unleashed pitbull came after my dog last year, I no longer even bother attempting to walk around here.
Mack
“The theoretical NYT African village needed their own Manute Bol. Could they not recruit one?”
Probably had room under the cap too.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@Heliopause: I see some Patriots have been firing shots at US soldiers on Jade Helm training for the second day in a row, and wonder if that was terrorism.
I guess not.
Roger Moore
@trollhattan:
And how could I forget opossums? And, somewhat amazingly, feral parrots seem to be doing very well in my neck of the woods. The have plenty to eat because humans plant non-native fruit trees as ornamentals and plenty of people never bother to harvest the fruit. There aren’t any native birds that are well adapted to eating random collections of fruit scattered all over the place, but amazon parrots seem to be very good at it. I suspect hummingbirds will do well, too, because people love to plant flowers and put out feeders.
Mnemosyne (iPhone)
@Betty Cracker:
She hasn’t come back to reply, so I don’t really want to continue without her, but aimai’s comment came across as dismissive of conservation efforts as being driven strictly by sentiment and emotion. Frankly, sentiment and emotion is how you get people to give a shit about abstract concepts like “wildlife management.”
There have been some really interesting studies lately about the role of emotion in decision-making and it turns out that it’s actually HARDER to make a decision if you don’t have an emotion about it. One study found that people who have brain damage that removed their emotions can spend hours deciding between a black pen and a blue pen because there’s no objective reason to favor one over the other.
So, yes, sentimentality can be a powerful force if it’s channeled correctly. Let’s try and channel it in a way that will benefit both the people and the lions of Zimbabwe rather than decrying humans for acting like humans.
Cacti
I also tend to think that the reaction to the killing of an anthropomorophized lion has been ridiculously overboard, but…
Trophy hunting is an a**hole hobby, and members of Safari Club International are a bunch of creeps.
boatboy_srq
@dedc79: Key difference: The US doesn’t let wealthy furriners come over, shoot local endangered animals in the municipal zoos or national parks, then bribe their way out of trouble afterward.
The debate here isn’t about how Zimbabwe (or Kenya or Uganda or wherever) handles its lion population, it’s how 1%er scofflaws can get past the preservation regulations with $55K to “expert guides” and another $20K to the state for the subsequent infraction. That’s no slight on Zimbabwe: it’s calling out white 1%er privilege. The fines assessed for poaching would stop almost anyone – except an entitled j#ck#ss with millions to burn on the kill and no intention of engaging in anything like a sporting event.
slag
@Omnes Omnibus: Christ! It was a metaphor! Science, technology, engineering. The point is that they’re all rational modes of thinking that can be used to preserve as well as destroy. Context!
dedc79
@Omnes Omnibus: There has been a ton of criticism (and some defense) of the way they license hunts of threatened and even endangered species to raise funds for other conservation efforts (or at least that’s what the claim is).
More generally, the developed world tends to lecture the less-developed world about how they manage their wildlife, rainforests, coral reefs, etc…
We live in a country where close to 100% of the old growth forests outside of Alaska have been logged, but we like to tell Brazil and Congo what they should and shouldn’t be doing with their old growth rainforests. And to be clear, I’m not saying we shouldn’t be concerned or that we shouldn’t voice those concerns. I just think we should be cognizant of why those getting the lecture may object.
Tree With Water
“Many of the same people who made the case for war with Iraq” are now opposing the Iran deal, Obama said, who urged for a shift away in U.S. policies “characterized by a preference for military action over diplomacy.”
Wrong. That’s not it at all. The president’s remark ennobles the brazen lies of Bush-Cheney (et.al.). They weighed nothing in the balance- war was their first and only option. They desecrated the memories of those Americans killed on 9/11 to wage it, and their wickedness led to the slaughter and maiming of thousands of their countrymen- and many, many thousands of other innocents. All betrayed. Those people are not an honorable opposition. They are killers, and they very dangerous people that I, at least, equate with a pack of rabid dogs running wild.
Bobby Thomson
@Patricia Kayden: that pretty much sums up the Gabonese attitude toward the Gabon Viper.
Roger Moore
@beltane:
I’m also more afraid of dogs than anything else when hiking. For me, it’s not fear of being bitten; no dog I’ve met while hiking has given me reason to be afraid of that. But plenty of idiots let their dogs run out of control, off a leash and in many cases out of sight of their humans. I’m afraid one may come barreling around a corner and knock me off the trail, which where I go hiking would mean a nasty, long tumble through chaparral.
Betty Cracker
@Roger Moore: We’ve got lots of feral Quaker parrots. Loud mofos!
dedc79
@boatboy_srq: Not only does some of that exact stuff happen here, we have a whole agency devoted to killing american wildlife:
Bill
While we can certainly make a case that trophy hunting should be banned entirely (a fairly strong case actually), fact is hunting Lions with the proper permits is perfectly legal in Zimbabwe. Palmer (the dentist) claims he paid Theo Brokhorst, a Zimbabwean Hunter, to get permits and make sure the hunt was legal. Palmer claims to have had no involvement in luring the lion, and Bronkhorst has called Palmer a “totally innocent party” even in the face of criminal charges against Bronkhorst.
