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.
Thanks for posting this. It is obvious from watching the news that even conservative talking heads don’t get this. End hunting and you lose the number one source of interest and revenue in keeping these animals around.
Does anybody remember when some university wanted to control the sudden deer overpopulation by putting birth control implants in all the does? You know, the overpopulation that started when the greenies agitated to end the taking of does. That plan would have cost taxpayers millions of dollars with no certainty that the same does was not being trapped over and over again while all the other slut does were out there copulating. The plan was laughed out of the room, doe hunting was resumed, and withing three years there was no overpopulation problem. Plus, hundreds of thousands of dollars poured in from licenses and fees and taxes.
As for Cecil – was he still king of the pride, creating offspring? In the wild lions do not hold that position very long and replacing the top dog regularly ensures against inbreeding. How much longer would it have been before Cecil started taking domestic animals and humans because he was too old to hunt game?
And at a base of $35,000.00 for a tag to take a lion, plus the cost of a Professional Hunter or two and all the camp help, throws almost that much again into the economy.
Buncha idiots have no idea how much hunting improves society (here in the USA and other places).
stay safe.
I believe that was Cornell in Ithaca,NY.
Hunters, fishermen and trappers all do more for conservation than they are ever credited for.
Jeff and I grew up together. I’ll vouch for his research and numbers. And I agree 100% with his comment!
A trophy hunter does not hunt because he hates those animals and wants to see them erraticated off the face of the earth. Quite the opposite. They have a vested interest to see those animals flourish. They spend large amounts of money to hunt, while the poacher makes money. Huge difference. And though the poacher technically would have an interest in not running animals to extinction, short term gains and competition will win out to take what they can when they can. I think the anti big game hunting crowd doesn’t see much of a difference between the two.
The whole thing is a figment of the media. The US has known about this for quite some time, and this guy is getting the shaft for it.
http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2015-07-30/secret-memo-reveals-us-was-aware-americans-killing-zimbabwe-lions-only-concern-was-g