Sounds outrageous, but makes sense.
1. The money will be used in the effort to preserve the population of black rhinos from the depredations of poachers (who are strongly motivated by the extremely high market value of rhino horns).
2. There will be expert selection of the animal to be killed, which will be one of the old males "who no longer contribute to the growth of the population and are in a lot of ways detrimental to the growth of the population because black rhinos are very aggressive and territorial." These mean but useless geezers "will kill younger, non-breeding bulls and have been known to kill calves and cows."
But, of course, the auction was protested, because it just feels so wrong to be able to buy a privilege to shooting an endangered beast. Perversely, what the protesters are protecting is their own privilege to feel however they intuitively feel, without the bother of studying and understanding the facts of the natural world.
January 12, 2014
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43 comments:
The "can't kill anything" people don't understand that dying is part if life and that few if any wild animals die of old age.
You don't need the selection, just the price.
Once it's pricey, people start growing them for sale and the population explodes.
Rather than killing them as nuisances.
That is also racist.
How about an auction to hunt Old White RINO's?
I wonder how much they could get at auction to hunt the poachers.
"There will be expert selection of the animal to be killed, which will be one of the old males "who no longer no longer contribute to the growth of the population and are in a lot of ways detrimental to the growth of the population"
sounds like Obamacare death panels.
@PB
That's what I thought when I saw the words "mean but useless geezers".
Its my ambition to one day be a mean, useless geezer, maybe even the foremost mean, useless geezer in what ever facility I wind up in.
"Perversely, what the protesters are protecting is their own privilege to feel however they intuitively feel, without the bother of studying and understand the facts of the natural world."
This sums up the modern environmental movement quite well. The environmentalists are long on protests, complaints and expensive regulations but they are sort on practical solutions.
Environmentalism has become an emotional ideology/religion rather than a reasoned belief system.
These protesters are so hung up on their so called principles that counters the net result what they are fighting for. This isn't the first time this happens. In fact this nutty line of thought is codified by law in the Endangered Species Act. For example:
"Priscilla Feral, head of the animal rights group Friends of Animals, says she would rather see the oryx go completely extinct (not "no more left in the wild" extinct, like we mentioned earlier, but "utterly wiped from the face of the planet" extinct, like the dinosaurs) than be kept alive on hunting ranches simply to be killed for sport. She totally supports the ranchers exterminating all of their oryxes in the wake of the newly enforced regulations, because she believes it's a better fate for the animals. The oryxes themselves would probably disagree."
Source
illuminati, they are long, looooooooooong, on impractical solutions. But you knew that, as does everyone here, even the trolls.
Meh, trophy hunting is killing for the sake of killing, for ego gratification, for bragging rights.
No animal can ever compete with a human who has a high power rifle or handgun.
Might as well shoot fish in a barrel. Or club baby seals. At least the baby seal clubbers are doing it in order to extract a resource.
Hunting is good. Shooting animals for the hell of it is not good.
When someone bags a rhino armed with nothing but a knife, I'll be impressed. Trophy hunters are the biggest losers on earth. You shot a zebra with a high powered rifle safely from a guide's truck. It's a fucking horse!
Soooooo....I'm guessing that a rhino horn fetches about $350,000 on the black market. That's a fairly powerful incentive for African poachers.
I wonder how much they could get at auction to hunt the poachers.
In Botswana, we saw military convoys that followed rhinos around and had shoot to kill authorization against poachers. So at least in Botswana you could be paid to do it.
For those like Jimmy & garage who think it so easy to hunt big game in the bush in Africa I suggest you read the 50's memoir of one of the last African professional "Big Game hunters entitled "Hunter" by John A. Hunter who was at one time also Head of the Tanganyika Nat. Park system. Of particular interest is his depiction of the dangers inherent in hunting bands of rogue marauding rhinos..
While I'm not critical of the operation or with hunting, I'm not sure hunting rhinos is very sporting. They have poor eyesight, aren't difficult to track or spot, don't flee when man's nearby, and they're not exactly the smartest species on the plains, either.
