Xanda, son of Cecil the lion, killed by trophy hunters in Zimbabwe

Chalky

hywelg said:

OK @snap and @Dominic, so you ban all bounty hunting. Now you have two problems.

The locals who need to protect themselves and their livestock will kill predatory big cats themselves in an uncontrollable (on a national scale) way. Much of the demand for culling comes from locals.

The loss of income will reduce the money to pay for game wardens to oversee the conservation of the species. 

On the upside we in our insulated western idyll all feel much better about it all. 

As ever there's more to a story than initially meets the eye, and in this case, as in the case of Cecil, the people promoting the story have an agenda. 

Wisdom sir.

The hunting of lions is horrible.

But to those on here expressing disgust, go and talk to the locals who live there.  See what they have to deal with. How much trouble they put up with.

From the lions? Oh no, they just shoot them.

From the bleeding-heart white liberals who come into your town and tell you how to live your life, how you should put your family, livestock, and livelihood in danger, and how YOU should lose sleep with worry about all this so that those bleeding-heart white liberals can get on the plane back to suburbia and sleep easy knowing how virtuous they are to have saved the lions.

hywelg

Chalky said:

The hunting of lions is horrible.

Only if you dont live next door to one who wants to eat you, your family and your pets or livestock.

Oh and hunting is what lions do. How about a FB page for the Impala??? Nobody ever gets worked up about them.

Snap

hywelg said:

OK @snap and @Dominic, so you ban all bounty hunting. Now you have two problems.

The locals who need to protect themselves and their livestock will kill predatory big cats themselves in an uncontrollable (on a national scale) way. Much of the demand for culling comes from locals.

The loss of income will reduce the money to pay for game wardens to oversee the conservation of the species. 

On the upside we in our insulated western idyll all feel much better about it all. 

As ever there's more to a story than initially meets the eye, and in this case, as in the case of Cecil, the people promoting the story have an agenda. 

I know its not black and white, but,,,,you can make similar defences for all manner of disgusting behaviour. for example, the poor tribes people who murder orang utans, babies and adults, in order to sell the body parts on - because they are destitute.

The killing of tigers to supply the Chinese medicine market, the killers being poor, desperate for money.

The killing of whales by Japan, in pursuit of "science"

Child labour, exploitation of workers etc.

I;'m not a naiive child FFS, but..

Not disputing the double edged nature of all these things: however, we should be striving to stop it.

@Chalky, I'm not a bleeding heart liberal either, not having that.

If somthing is morally wrong, its wrong. What we should be doing is trying to find ways to address it and improve situations, not allowing wankers to travel to countries and kill wonderful animals for a hobby.

Question: do you think its right to go and shoot game for fun? Never mind any other factor, is it a good thing to be able to tool up and blow killing holes in wild animals, for no other purpose than to enjoy the kill?

If the answer is yes, end of discussion.

If the answer is no, then the next questions should be what needs to happen to stop it, and what is the impact and how is that impact managed?

Western idyll? My fat arse. The majority of people coming to kill these animals are rich westerners. They are the true wankers in all this. Game hunting is a western phenomena.

menamestom

Chalky said:

 

From the bleeding-heart white liberals who come into your town and tell you how to live your life, how you should put your family, livestock, and livelihood in danger, and how YOU should lose sleep with worry about all this so that those bleeding-heart white liberals can get on the plane back to suburbia and sleep easy knowing how virtuous they are to have saved the lions.

To dismiss everybody who thinks this wrong as 'bleeding-heart white liberals' makes you as wrong as the bleeding-heart white liberals!

From the BBC:-

At the time it was reported that the lion had been shot with a bow and arrow and did not die immediately. He was followed for more than 40 hours before being shot with a rifle.

Mr Palmer was believed to have paid $50,000 (£32,000) to hunt a lion in Zimbabwe's largest game reserve.

Perhaps it is a necessity to cull the animals, but it should be done in a humane way by an expert and it should not be used as a stunt by westerners to prove how manly they are.

I've no issue with animals needing to be managed, but it must be done another way and whilst the moral outage gets boring, perhaps it at least highlights the issue so that other funding can be made available so that one of the most magnificent animals isn't reduced to a dentists trophy (FFS, isn't a PRS enough!). 

Furthermore, I'm not sure all of these kills are approved animal culls, corruption is often involved and animals are killed that shouldn't be.  Without the demand from western idiots, the market would not be available to the people facilitating the kills so to that end publicising it may be of some use, even if as you point out there may be legitimate reasons to kill some animals.

menamestom

Snap said:

 

@Chalky, I'm not a bleeding heart liberal either, not having that.

Classic modern day internet false dichotomy, pity @chalky added some insight from a different perspective then ruined it all by dismissing anybody who didn't agree with his conclusion as bleeding heart liberals.   Does every argument nowadays have to be reduced to 2 assumed political standpoints?

hywelg

Snap said:

If somthing is morally wrong, its wrong.

But surely you're not going to argue that morals are fixed, globally accepted standards of behaviour are you?. Morals are relative, and you (us) living in the West should not be allowed to fuck with the morals of other societies who live in very different circumstances. We should be allowed to help them develop their economies and living standards and then their morals might well develop to match ours, but its not our right to be deterministic about it. In fact it might very well be that your attitude is why so many parts of the world seem to hate the west (fundamentalist Islamic areas of the world for example)

Morals are a moveable target. Only 70 years ago it was common practise of birth control to allow a newborn to die and my wifes grandmother (having had 5 or so) was asked by the midwife if she'd be keeping this one!.