It is certainly possible that facts yet to come to light show Palmer was involved in illegal aspects of the hunt, in which case he should pay the penalty for breaking the law. (As an aside, the guy seem like a complete douchebag, but that’s really beside the point.)
So basically the dentist paid good money to do something that’s perfectly legal, may have been misled regarding the legality, and the only evidence available at this time is to be believed was an “innocent party”.
Can we all maybe take a breath and wait to see how this shakes out?
http://www.washingtonpost.com/news/morning-mix/wp/2015/08/04/zimbabwean-hunter-says-he-did-nothing-wrong-in-luring-cecil-the-lion-to-his-death/
Mnemosyne (iPhone)
@Roger Moore:
Now that stand-up paddleboarding (SUP) is becoming more popular in So Cal, some people are getting a little freaked out when they discover that sharks are constantly swimming around in deeper waters doing their shark thing and ignoring the puny humans at the surface. Apparent the SUP gives you a very good angle at which to see deep into clear waters that you don’t get on a surfboard or kayak.
Omnes Omnibus
@dedc79: I suppose that Yul Brunner’s anti smoking ad was similar lecture?
Bruce Webb
@efgoldman: Shooting a baited animal is not hunting. It is simply some combination of blood lust and trophy acquisition. At the other extreme is culling a dangerous animal, for example a lion that has lost its fear/caution of humans and is prowling around human habitations. In between is actually stalking an animal in the wild. You don’t have to be a monster to reject the first as barbaric, accept the second as necessary, and understand why some people engage in the middle activity.
But mostly I would argue that you should rarely if ever hunt an actual apex predator like a lion or a brown bear (which includes Grizzlies, Kodiaks and oddly Polar bears). Because they pretty much do their own management, one per territory. But I am not going to tell someone they shouldn’t go out hunting actual meat animals also preyed on by apex predators, I have friends who hunt deer, moose and elk. On the other hand I have reservations about pure trophy hunting for skins or horns. But that may just be me.
No matter how you slice things, dragging a carcase behind a truck to get a lion to follow right up to a hunter with a compound bow is just not right. Baiting ain’t hunting.
trollhattan
@boatboy_srq:
I keep running into “it’s these guys who’re keeping the (Country X) economy afloat. Stop them and watch the people starve, hippies” arguments, which is not only absurd on its face it’s also got an inevitable endgame where the income stops as soon as the last corpse is collected.
Far more rich (and middle-class) people engage in wildlife photography than hunt, and what more sustainable form of tourism could there be? Think a huntin’ rifle and scope cost a lot? Those dudes are fiscal pu$$ies.
Example safari lens.
And a camera to hang from it.
“Mine’s bigger” is a big part of photography’s upper end. Exploit it for all it’s worth.
dedc79
@Omnes Omnibus: Had Yul Brenner been smoking a cigarette while talking into the camera, maybe
ETA: Should have said, “Had Yul Brenner been doing promo ads for Marlboro at the same, maybe”
Cervantes
@Bill:
Heresy.
catbirdman
@slag: “The fence is generally considered to be a symbol of a human’s ‘special’ ability to engineer his own habitat.” In the context of wildlife straying outside of preserve boundaries — the topic of this thread — “the fence” generally refers to an actual fence. The concept of a fence somehow symbolizing “human engineering of his own habitat” would be awkward and inept, which is probably why I’m not aware of anybody ever having employed this metaphor.
slag
@bemused:
I think about this a lot and feel that one plausible solution to most of our current social ills is to more aggressively work to instill a deeper sense of security in white males, in particular. White man’s burden is hurting us all.
It could be that social progress—women’s rights, gay rights, intersectional everybody rights, etc—is actually helping to do that by showing white men that they don’t have to dominate everything to be successful. That their achievements can come from collective means. But it’s hard to say.
Of course, we could just build a big fence around them.
Emerald
I am for the animals. Always have liked animals better than humans.
However, hunting for food, or hunting to protect your village when it’s threatened by some rogue animal, lion or elephant or leopard, for example, those are completely natural things to do. I have no problem with either.
I even accept hunting for sport if you intend to eat the meat, whether or not you need it to feed your family.
But trophy hunting is not natural. Virtually no other animal does it. It is having a serious impact on wildlife in Africa. They banned it in Botswana five years ago, and the lion population is stable there now. Botswana banned all sport hunting last year, and are making 1,300 percent MORE MONEY from ecotourism than they made from the hunting. () They are also employing massively more people–and the skills transfer. The former poachers are finding out that they make more money by keeping the animals alive.
For those who enjoy watching wildlife, Nat Geo Wild has started up their live webcam safaris again! Runs twice a day from 6:30 pm Eastern and 3:00 am Eastern for three hours each. Fantastic to watch, absolutely riveting, and nobody shoots anything. Linky goodness: http://www.wildsafarilive.com
trollhattan
@Mnemosyne (iPhone):
Heh. We were in Maui and wife.gov was out SUPping, all excited about watching the turtles glide underneath. A local later told her not such a good idea, as sharks follow the turtles.
beltane
@Roger Moore: A friend of mine was recently bitten by an unleashed dog while hiking. Since the dog didn’t have his rabies tag, and the owners were from out-of-state, it was an agonizing couple of days waiting for the owners of the dog to provide proof of vaccination. As a child, my husband had to endure the standard series of rabies shots after being bitten by a stray dog. In rural areas of this country, dog maulings seem to be far from uncommon.
