Cecil The Lion

[Troubador]

Hi all I was just wondering where people stand on this? I'm personally of the view that whilst it is a shame I've been somewhat taken aback by the explosion of international media coverage.

 

Hunting is not something I've devoted an awful lot of brain power to examining. I can see the appeal, although if I were ever to consider participating in it I would want at least a few tasty dinners out of it.

 

It has made me wonder about the ethical/moral dimensions of conservation policies. Like do we have a collective responsibility to leave the earth as close to how we found it for future generations to enjoy? Or is it an inevitable consequence of the march of human progress that ecosystems should be exploited to human need. It's all very well to sit comfortably in the west and bemoan the endangered status of the tiger, gorilla etc, but people in those regions have a right to provide for themselves and their families.

 

Any thoughts?

[PatrickC]

I think there is an interesting debate to be had about controlled hunting conserving species into the future.

 

However, as the Cecil saga shows us. It's not really about lions, tigers or wildlife really. It's about spewing hatred onto random unknown people. Hatred more than likely that was born out of unprocessed childhood trauma.

[Wuzzums]

In a free-market species will be preserved either by donation or by hunting itself. If hunters want to kill lions then there's profit to be made from breeding lions for sport. If people care about lions there's profit to be made from taking care of lions.

 

This is not a hypothetical because it's exactly what happens in Africa. Can you guess which of the two, hunters or lion enthusiasts, are doing a lot more to preserve the species? It's the hunters. A lion costs about 200 000 $ to hunt/kill as far as I know. And these hunters don't just want to kill any lion, they want the strongest, healthiest, biggest lion possible. So it's an added incentive for the breeders to take care of these bred lions as good as possible (maybe offer them better conditions in the habitat than in the wild).

 

It's like the chicken population. Once we found out they're delicious their numbers increased exponentially.

 

Louis Theroux has a great documentary on this.

www.youtube.com/watch?v=40W_hc_q8XU

 

Honestly, I fucking love how the free market solves everything. It's the hero we need but not the hero we want.

[MrNlul77]

My thought is you need to devote an awful lot more of your brain power, to examining hunting.

 

You say you can see the appeal of hunting?, in your opinion what is the appeal of Hunting??

 

IMO, with regards to conserving the planet/environment, we don't have a responsibility to do anything, we are "Free" to do whatever we want, We make are choices based on what we feel to be right.

 

Morals pertain to enforceable human behaviour.

 

Exploitation is the use of "force", and is IMO not inevitable.

 

In saying people have a "right" to provide for their families, how will that right be enforced and what extent of force can be used.

 

If they do need to kill endangered species, to provide for their families it's a result of tyrants, war lords and politicians taking away their rights and abilities to provide in other ways.

 

The people who bemoan about endangered species, while not bringing up the real issue of the evil people who create the conditions that don't allow people to thrive, and as a result are being forced(though people could choose to move away) to kill such animals to provide for their families, are immoral people and through their actions/ignorance support the evil in the world.

 

I may not of answered your question, or been of any help, that is just my thoughts.

[shirgall]

His guides were dishonest and he should have vetted them better, first of all. He thought he was paying for the appropriate permits and being led to a hunt for legal targets. Lots of force of state going on here.

 

Conservation works well for handling endangered species. Ducks Unlimited is a great example. Another example is the availability of the "extinct" European Aurochs domesticated as the Texas Longhorn.

 

With animals that migrate, it's harder to handle conservation without a state, but it's not impossible.

[J-William]

Just remember Cecil the next time you are talking to anyone who says "how will endangered species be protected without a government?"

I can't imagine that anyone who doesn't want to be an international pariah will do anything like that ever again.

[Torero]

I would say that environmental protection, or the care for endangered species is not at all contradicting a libertarian view.

 

What is a trap or false dichotomy, set by statists, is that they portray the current situation as "governments do their utmost best to protect these animals [so in a stateless society there would be nobody to protect these species and they would get extinct by the millions]". That is obviously not the case; the current picture is painted with false colours and the picture of the future is a strawman. For an excellent documentary about this topic, where you see the active involvement of statists in failure to protect a beautiful and closely related endangered species, I recommend watching Virunga (2014).

