Trophy Hunting and Hunting in General.
Jeff Riley does a great explanation about hunting and how hunters and gun owners do more for the ecosystem that 99.99999% of the hardest core member of any green group.
Law of unintended consequences…if you ban hunting those animals will disappear. After reading this article go read about Kenya’s spectacular loss of wildlife after banning all hunting (trophy, sport, meat). Since 1977, Kenya has lost 60% to 70% of all its large wildlife even in national parks. Hunters spend tremendously more money on conservation than any other groups combined.
Here are the numbers, according to the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, the International Association of Fish and Wildlife Agencies, and other public sources:
** $746 million — Annual amount of money spent by hunters in the United States on licenses and public land access fees alone. Sportsmen’s licensing revenues account for more than half of all funding for state natural resource agencies
** $300 million — Additional monies contributed to wildlife conservation every year by the more than 10,000 private hunting-advocate organizations, like the National Wild Turkey Federation, Ducks Unlimited, and the Rocky Mountain Elk Foundation
** $4.2 billion — Amount of money sportsmen have contributed to conservation through a 10% federal excise taxes on firearms, ammunition, and gear since the 1937 Pittman-Robertson Act established the tax. Millions of acres of public-use land has been purchased, preserved, and maintained with this money.
So..if you want to ban hunting you’ll need to step up and replace that funding with your own money. More importantly you had better become a wildlife expert because no other group know and fights harder for maintaining habitats for these animals.
For instance, good intentions kill deer every year because people who don’t know any better, put out hay for deer in the middle of winter. Deer can’t handle this adrupt change from the wood browse diet they have been eating and it kills them.
Never judge a policy based on its intentions…judge it based on results. Based on results…hunting has saved far more animals than it has taken.
Every cow that goes to the slaughterhouse is killed…not ever deer born falls to the hunter.
Jeff Riley.
And so is the BS that the Cecil killing has created, that countries with plenty of animals and local people fed because well-managed trophy hunting are suddenly scared they will lose the income that keeps the animals safe from the guns of the poachers. Read the whole article, if you don’t know about trophy hunting, it will be an eye opener.
As Tanzania’s highest-ranking wildlife official, I ask on behalf of my country and all of our wildlife: do not list the African lion as endangered. Instead, help us make the most from the revenues we generate. Help us make trophy hunting more sustainable and more valuable. In short, please work with us to conserve wildlife, rather than against us, which only diminishes our capacity to protect Tanzania’s global treasures.