Roger Moore
@Betty Cracker:
We have some smaller parakeets (mostly yellow-cheveroned and white winged) and conures (mitered and red masked) but the most obvious ones are the red crowned amazons. They’re amazingly annoying. Not only are they ridiculously loud, especially in large flocks, but they eat fruit that people want to harvest and make an enormous mess in the process.
ETA: I took the picture of the perching parrot in the linked Wikipedia article.
Mnemosyne (iPhone)
@Bill:
I’m not sure how the law works in Zimbabwe, but ignorance of the law doesn’t really fly in most countries. There’s also usually a penalty if it turns out that you benefited from someone else’s illegal actions, even if you didn’t know they committed a crime.
But I’m perfectly willing to have the guy be extradited to Zimbabwe and have the case heard in their courts. Assuming they can find him to serve the warrant — last I heard, he was still refusing to talk to US Wildlife & Game officials.
slag
@catbirdman: You’re right. Context matters:
bemused
@Roger Moore:
Yes, and family dogs too. I think our DNR has made exceptions in the past when it was illegal to kill a wolf if there a family was having an ongoing problem with losing farm animals or pets to wolves. If this was happening to a lot of people on a regular basis, we would all hear about it from neighbors, friends and the local papers but it is just not that common.
Being aware comes with living in a large rural and wild area with bears, wolves, occasional mountain lion, bobcats, etc. I’ve lived here for over 60 years and we see a wolf once in awhile, hear them howl and yip at night more often, know they are around due to some deer kills on our property but we honestly don’t think about or worry about wolves much. As someone said, they don’t bother us, we don’t bother them.
I was reading a commenter in local paper go on and on about the evil wolf and he planned to shoot every one he sees on his property. He has dogs. However, he allows his dogs to run around his property freely and they regularly visit the out of sight rural neighbors who are not exactly right next door. I don’t think he can have it both ways. We keep an eye on our dogs and never let them run around by themselves. We used to have indoor cats that went outside too that never had any trouble with predators. There are a lot more bald eagles, owls, other birds and animals that would snatch up a cat than there used to be so our current cats are strictly indoor.
It’s being realistic but not hysterical about the predator risks where you live. The wolf haters here have gone around the bend.
Emerald
I am for the animals. Alway did like animals better than humans.
However, hunting for food, or hunting to protect your village when it’s threatened by some rogue animal, lion or elephant or leopard, for example, those are completely natural things to do. I have no problem with either.
I even accept hunting for sport if you intend to eat the meat, whether or not you need it to feed your family.
But trophy hunting is not natural. Virtually no other animal does it. It is having a serious impact on wildlife in Africa. They banned it in Botswana five years ago, and the lion population is stable there now. Botswana banned all sport hunting last year, and are making 1,300 percent MORE MONEY from ecotourism than they made from the hunting. Here’s the link: http://voices.nationalgeographic.com/2015/07/31/hunting-lions-for-fun/?utm_source=Facebook&utm_medium=Social&utm_content=link_fb20150731voices-lionhuntingjouberts&utm_campaign=Content&sf11558643=1
BTW, you can watch safaris from South Africa live twice per day! National Geographic runs this: Wild Earth Safaris. Eastern times: 6:00 pm and 3:00 am for three hours each. Absolutely riveting! Here’s the link: http://www.wildsafarilive.com
chopper
this story is dumb. Cecil lived in a national park. he wasn’t terrorizing villagers.
the fact that wild elephants can be dangerous is meaningless when some asshole breaks into the zoo and shoots a captive elephant in the face.
Roger Moore
@slag:
The number of white men who are actually comfortable with successful women, gays, minorities, etc. is a sign that it can work. The problem is that there’s this awful transitional period where the success of people who aren’t straight, white, Christian men makes the ones who haven’t adapted to a pluralistic world ever more scared and eager to lash out. Actually, the really big problem is that transitional period seems to be stretching out to generations-long, and the idiots are doing a lot of damage with their tantrums.
Mnemosyne (iPhone)
@dedc79:
So we’re not allowed to say, Hey, guys, we fucked up, but we’d like you to be able to learn from our experience and not repeat our mistakes?
trollhattan
@Roger Moore:
Nice shot!
Friends in the Sierra foothills had very odd birds successfully nest in one of their bird boxes last year and after a lot of poring through bird books he realized they were zebra finches. Evidently having either made the cross-Pacific journey or escaping from somebody’s cage. They didn’t return this year, so maybe a one-time deal? (Doubt it, but they’re not listed anywhere I’ve looked as an invasive species.)
Cervantes
@Mnemosyne (iPhone):
Sure, we’re allowed to say that — but it does not always convince the folks who would have to pay the cost of behaving better than we did.
It’s an old problem.
beltane
@Mnemosyne (iPhone): Most of the destruction is carried out at the behest of multinational corporations anyway. It’s not like the Kochs, etc. are content with corrupting the government of our country.