 

 

Care for animals, and subsequent "arranging animal societies" is different from forcing humans into arrangements and society building (brrrr). Animals do not have the same powers, consciousness and moral as humans and thus cannot fall in the same category.

 

What if it would be possible to just privately buy pieces of land and breed endangered species? That's now blocked by governments/states/organisations wanting to maintain the status quo.

 

Preventing animals to go extinct is a moral, wise position (so would follow from an increase in philosophical thinking), not a call for the need of governments (which is the destruction of philosophy).

[MagnumPI]

I keep seeing these Chris Kyle VS THe Dentist memes on Facebook that put across a pretty interesting point. Soemthing like hunts and kills 160 humans = hero. Hunts and kills 1 lion=crucified. Just doesn't really matter in the grand scheme of things. If you want to save big cats, donate your money and time to a sanctuary. There are a good number of them.

 

Otherwise, shut the fuck up and respect others' private property, or go after the government who failed to protect what it claims it was taking(literally, taking) money to protect.

As for the dentist, well, odds are he's an asshole and not somebody I'd ever want to associate with personally. But if he goes out of business and whatnot, I hope the hypocrites who are only now upset remember to hand their next dentist a written affadavit to be notarized before they accept his services stating he's not a wild game hunter(or 'homophobe' or watches tranny porn or what the fuck ever the new sensation these morons want to pretend to be pissed about happens to be that week).

[WasatchMan]

Just another chance for the anti-humans of the world to scream at humanity. Naughty, naughty humans.

[Troubador]

Meh I think the wise things to value are varied and diverse ecosystems. It's all too easy to get uneducated masses riled up cos something we identify as aesthetically pleasing to the eye is endangered. Getting them to get equally up in arms over less photogenic species is like getting someone to ice skate uphill in roller skates.

 

Most conservationists have cottoned onto this fact and will try to identify an "ambassador" species like a lion, tiger or panda. Get everyone to give damn about that species and thus attempt to preserve their whole environment.

 

Sometimes the knee-jerk emotional response backfired though. I remember at one point back in the 90's people got incensed at native populations clubbing baby seals. Which got banned, and then had the net effect of decimating local fish populations, as the seal population surged which in turn hurt local fisherman who relied on fishing.

 

As to what appeal I can see in hunting? Time spent in the great outdoors, and developing a greater understanding of nature would be my top picks. However hiring other people to do the tracking and luring sounds like the hunting equivilant of hiring several burly men to hold down Chuck Norris pummeling him into unconsciousness and boasting how you took him down.

[cab21]

so i think one thing to look at, is if this was a private game reserve, would this lion have been sold for a trophy hunt at this time?

the lion was bringing in money from research and tourism, i think the reports say millions, so 50k would be pennies on the dollar.

the lion had cubs that he was protecting, so it's not like the case of the rhino's that are auctioned off when they no longer breed and become a danger to other younger rhinos.

i think i read reports of hunting bringing in a fraction of what tourism brings in, but a private game manager would be able to tell what makes more financial sense for the individuals on the game reserve.

[Brentb]

It mostly shows that Americans have their collective heads up their asses. 

 

A continent of miserable, destitute, and disease ridden people and Americans are upset that an animal was killed in their midst. I haven't been able to figure out why it matters at all that this lion was killed.

[russoft]

Zimbabwe is so unbelievably corrupt. The news coverage was about as clear as mud. I bet this hunter's guides didn't bribe the right official, or Robert Mugabe didn't get his feet kissed enough by the American hunter.

 

 

All joking aside, while I have no particular love for hunting big cats, I see the value of it. Big game hunters have lots of dough to spend and that money goes a long way towards animal conservation. If the business of wild animals are profitable, they will be protected by private interests. This is important, especially in Africa where governments are hopelessly corrupt and do a poor job of conservation.

 

I love animals and want to see them protected. I love Africa and I want to see it thrive. The free market is the best way to do this. I also love shooting things and eating meat. The free market will gives me these things too.