A bit like shooting an old truck, or something.
I wonder how much they could get at auction to hunt the poachers.
They'd probably pay half a mil to hunt animal rights activists.
Bob Boyd@9:42/
Are you sure you're not my long-lost blood brother? :)
Interestingly, in territory they're defending they defacate in the same spot repeatedly. Like they could be litter box trained.
@rehajm/
See my comment above you. A guy who did it for a living all his adult life sure didn't think it was any safe, easy task--go read his memoirs.."spine-tingling" is how the Amazon reviewer described his experiences..
("Hunter" was a Book-of-the-Month-Club selection in the 50s)
Death Panels for Rhinos - who knew it would come to this?
Cape buffalo, which aren't endangered in any way, are the most dangerous African big game to hunt.
Peter
I thought that one of the unintended consequences of Viagra would be that rhinos could live their lives out in peace without being hunted down for their horniness. But some ideas are just too seductive to ever be relinquished. Sort of like Head Start programs with liberals.
@virgil
"Go boil your ass, punk!" Waves cane.
Sorry. Practicing.
Noe this is impressive
Moses Lekalau, 35,a herdsman, was walking from a neighboring village in Maralal with his livestock when a lion pounced upon him. He managed to fend off the animal and used his bare hands and a spear to kill him following half hour duel. Link
Too bad about the hyenas.
A guy who did it for a living all his adult life sure didn't think it was any safe, easy task--go read his memoirs.."spine-tingling" is how the Amazon reviewer described his experiences..
I didn't suggest it was safe, just not exactly challenging. Based on my experience with them in the wild, and those experienced to living in their vicinity every day, you take a few reasonable precautions and risk of altercation is low. Hippos and cape buffalo are far more dangerous, and you can live them around, too.
@TosaGuy/
Yes, all the greenies who advocate "steady-state," "sustainable" environments--whether it be for humans in urban settings or for animals--overlook the fact that only the ruthless pruning of the aged, unfit and diseased keeps it all "steady-state." The movies Soylent Green
and Logan's Run are instruction manuals for the faceless bureaucrats who will be running Obamacare (and putting even Kafka in the shade) and the Regional planning commissions envisioned by HUD, who even now is installing the requisite regulations needed to "reorder" neighborhoods and our lives, overriding private-property rights without the slightest hesitation...
What is the significance of "Illuninati" vs. "Illuminati"?
A "high-powered rifle" by definition is any rifle using ammunition more powerful than .22 Long Rifle. Look it up in your Funk & Wagnall's.
It is something to be thought more about and discussed, how so much of the left's programs is powered by the urge to keep things as they are and stoutly refuse to accept that nature is always changing due to forces beyond our - or their -control.
You want to preserve an endangered species? Convince people it is a luxury food, and people will start raising it. Panda ranches anyone?
I can see whole foods now...
Organic Panda steak, at $20 a pound and Eagle breast at $15 a pound.....
Auctioned here in Texas! Buzz off, do-gooders.
To back up what Gahrie said (11:52am), James Fitzjames Stephen, now best known as Virginia Woolf's uncle, once wrote "If all the world were Jews, there would be no pigs at all".
In searching the web for that quotation, I found that the only on-line source is something I blogged myself ten years ago last Thursday. Read it if you dare.
James Fitzjames Stephen also wrote a terrific book trashing J. S. Mill's On Liberty. It's called Liberty, Equality, Fraternity, and he's against all three. Read it too if you dare. Amazon has a Kindle version for $0.99. Note: no S on the end of Stephen.
Gahrie (1:07pm):
Last month I just missed a chance to eat at a South African restaurant in Berlin that serves gnu, crocodile, zebra, and other exotic delicacies. Not rhino, or hippo, or elephant, or any kind of monkey, though.
My wife is South African and never ate those meats. On the other hand she does make a great monkey gland sauce.
"Monkey gland sauce"? That really sounds like some kind of totally non-culinary euphemism.