Roger Moore
@bemused:
That seems about right to me. We have plenty of predators in my neighborhood. I’ve seen a bear walking through town about a mile from my home, and I see coyotes with some regularity. I have never seen a mountain lion or bobcat, but I know they live in the area, and I have seen remains of a deer that looked suspiciously as if it had fallen prey to a mountain lion. For me, dealing with them mostly means keeping my cat inside and keeping my eyes open if I go out on trash day, since that’s the main attraction for bears.
schrodinger's cat
NYT opinion page is descending to being like Slate, off late. They had an op-ed on the Iran deal by none other than Lolrus Bolton a few days ago.
Ben
Of course, to me the more interesting aspect is Cecil’s namesake–Cecil Rhodes, namesake of the Rhodes Scholars program and imperialist bastard.
Bobby Thomson
@Bill: please. Palmer didn’t happen to notice the bleeding gazelle tied up to the truck? Pull the other one.
Roger Moore
@trollhattan:
I’m especially happy to think that I made a contribution to a wonderful resource like Wikipedia. I wonder how many people have looked at that picture; I wouldn’t be surprised if it were more than any other picture I’ve taken.
Germy Shoemangler
@schrodinger’s cat:
I’ve noticed that trend. Everything they do is on purpose, so they must have had editorial meetings about it.
Germy Shoemangler
@Ben: Naming seems to increase compassion.
http://boingboing.net/2015/08/05/tom-the-dancing-bug-cecil-th.html
Bart
There’s about 30,000-45,000 lions left IN THE WHOLE OF AFRICA, but these idiots have to live next door to a wildlife preserve. Isn’t there really any place elsewhere? Isn’t Africa fucking HUGE?
Bill
@Mnemosyne (iPhone):
That depends on the law. Many – probably most – crimes do include an intent element. But I am no expert on Zimbabwean law either. (In fact I know nothing about it, and am admittedly making assumptions that it mirrors US criminal law regarding intent.)
Absolutely agree. All I’m saying is that the only evidence I’ve seen so far does not indicate Palmer intended to commit a crime. As noted above, the facts may play out differently as the case proceeds. But based on what we know right now I don’t see the slam dunk “he poached”: case other’s seem to.
wuzzat
See, the difference between someone hunting and killing the lion terrorizing a village and what Palmer did is the difference between someone shooting a buck in season in a place where they’re a menace to agriculture and automobiles and Homer taking Bart to Santa’s Village to shoot a reindeer in a pen.
Hal
I don’t see any difference caring about a lion vs. the air quality, climate change, or the environment as a whole. They are all the same issue. I’m not anthropomorphising when I express concern about an impending extinction (2050) of a species and I refuse to care or sympathize with some rich white asshole that jets off to Africa to kill animals purely for sport.
slag
@Roger Moore:
I see this too. Many of the white men I know are insanely secure in themselves and see the social progress made in their lifetimes as offering direct benefit to them as well as others. They’re directly contradicting the old stereotype that suggests they should get more conservative with age as their increased feelings of security are making them more liberal, more enlightened over time.
But you’re right, the backlash is fierce. And even as the enlightened ones, as individuals, are valuing the progress, the pressure they get from the reactionaries is causing conflict in itself. They are having to work more and more aggressively to keep from being dragged back into the dark ages. It’s a matter of finding a tipping point. And somehow—at least partially through bravado, fear, and bias all being disguised as objectivity—the reactionaries keep pushing that tipping point further and further away. Tough nut.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
and again, a movie theatre shooting, in the Nashville suburb of Antioch
schrodinger's cat
@Germy Shoemangler: The Gray lady is trolling for clicks!
japa21
@Jim, Foolish Literalist:
Metro police spokesman Don Aaron said the suspect entered the theater armed with a gun and a hatchet. The shooting began in the projection room during a showing of Mad Max: Fury Road.
Read more: http://www.wsmv.com/story/29717483/active-shooter-reported-at-antioch-theater#ixzz3hyG5jriN
Gun and hatchet. Mad Max: Fury Road. Sounds about right.
lawguy
@aimai: I’m not sure what your argument is? Is it that it’s tacky to anthropomorphize the animal? To argue that the brother of the dead lion isn’t protecting the cubs? (Since new male lions do kill the cubs of the previous male, that seems to be an argument that goes back to your original point about anthropomorphism.)
Further, I suspect that this writer hasn’t been vetted as well as Judith Miller.
I suspect that more than a few people are angry because it is another example of very wealthy white people going around the world to go out of their way to destroy what little is left of the natural world. It got people’s attention because it is photogenic. Good.
Mnemosyne (iPhone)
@Bill:
As other people have said, he AT BEST completely ignored a whole host of warning signs, like the gazelle carcass being dragged on a car. I suppose his defense is going to be that he was just a poor, innocent tourist who was bamboozled by the locals but, like it or not, he participated in an illegal hunt that he should have been bright enough to know was more than a little suspicious.
And of course the poacher is claiming the client was totally innocent. He doesn’t want the authorities looking at his past clients and arresting them as well.
Parrotlover77
Fuck this article. The solution to every “nuisance animal” problem humanity faces is to just kill it. Well, guess what? Eventually you run out of the animal and generally fuck up entire ecosystems. If an apex predator is stalking your village, that sucks, but does not automatically IMHO mean you get to kill it. Neither does hunting whales just because your tribe has always done it and you use all of it and hunt with spears. Wtf is with that? Well I killed your dog but I used all of it, so it’s okay. No, this bullshit culture of death needs to stop, even if it means breaking long standing traditions. But what fucking balls do you need to use this as a response to trophy hunting of endangered species in a wildlife preserve? Fuck that noise!