[Troubador]

Freemarkets are governed by efficiancy and viability, if something costs more than you can get out of it you're out of luck. The best example of this is the worlds oceans, the cost of operating in that environment is astronomical, so from a strictly profit based perspective it doesn't work. Ask any marine biologist.

 

Another interesting component is the majority of the worlds oceans are international waters and thus stateless, states come up against equally prohibitive costs, hence why managing immigrants trying to cross the Mediterranean is proving such a problem as well as Somali pirates for example. This of course doesn't stop states trying to control, but in practice they realistically can't.

 

A free market would probably see the end of Wales, sharks and plenty of other marine life. I don't think the free market is quite the magic wand you think it is in this instance. I'm not saying states are either as they quite demonstrably aren't, I believe additional thought needs to go into the problem. Assuming you accept that is even a problem in the first place, and I'm sure to plenty of people it simply won't be.

[russoft]

Part of wildlife management means culling. Game parks create environments conducive to thriving animal populations (usually as simple as developing the water reservoirs in the area) and those populations explode. A good example is elephants. Why would anyone shoot an elephant? If you pack too many elephants into a small enough area, they eat and destroy vegetation and trees faster than they can grow back. All animals suffer from a lack of food, and massive numbers of animals starve. An alternative is to sell a hunting permit to allow a hunter to come onto the game park and shoot an elephant. How horrible to kill such a majestic animal. Except it's controlling the population and all animals benefit because the burden on the environment is lessened.

 

By the way, elephants are terribly destructive. We had two elephants come onto our land in Mozambique. They raided the local people's villages and destroyed their fields of maize. They all banded together and demanded the local government to solve the problem. The local government brought in a hunter to kill one of the elephants while the other ran off. Because there was no one who had the resources to fence the area off, they got killed. If only some capitalist pig had been around to take advantage of the situation, maybe we'd have elephant herds roaming around instead of NOTHING.

 

I realize I'm talking about elephants rather than lion, but I think the principal is the same. If you can sell a big game hunt for $50,000, that goes a long way towards fencing land, hiring guards, and developing the land to foster wild animals.

 

Since you brought up oceans (I certainly didn't): The problem with the ocean is that no one is allowed to take ownership of it. It's a communal area so the incentive to protect it doesn't exist. Believe me, I worry about the extinction of sharks and other species.  We used to watch chinese ships off the Mozambique coast that would fin sharks and dump them back into the water. The government didn't have the resources at that time to protect the ocean, so it was abused by foreigners. The local people hack away at coral reefs to find food. If they saw the tangible benefit of tourism, they'd have an incentive to protect it. But the government makes doing business so incredibly hard, and scares off tourists via corrupt police and border officials, draconian visitor visas, etc. Of course the impoverished, starving locals will continue to destroy the ecosystem. Not enough rich foreigners bringing tourism money into their communities to incentivize conservation.

[Alan C.]

I don't understand the entertainment value of killing animals, but it's disturbing that there seems to be greater outrage when somebody kills a lion (or giraffe), or abuses a dog, than there is when people's lives are ruined by the State. People lose their homes, businesses, life savings, and sometimes their lives.

[cab21]

selling the kill for 50K sounds bad if the keeping it alive was bringing in more than 50 k.

 

otherwise , sure you can sell your house for 50K, but a market value is going to be even better.

[Alan C.]

I read a bunch of news everyday, and I see gut-wrenching stories like this one on a regular basis, but public outrage is nowhere to be seen. People, and especially those in the news media, seem more concerned about animal abuse.

[shirgall]

http://mobile.nytimes.com/2015/08/05/opinion/in-zimbabwe-we-dont-cry-for-lions.html?referrer=&_r=0

 

 

...

 

Did Cecil live near your place in Zimbabwe?

 

Cecil who? I wondered. When I turned on the news and discovered that the messages were about a lion killed by an American dentist, the village boy inside me instinctively cheered: One lion fewer to menace families like mine.

 

My excitement was doused when I realized that the lion killer was being painted as the villain. I faced the starkest cultural contradiction I’d experienced during my five years studying in the United States.