And you also have the very dubious morals of fundamentalist religious societies who think nothing of killing people for exercising free speech.

So I suggest you temper your moralistic tone with a little humility. We dont run the world.....

hywelg

menamestom said:

 Without the demand from western idiots, the market would not be available to the people facilitating the kills so to that end publicising it may be of some use, even if as you point out there may be legitimate reasons to kill some animals.

Maybe you need to direct some of your ire towards those who pay to go stag hunting in the UK?

Maybe its because they're not so cuddly and catlike as lions, and no-one gives them nice soft names like Cecil.

menamestom

hywelg said:

menamestom said:

 Without the demand from western idiots, the market would not be available to the people facilitating the kills so to that end publicising it may be of some use, even if as you point out there may be legitimate reasons to kill some animals.

Maybe you need to direct some of your ire towards those who pay to go stag hunting in the UK?

Maybe its because they're not so cuddly and catlike as lions, and no-one gives them nice soft names like Cecil.

How do you know I don't?  Why try and misrepresent me as somebody who only cares about Lions when you have no way of knowing what my position is on other subjects.

Like Chalky you're making wild assumptions and reducing the argument down into assuming anybody who doesn't like what has been posted as a certain type of person.

Since you ask, I don't give a fuck if the animal is catlike or cuddly.  I like sharks, scorpions, crocodiles, ants as well. 

Dominic

Lots of good and interesting points
I suspect there is a strong argument for the fact that Lion populations are a hazard to humans and Livestock in fringe areas and populations need to be culled/controlled lawfully and with some regulation at least.
I guess it's a sad fact of 21st century Human Evolution that we need to sanitise our environments to support Human Societies needs -probably easy to say when we are busy gassing furry little badgers and the most dangerous wild animal in our environment is Basil Brush.
The unpalatable element is the Glory of the Kill - big game trophies for small- dicked people . The same goes for Foxhunting -the gore and glory ,pomp and pageantry makes it unpleasant ,not least the poor creatures being torn limb from limb by a pack of hounds .
I question the heart and soul of the person who actually sights a beautiful wild creature, aligns a sight and has the gumption to squeeze a trigger but in a world where snipers would do that to 4 year old children on the streets of Mosul it pales into relative obscurity.
We are strange creatures us Humans.

menamestom

hywelg said:

Snap said:

If somthing is morally wrong, its wrong.

Morals are relative, and you (us) living in the West should not be allowed to fuck with the morals of other societies who live in very different circumstances.

I agree with this, morals are relative to the society which they are in.  There is no absolute.  

What makes this different, from the moral outage standpoint I think is that the people doing the shooting, are westerners and subject to the moral code of their own countries and that is by what they should be judged.

But I'm not full of moral outrage myself, that would be a waste of energy.  I'm not interested in judging the people in Zimbabwe on how they run things.  But the guy who goes from the UK to Africa to shoot a Lion is a wanker, no doubt about that.

Chalky

@menamestom - I am the type of person who carefully catches wasps and flies in my house and releases them safely outside. I abhor hunting and the thought of someone delighting in it makes me think that they must be partly insane.

But! Talking to folks in South Africa, who live there, who are living a life without the vast majority of comfort and safeguards that I enjoy, made me realise that in many of my opinions on animal protection, on what should and should not be done, I was being a bleeding-heart white liberal!

There is a vast amount of complexity in this topic that far exceeds your simplistic moral stance. Get out there and talk to folks who live there. Otherwise your understanding of the whole situation, including the need to attract the 'wankers' for their money, is fatally flawed.

menamestom

Chalky said:

@menamestom - I am the type of person who carefully catches wasps and flies in my house and releases them safely outside. I abhor hunting and the thought of someone delighting in it makes me think that they must be partly insane.

But! Talking to folks in South Africa, who live there, who are living a life without the vast majority of comfort and safeguards that I enjoy, made me realise that in many of my opinions on animal protection, on what should and should not be done, I was being a bleeding-heart white liberal!

There is a vast amount of complexity in this topic that far exceeds your simplistic moral stance. Get out there and talk to folks who live there. Otherwise your understanding of the whole situation, including the need to attract the 'wankers' for their money, is fatally flawed.

I agree with your standpoint to some extent.  You're just fundamentally wrong about whatever moral stance you think I have and you are incorrectly assuming my position.  I know it's a complex issue, I understand that.  But yes, talking to folks who see it first hand would never be a bad thing, I have a mate from Zimbabwe, I'll see what he says.

Chalky

At least we are closer in our thinking @menamestom ;

Its like the old morality gag:
Lady, will you sleep with me for a million dollars?
Well, Sir, I'll have to think about that....
Lady, would you sleep with me for ten dollars?
Now look! Just what sort of girl do you think I am?!
Oh I think we both know what sort of girl you are. We're just negotiating the price!

So if someone offered you £10 to sit in your garden shooting the local crows, would you accept the free money? And what if they offered £10,000? Or a million?

When the locals income is tiny and unreliable, even a small cut of money can be huge to those folks.  And the lions to them are as plentiful and as important as crows are to us.

As another old saying goes "Morality is nice for those who can afford it".