PIGL
@hitchhiker: thanks for pointing this out.
trollhattan
@Hal: @lawguy:
Might be worth noting that protecting the environment requires eternal and constant vigilance while destroying that same environment can occur in a relative eyeblink. “Eco-terrorism” is actually the act of poaching, felling timber, mountaintop coal removal, toxic waste discharge, etc., not setting some SUVs aflame. Sadly, it’s an asymmetrical battle with all the advantages going to the destroyers. Who also control the money and many of the lawmaking bodies.
seaboogie
@beltane: Excellent point on the danger of microscopic critters. Pretty sure Ebola killed far more Africans last year than all of the lions in history.
Roger Moore
@Mnemosyne (iPhone):
And his personal track record of poaching makes people understandably reluctant to grant him the benefit of the doubt in this case.
Elizabelle
I would be impressed if these great white hunters (or whatever color they be) suited up and went Burmese python-hunting in the Everglades. Pythons do not belong in that ecosystem, and they’re destroying the mammals. It’s tragic.
Do some hunting that allows native animal populations to rebound.
I’d be suitably impressed with the hunter’s new python boots or ottoman. Pythons are hard to catch and kill, and present some danger. Give Everglades mammals a break.
Another Holocene Human
@Elizabelle: Too true.
trollhattan
@Elizabelle:
It’s a good point. They’re trying, but so far the python is proving much smarter than Florida Man.
Another Holocene Human
@Parrotlover77: Culling a few is responsible resource management. Wiping them out as the non trophy parts of the carcass rot is just revolting.
Gators and deer are resource-managed all over the US now and I don’t hear hunters as a whole complaining. (Not denying there are poachers despite all the legal avenues … guns and the woods seem to attract that sort of sociopath.)
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@trollhattan: I blame Betty Cracker. And Obama, of course.
Another Holocene Human
@Bart: And the jerk comment award for the thread goes to Bart, who thinks people should just leave their ancestral village when the aesthetics of life there no longer please Bart.
lawguy
@Roger Moore: There is in American law at least and probably English and therefore, probably Zimbabwean law(since they were an English colony) the “Knew of should have known” aspect of it. That is: If a normal human being should have been able to figure it out, then the law assumes that you did in fact know.
trollhattan
@Jim, Foolish Literalist:
They’re definitely in cahoots. If you look carefully at Oval Office photos, you’ll see a tiny collection of wine capsule foil sculptures. Coincidence? I think not!
Another Holocene Human
@schrodinger’s cat: If we could heart comments on FYWP I would heart yours for “Lolrus Bolton”.
slag
@Elizabelle: It would be nice if this quien es mas macho worldview could be turned into a feature instead of a bug. Unlikely though since that would be a direct violation of cleek’s law.
See also: Cyclists braving the elements getting run over by flag-waving SUVs; “leaders of innovation” pissing their pants over penny ante EPA regulations; etc etc…
Elizabelle
NY Times op ed writer Goodwell Nzou is a doctoral student in molecular and cellular biosciences at Wake Forest University.
He lost his right leg to snakebite. Have no doubt being a child with a lion out and about was terrifying. But there are so few wild animals now, and they are losing habitat day after day. In Africa, in South America, just about everywhere, because human populations are out of control.
Think of the animals fleeing drought and wildfire now. Their environment is changing faster than they can adapt. The seasons do not match their breeding and migrating behavior.
Heat, drought cook fish alive in Pacific Northwest. Bees disappear.
We are all the lion.
dedc79
@Mnemosyne (iPhone): No, we are. I thought I had made this clear. We need to be mindful of our hypocrisy and be working to clean up our own act as we prod others to clean up theirs. Often we don’t admit to the part about having already f’d up, or that we’re still in the process of f’ing up our own country and theirs.
We’re all so worried about how Indonesian loggers are cutting down their forests. Well they’re doing so to replace the forests with oil palm plantations so that they can sell palm oil to us, to the Chinese, to Europeans. Same in brazil, except they’re doing it to raise cattle for beef to sell in the US and elsewhere. Or to grow soybeans.
I’m of the view that the global situation is only ever going to improve if we get our own population under control. Yes poaching is an enormous problem, particularly when you’re dealing with threatened populations of species that don’t reproduce in big numbers. But the ultimate problem is population growth and the need for land to grow crops, fuel to burn, and places to live. Lions need A LOT of open land, and there’s less and less of it left.
Elizabelle
CNN on in background. Talking about movie theatres being “soft targets.” The new normal in Guntopia.
Cervantes
@dedc79:
Plus the way we define or measure our standard of living.
schrodinger's cat
@Another Holocene Human: Thanks, I aim to please!
Keith G
@Elizabelle:
God, I fucking hope not.
Reminds me of the brainless twits lining up to buy masking tape and rolls of plastic sheets in 2002. I remember some woman in Iowa asserting how she was going to get prepared for a terror attack in her fly-over country small town.
Be worried about texting drivers. Have a tiny frisson of worry about traveling to the movie theater.