 

Did all those Americans signing petitions understand that lions actually kill people? That all the talk about Cecil being “beloved” or a “local favorite” was media hype? Did Jimmy Kimmel choke up because Cecil was murdered or because he confused him with Simba from “The Lion King”?

 

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...

[russoft]

The article below highlights my frustration with this ridiculous controversy.

 

I grew up an hour from the Zimbabwe border. In 2000, Robert Mugabe began seizing farmlands. The economy tanked. Zimbabwe saw an almost unbelievable inflation rate in 2008 of 80 billion percent. The country has 90-95% unemployment. I know people personally who fled Zimbabwe. I watched as the largest denomination bill, 100, added a few more zeros before I left Africa in 2005.

 

This is the real tragedy of Zimbabwe, and yes, a real concern for wildlife and the environment in that country. Poor people care little for nature when fighting for mere survival. They chop down trees indiscriminantly for firewood, burn the bush so they can hunt more effectively, and kill any animal available for eating. They are also vulnerable to dangerous animals like hippos, crocodiles, lions, and elephants. This puts them in direct conflict with these animals. At that point, it's them or the animal. The animal usually loses.

 

Poverty is bad for the environment, whether it be flora or fauna.

 

http://www.pri.org/stories/2015-08-04/zimbabwe-has-lot-more-going-death-cecil

[regevdl]

I live in Israel and saw snippets about this situation via people's reaction on FB so I admit I really don't know anything other than a lion named Cecil is dead, killed by an American dentist.  Reading this thread has actually sparked my interest since it's full of some tongue in cheek humor but mostly intelligence analysis of the situation.  

 

I will say during this time, an evil man who believed he was religious and dressed up as a religious Jew went on a stabbing rampage at the Gay Pride parade in Jerusalem 3 weeks after he was released from a 10 year prison sentence from.....committing the same act prior.  :-/   Also the same week some evil teenagers who also believed they were religious and dressed as such burned down a home of a Palestinian family severely maiming the family and unfortunatly the infant died because of injuries of this crime.  

 

After that a Palestinian, not sure if dressed up like a religious person or not, was throwing hand made bombs at passing cars in Jerusalem injuring people.  

 

So while this was all going on, a woman I know was posting stuff about Cecil and I get really annoyed by that.  I love animals and really think conservation (which sometimes includes controlled hunting) is important but this over-correction reaction about a dead animal while people in our vacinity, regardless of where you are in the world, are being killed, hunted and maimed is really starting to gross me out.  

 

but of course, the over-reporting of Cecil and apparently this man is clearly used as a convenient distraction from other important things like terrorism, revenge terrorism, and whatever the US gvt wants to distract its citizens from etc

The article below highlights my frustration with this ridiculous controversy.

 

I grew up an hour from the Zimbabwe border. In 2000, Robert Mugabe began seizing farmlands. The economy tanked. Zimbabwe saw an almost unbelievable inflation rate in 2008 of 80 billion percent. The country has 90-95% unemployment. I know people personally who fled Zimbabwe. I watched as the largest denomination bill, 100, added a few more zeros before I left Africa in 2005.

 

This is the real tragedy of Zimbabwe, and yes, a real concern for wildlife and the environment in that country. Poor people care little for nature when fighting for mere survival. They chop down trees indiscriminantly for firewood, burn the bush so they can hunt more effectively, and kill any animal available for eating. They are also vulnerable to dangerous animals like hippos, crocodiles, lions, and elephants. This puts them in direct conflict with these animals. At that point, it's them or the animal. The animal usually loses.

 

Poverty is bad for the environment, whether it be flora or fauna.

 

http://www.pri.org/stories/2015-08-04/zimbabwe-has-lot-more-going-death-cecil

 russoft, thanks for sharing that article and your experience.  That is a very important aspect to have the cause/effect understanding.  People always focus on the aftermath and think they can solve that when really it's just  a symptom of a bigger problem that they realize they don't have the time or care for.  Much easier to look like a caring, noble human being carrying pitchforks to a dentist's office than actually discuss the disparities in African government.