History for coochiee

A thing that is making me go hmmmmmm at the moment... 

Trophy Hunting in Africa. It's had me going hmmm for a few months, but another podcast about it (Joe Rogan with Cameron Hanes) really rammed it home. 

So I see the pictures, I see the outrage, I remember the Cecil thing, my reactions are initially the same: "what in the hell??? why are people going there and killing animals like lions, elephants and rhinos???"

It seems like total madness, horrible horrible stuff. Surely it's not right and it needs to stop. 

Then I look into it a bit further... 

It seems that we are very uninformed about what is going on in Africa with these hunts. 

So yes, these people are killing these animals, but did anyone else know that this is actually vital to the animals' survival in the long term? I certainly didn't. 

400 elephants are legally killed every year. 30,000 elephants are illegally killed.

The money that was raised from the legal killing of the 400, is what is being used to drive down the 30,000. The profit from professional hunts literally pays for the entire anti-poaching movement, in a lot of places in Africa. That is its whole idea apparently. 

A story I heard the other month, was about the rhinos. So there was a type of rhino, I forget which, obviously not the one that just went extinct, but it is an endangered rhino (I think they're all endangered?). They have a massive high-fence reserve in africa, I forget which country this is sorry, can research and find out if needed. So every year, they give very limited numbers of tickets for the permission to kill a single rhino. Whomever buys one of these tickets, for hundreds of thousands of dollars, they come to this place, they are guided 100% of the time, and they must shoot the particular rhino that has been designated for them. This will be an old male that can no longer breed, and is causing trouble. Although they are now impotent, these old males will attack and kill the young fertile males, still trying to preserve their place at the head of the group, and they will also attack the young of the females that they have not fathered. They are now troublesome animals and are preventing more prolific breeding. So it's a win-win to take them out. The person gets their rhino trophy and goes back to Texas or wherever. The money they paid, is literally funding the reserve, and the entire country's anti-rhino-poaching efforts. 

So we get these stories, like Cecil, we get the picture of the guy with a dead rhino, we totally flip out because it just seems wrong. Then Obama virtue-signals and bans americans from bringing these trophies back to the US. He can't stop the hunting, it's not in his country, but he can stop the trophies coming back, which is what these guys want, so the business of doing this has dropped massively. Americans aren't wanting to do it as much, and they won't pay as much, because they can't put the head on their wall. 

And what is the result? Some of these reserves are just shutting down. Their revenue stream has gone. The funding for anti-poaching, increasing breeding, and preserving the animals, has gone. A 40 year old reserve in Tanzania for elephants just shut down entirely. 

The biggest shock to me was the news that the staff there, staff who have been paid to preserve the animals for years, have mostly walked into poaching jobs afterwards! So now, we have no americans going there and killing animals legally, so no instagram publicity stories to whinge about. Job done right? But instead, we've got MORE animals being killed, all illegally, by professionals who know exactly where they go, how they behave, everything about them. We just went from near-maximum protection, to basically zero protection, which is the exact opposite intention of the bill that Obama passed. 

What also amazed me was that when we think poachers, we think dudes shooting animals, leaving them to rot, but taking the ivory etc. Did you know that most poaching deaths are not from that at all? Most poaching deaths are kills for food, by people that need it, or so I'm told in that podcast.

Obviously some of this info needs further verification, but I've read a few pieces now, and listened to a few podcasts where it has been discussed, and it seems pretty legit.

What do people think about this?

A thing that is making me go hmmmmmm at the moment... 

Trophy Hunting in Africa. It's had me going hmmm for a few months, but another podcast about it (Joe Rogan with Cameron Hanes) really rammed it home. 

So I see the pictures, I see the outrage, I remember the Cecil thing, my reactions are initially the same: "what in the hell??? why are people going there and killing animals like lions, elephants and rhinos???"

It seems like total madness, horrible horrible stuff. Surely it's not right and it needs to stop. 

Then I look into it a bit further... 

It seems that we are very uninformed about what is going on in Africa with these hunts. 

So yes, these people are killing these animals, but did anyone else know that this is actually vital to the animals' survival in the long term? I certainly didn't. 

400 elephants are legally killed every year. 30,000 elephants are illegally killed.

The money that was raised from the legal killing of the 400, is what is being used to drive down the 30,000. The profit from professional hunts literally pays for the entire anti-poaching movement, in a lot of places in Africa. That is its whole idea apparently. 

A story I heard the other month, was about the rhinos. So there was a type of rhino, I forget which, obviously not the one that just went extinct, but it is an endangered rhino (I think they're all endangered?). They have a massive high-fence reserve in africa, I forget which country this is sorry, can research and find out if needed. So every year, they give very limited numbers of tickets for the permission to kill a single rhino. Whomever buys one of these tickets, for hundreds of thousands of dollars, they come to this place, they are guided 100% of the time, and they must shoot the particular rhino that has been designated for them. This will be an old male that can no longer breed, and is causing trouble. Although they are now impotent, these old males will attack and kill the young fertile males, still trying to preserve their place at the head of the group, and they will also attack the young of the females that they have not fathered. They are now troublesome animals and are preventing more prolific breeding. So it's a win-win to take them out. The person gets their rhino trophy and goes back to Texas or wherever. The money they paid, is literally funding the reserve, and the entire country's anti-rhino-poaching efforts. 

So we get these stories, like Cecil, we get the picture of the guy with a dead rhino, we totally flip out because it just seems wrong. Then Obama virtue-signals and bans americans from bringing these trophies back to the US. He can't stop the hunting, it's not in his country, but he can stop the trophies coming back, which is what these guys want, so the business of doing this has dropped massively. Americans aren't wanting to do it as much, and they won't pay as much, because they can't put the head on their wall. 

And what is the result? Some of these reserves are just shutting down. Their revenue stream has gone. The funding for anti-poaching, increasing breeding, and preserving the animals, has gone. A 40 year old reserve in Tanzania for elephants just shut down entirely. 

The biggest shock to me was the news that the staff there, staff who have been paid to preserve the animals for years, have mostly walked into poaching jobs afterwards! So now, we have no americans going there and killing animals legally, so no instagram publicity stories to whinge about. Job done right? But instead, we've got MORE animals being killed, all illegally, by professionals who know exactly where they go, how they behave, everything about them. We just went from near-maximum protection, to basically zero protection, which is the exact opposite intention of the bill that Obama passed. 

What also amazed me was that when we think poachers, we think dudes shooting animals, leaving them to rot, but taking the ivory etc. Did you know that most poaching deaths are not from that at all? Most poaching deaths are kills for food, by people that need it, or so I'm told in that podcast.

Obviously some of this info needs further verification, but I've read a few pieces now, and listened to a few podcasts where it has been discussed, and it seems pretty legit.

What do people think about this?