As far as the opinion of the writer in the above text, until shown otherwise, I will assume this is a legitimate statement from someone who seems to have a higher stake in this discussion than I do.
I wish the African ecosystem had been cased in amber many decades ago. It is a shame how diminished it is now and how much more it will be diminished as agricultural communities push further into sensitive lands. Habitat degradation is the real killer of wild fauna. But it is their land and I do not see very many Westerners raising the funds it will take to reshape their choices.
trollhattan
@dedc79:
Sub-Saharan Africa population projected to grow from 1 to 4 billion, comprising most of the globe’s overall growth. I have zero idea how they can do this and be self-sustaining, but I gurangoddamntee the flora and fauna will not survive this change.
Cervantes
@schrodinger’s cat:
@Another Holocene Human:
That was pretty funny!
dedc79
@trollhattan: I was just going to respond by saying that “The outlook is bleak.” But even that doesn’t really do it justice.
So many people knock fertilizers and pesticides, but a good portion of them haven’t given much thought to how else we are going to get the productivity we need out of the land we’ve already converted to agriculture to feed an ever growing population. Something like 60% of all arable land on the planet is already being used for grazing/agriculture. There’s still a lot of inefficiency in that use, but what happens when there are twice as many people on the planet as there are now?
Bill
@Mnemosyne (iPhone):
Have you seen any evidence he was present when the lion was baited? If that evidence exists it certainly changes my analysis, but I haven’t seen that.
dedc79
@Cervantes: Yes, if everyone (or anything approaching everyone) had already adopted our standard of living, the planet would probably already be uninhabitable.
Bill
@Elizabelle: I saw a show about python hunting in the Everglades. Apparently Florida put a bounty on the snakes a while back to try to help reduce the population. Large numbers of people showed up to participate, but most of them quit very quickly when they realized just how hard it is to hunt pythons.
catbirdman
@trollhattan: Many species of exotic cagebird have escaped and become established as breeders in California and elsewhere. I’m not aware of Zebra Finches having nested in the U.S., but I guess it wouldn’t surprise me. In southern California I regularly run across Pin-tailed Whydas, Scaly-breasted Munias, Orange Bishops, and various parrots and parakeets, among others.
Cervantes
@Bill:
That was an amusing episode. More than a thousand hunters showed up to capture (ostensibly) hundreds of thousands of pythons — and when the contest ended a month later, the cull was … fifty.
Roger Moore
@catbirdman:
We have whiskered bulbuls at my work. And that doesn’t even include the really common introduced species, like house sparrows, starlings, and rock doves.
boatboy_srq
@dedc79: AGAIN, using smaller words. One thing to “manage” wildlife. Different thing for rich foreign hunter to bribe locals to break laws, kill animals in a preserve just for the fun of it, pay off government’s (to him) paltry fine, and waltz home with illegal pelt. Neither is good, but the latter is just scummy. I don’t see Wildlife Svcs issuing hunter’s licenses to wealthy Zimbabweans (or Germans, or Chinese, or whoever) to pursue coyote onto private property, for example. Add to that lions aren’t (yet) reaching pest population levels, and coyote don’t have regional transnational tracts of land set aside to protect them. AGAIN – I’m not troubled by Zimbabwe’s wildlife management here, so your complaint about how bad US wildlife mgmt. is ain’t relevant: what bothers me is that fines Zimbabwe defensibly thinks are prohibitively high are still pocket change for some 1%er shmucks-with-guns and therefore not a deterrent to the uberwealthy’s bad behavior. Then again, US laws and penalties don’t seem to have been a deterrent for Palmer, so outside mandatory prison time or fines based on offender’s net worth (and assessed at the 80% level or thereabouts) there’s probably not much to be done there.
@trollhattan: Photography is the ultimate “mine’s bigger than yours” hobby. Between the glass and (nowadays) the electronics you could buy a decent-size house with the money you’ll burn on some of the equipment, with the added bonus of shooting your targets again, and again, and again, with minimal harm done. But of course for some people the big-as-life photo just isn’t the same as having the pelt in front of the fire.
Mnemosyne (iPhone)
@Bill:
I’m not sure how you otherwise explain that the lion your client is about to shoot is munching on a gazelle strapped to your car, but I’m sure you’ll be able to come up with a totally innocent explanation that completely exonerates the wealthy guy with a documented history of barely legal poaching.
Elizabelle
@Bill: Prezactly. Python hunting separates the glory seekers from the actual trackers. Takes a lot of patience and skill to find them. Maybe someone could devise a better way to do so.
And pythons are doing a LOT more damage than lions and giraffes. Would be public service culling of the python herd.
And: boots! Purses! Jackets!
slag
@dedc79:
These aren’t necessarily two different debates—lion-killing and habitat preservation. It can be just one debate—who are we as a species?
Are we a species that, when posed with a threat, resorts to violence and destruction to alleviate that threat? All to preserve our own vaunted segment of humanity (as defined by whatever perceived characteristic suits the moment). If that’s the case, we can simply follow our path of destruction until the winners take all (which, quite frankly, won’t be all that much).
Or are we a species that lives up to our own publicity and keeps tightening our constraints and raising our expectations until we successfully achieve a delicate, but rational, coexistence? If that’s the case, we have a whole different set of options as well as quite a lot of work to do that starts yesterday.