I'm guessing that hunting in Africa in the 50s was a bit more risky than a canned hunt in 2014, which is what this sounds like. I'm not horrified by hunting and grew up hunting deer from time to time, but from what I've read about this story, this sounds like hunting a slow-moving pickup truck. Not very sporting and if the person buying the license wants to protect rhinos, there are other ways of making donations to that cause.
I was in a gun shop in London and the gunsmith showed me what I thought was a shortish double barrelled shotgun. Hold this, he said, and handed me the weapon. Holy smokes it weighed a lot. Elephant gun, he said. How much? I asked. 200,000GBP. Wow, i would want to be able to kill more than a single elephant with a gun that expensive. Good for Rhino too, he said.
Jimmy said...
Meh, trophy hunting is killing for the sake of killing, for ego gratification, for bragging rights.
No animal can ever compete with a human who has a high power rifle or handgun.
Might as well shoot fish in a barrel. Or club baby seals. At least the baby seal clubbers are doing it in order to extract a resource.
Hunting is good. Shooting animals for the hell of it is not good.
Shooting this animal for the hell of it may just save it from extinction.
the money paid for a hunt goes through more local hands than the money paid to a poacher.
The money gained from clubbing baby seals is in many cases the only cash money the hunters will see that season.
The best way to insure the continued existence of a species is to show humans a way to profit from their continued existence.
garage mahal said...
When someone bags a rhino armed with nothing but a knife, I'll be impressed. Trophy hunters are the biggest losers on earth. You shot a zebra with a high powered rifle safely from a guide's truck. It's a fucking horse!
It's not about you.
Hagar said...
That is also racist.
How about an auction to hunt Old White RINO's?
And that's some funny chit right there!
It is silly of the protesters to protest, but that's what protesters do. It seems to make them feel good. (Remember Palin and Cruz at those silly protests in D.C. last October? Talk about self-satisfied!)
That doesn't mean that the guy who paid $350K for the privilege of dispatching the most decrepit black rhino in all Namibia isn't due a healthy dose of derision.
I can see it now: The great, doddering beast, drooling in the the late stages of rhino Altzheimer's, is prodded to the execution site, where he is tethered to a tree. Then, Namibian wildlife officials spritz him down with a few of those sedative darts like the ones Marlon Perkins used so effectively in "Wild Kingdom." When the rhino is sufficiently gooned up, the Great Hunter emerges from the cover of the bush and smothers the animal with a pillow.
I hope the triumph of the Conquering Sportsman (a tall, square-jawed Texan from central casting, no doubt) will be documented by a competent filmmaker. I think Werner Herzog could do the scene justice.
The money goes to a good cause, and culling the herd makes sense as wildlife management. But the guy who paid to do it is one sick fuck.
bbkingfish sez:
I hope the triumph of the Conquering Sportsman (a tall, square-jawed Texan from central casting, no doubt) will be documented by a competent filmmaker. I think Werner Herzog could do the scene justice.
I'm thinking GW Bush directed by Leni Riefenstahl
I have a friend who went on animal safari in Africa about five years ago. The culmination of the hunting was a giraffe, much like this rhino hunt. The guides knew the exact giraffe they were going to shoot for exactly the same reasons: it was too decrepit to fuck its harem, but sprightly enough to keep the younger ones from taking over.
Yeah, there's a truck involved. They use it to search for the animal because despite what you read upthread, these are not tame animals led outside their pen at the zoo. They wander around as they are want to do and walking over the hundred or so acres looking for it is a PITA.
Once they found it, he shot it. Not from the truck, you get out and stand on firm ground instead of dampened springs. Interestingly, he did so with a huge scoped revolver that the locals didn't believe could dispatch the giraffe. They had two guides with rifles as backup in case he merely wounded it. (They weren't necessary. It was a big ass revolver and a spine shot). I saw the video. That giraffe just... turned off.
Afterwards, the guides dressed it, cooked it and they all ate it. About a year later, he received a delivery from the taxidermy in a big ass box.
There's more to this than just getting a decoration for the den.
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