Unfortunately, though, I don’t see us gaining consensus on this question any time soon. Which, thanks to path dependence, means we’re probably stuck with option one. That’s no fun.
Bill
@Mnemosyne (iPhone):
Again, have you seen any evidence that indicates this is what happened? I haven’t.
I’m really not trying to exonerate the guy – who again by all accounts seems like an a-hole – but i’m hoping the evidence is something stronger than “he showed up and shot a Lion someone else illegally baited” if he’s going to be charged.
Mike J
@Bill: “he showed up and shot a Lion
someone elsethe people he paid illegally baited”dedc79
@boatboy_srq: Don’t dumb it down for me. Feel free to use real big words.
Sure, it’s sold as “management.” That word can be used to justify a lot, here and abroad. Hell, I read one of the American rhino hunters claiming that he was protecting rhinos by shooting a rhino that was bullying another rhino. He too was helping manage the rhino population, right?
Also, are you familiar with the safari hunts that go on here in the US? The ones where people pay to shoot exotic animals in fenced in enclosures?
There’s also plenty of poaching and illegal fishing that goes on right here in America. You don’t think US and state wildlife officials get pressured or even bribed to look the other way when wolves and other supposed menaces are gunned down?
kc
@aimai:
What, you don’t think we should give them medals for killing “distant monsters?”
trollhattan
@dedc79:
That’s the Cheney Way, so he can get his kill on here in the States without any worries of being arrested and hauled before the Hague.
kc
As long as at least one of them is slower than him, he should be cool.
A guy
I hunt and fish. I’ve killed a lot of deer. The story relayed above, while interesting, is not really relevant to the debate. The issue is whether it was a legal kill or not. If it was not, then the guides and hunter may have to pay the price. But then again, I’ve no problem with some folks in West Virginia dropping a deer out of season as long as it is consumed for food. We have lots of deer here and it’s not because, as Amir believes, all the ranchers have killed heir predators. At the end of the day, it’s an animal, not a person.
boatboy_srq
@dedc79: Point. Missed. Again.
You keep trying to make this about wildlife management. NOBODY does that as well as anyone but the hunters would like. And of course there are people who will bribe officials to get past the niceties of the law. Palmer has already done that – which is part of why his latest jaunt is so despicable (another is his insistence on being a “responsible and law-abiding” hobbyist when he is clearly neither).
It’s about rich clods trampling laws – both at home and abroad – and getting away with it. It’s entitlement. Until that’s addressed the restrictions, fines, penalties, whatever don’t mean squat.
The reason Cecil is the cause celebre du jour is that lions are a vulnerable species (by category, by international agreement, and in fact as habitat is shrinking and human predation is significant) and Cecil was a resident of a sanctuary and presumably offered some protection by that. Cecil is dead because a very wealthy foreigner arrived in Zimbabwe, bribed locals to serve as “professional guides” with the equivalent of a few years’ salary, engineered a canned hunt, lured Cecil out of the sanctuary and proceeded to butcher the beast in fairly ugly fashion – and now, because Zimbabwe’s impoverishing-for-any-African penalty for poaching is to Palmer little more than pocket change, he’s poised to walk free after a quick plea and a fine less than half what it cost to pay the guides. And he’s doing it while protesting his innocence as a respectable ethical hunter and law-abiding citizen which he demonstrably is not. The problem isn’t Cecil. The problem isn’t Zimbabwe. The problem is Palmer and those like him. That there are Palmers everywhere, with fingers in every pie and guns hauled to every interesting locale foreign and domestic, is not the fault of wildlife management but of the society that taught them that dead animals are trophies and that wealth supercedes ethics.
If your problem is with killing things, fine. Join PETA. Start a petition. Run for public office someplace where wildlife needs serious protection: expect to lose, because there are plenty of people who won’t be convinced, but run on the platform just the same.
If your problem is with wealthy shmucks getting away with whatever they like, again, fine. Lobby your legislators and Congresscritters to reinstate the top income tax tiers, estate tax, capital gains tax, anything to reduce the amount of obscene wealth that accrues at the top. Use the hunting example as part of the message: it’ll resonate with somebody.
But for FSM’s sake stop trying to paint everyone as p!ss-poor at taking care of the environment just because there’s some entitled jackass paying off people to shoot what he wants to, where he wants to, and take home souvenirs. You’re not making yourself any friends by bashing everything short of mandatory veganism.
dedc79
@A guy:
There were once gray wolves in West Virginia. They’ve now been gone a long time. That is one, but not the only, reason why there are so many deer around.
A guy
Bullshit! The coyote population is as high as it’s ever been. Deer everywhere. The reason the deer are abundant is due to excellent herd management practices of the dnr, funded by sportsmen.
slag
@kc: Seriously. We frown on “anthropomorphizing” and “sentimentalizing” other species, but when the chips are down for a member of our species, we’re all, “kill kill bang bang!”, without even a hint of irony. What exactly are these amazing characteristics humanity possesses that no right-minded person would project onto other species again? Self-awareness? Creativity? Critical thinking?
Irony.
dedc79
@A guy: I assume you were replying to me. Coyote weren’t even native to West Virginia. They moved in only in the past 100-200 years as other apex predators were killed off. Coyote and wolves are two very different species. A coyote may take down a small deer now and again, but it pales in comparison to what a healthy population of wolves will do.
And this isn’t speculation. Ecologists have studies the impact of reintroducing wolves out west. It impacts and helps control the number and behavior of prey species such as elk. Native vegetation improves as a result.
J R in WV
@srv:
Yes, Conservatives live in a world of their own making, Disneyworld, where cutting taxes somehow makes the world a better place and Democrats live in the real world, where people need help and Democrats reach out to assist, where workers labor and need support from union brothers, where taxes pay for roads, health care, and education, all things everyone needs.
In other words, fuck you, srv, for being a ignorant, greedy” Got Mine, Fuck You” republican asshole! Now go away.
A guy
I saw three different coyotes last fall from my deer stand. I hunt 3 or 4 days a week from the opening of bow season in September to December 31. All came in to the field in daylight. I hear them at night as well. They can’t even begin to dent the deer population. Also saw two different foxes. One is a beautiful red fox. I’d really like to trap it during trapping season.
dedc79
@boatboy_srq:
1) Everyone is piss poor at taking care of the environment. It’s a tough pill to swallow, granted, but that doesn’t make it any less true.
2) As I think even you acknowledged somewhere in there, the biggest threat most species face is loss of habitat. We can implement the strongest anti-poaching laws we want all over the planet, throw a gazillion dollars into the effort, and it still won’t make a bit of difference if there’s no where left for the animals to live (or if the climate changes drastically and there’s no way or nowhere for them to migrate to.)
3) Not sure where the anger is coming from. I find what this guy and others like him have done to be absolutely abhorrent and unforgivable
trollhattan
@dedc79:
Yup, and wolves have a big impact on the coyote populations too. In the West the feds kill coyotes by the tens of thousands at the behest of ranchers and hunters. Deer populations are down in the West, not up.
Betty Cracker
@boatboy_srq:
I was thinking about that concept the other day in a different context. Was reading a rather infuriating article in The New Yorker about the cop who killed Michael Brown in Ferguson, and it alluded to how law enforcement functions as shake-down enforcers for municipalities nationwide. It traps the poor into cycles of spiraling noncompliance and debt, whereas people with more money skate by. It’s not fair.
dedc79
@trollhattan: Is “A guy” a troll? I’m trying to figure out whether there’s any point in continuing to engage with someone who either doesn’t know that coyotes and wolves are different species or doesn’t care.
Bill
@boatboy_srq:
Do you have a link to evidence indicating what he did was bribery?
Bill
@trollhattan: If my memory is right, this may have something to do with energy development out west. (Oil and gas.)
Omnes Omnibus
@dedc79: It’s a troll.
A guy
What exactly is a troll? Best I can tell it’s simply somebody u don’t agree with
Another Holocene Human
@catbirdman: Well, Hurricane Andrew was the cagebreaker in S. Florida. I understand there have been issues.
jonas
It’s interesting to have this Zimbabwean’s perspective and I totally get how people who have to live alongside wild predators don’t have the same sentimental view of them as we do. The same used to be true of wolves in much of Europe and North America and they were mostly exterminated as a result. But I don’t understand what that has to do with the story of Cecil. Cecil was 1. a perfectly healthy alpha male and not an obviously older, sicker animal that an ethical hunter would target for culling. 2., was furthermore in a sanctuary and not threatening anyone. 3. was illegally baited to draw him out of the protected area and 4. killed in a unsporting an inhumane way. No one should be defending this.
Palmer may have been hunting “legally” — depending on what passes for “legal” in a place like Zimbabwe — but by no stretch of the imagination was he hunting ethically or in a sporting fashion. I don’t care how “old school” you think bow hunting is, it’s your duty as a hunter to make sure an animal is killed quickly and cleanly, period. Even after baiting the animal, Palmer fucked up, only wounded the lion, and they had to track it for 2 days before putting it out of its misery and trying to disable its radio collar. Really? He had no idea something was wrong with this? He’s just sorry he was caught, is all. This was a plush, canned hunt for a rich douche and his asshole guides who wanted to make sure word got out in the safari community that they could bag their clients sweet trophies. No questions asked, of course.
Duane
@<a href="#comment-542976<
Bill D.
@trollhattan: But you really need *two* expensive lenses (one like the one you linked, the other for relative close-ups) and *two* pro-level cameras like you linked (to stand up to rough field conditions), since you don’t dare change lenses in the field due to all the dust that gets kicked up by the Land Rover. The cameras are tough on the outside but don’t like too much dust inside, especially on the sensor.
yodecat
Well, I don’t live where there are ‘apex predators’. In these parts, in lovely SW Oregon, we do have plenty of critters. Catamounts, bears, the occasional wolf, foxes, racoons, squirrels, coyotes and so on. Around here, the majority attitude toward the wildlife is, “They were here first”. Sure there are plenty of trigger-happy assholes, but the majority’s idea of hunting is catch a bunch of fish and then smoke ’em.
I cannot fathom the desire to kill a giraffe. I’ll bet the Shadow knows.
Bill D.
@yodecat: Catamounts and wolves *are* apex predators.