Reply to comment in post #35

msman

Don't you think what has been done in the past has not worked?



Well , therein lies part of the problem you see..

Hunters have been hunting these animals for a couple of hundred years , and they haven't done a very good job of helping save anything.
Even since the early 70's ,
when the problem was so well known , that elephants for example , were actually listed on CITIES by 1977.
And even then , with all the warning bells , and official recognition and acceptance of the problem ,

Between 1979 and 1988 ,

the numbers still fell by 50%.

and have continued at a similar rate , overall , to this day..

So , what happened ?
, were the great white hunters all asleep for the last
50 years.

If you know anything about farming , you'd know that loosing 50% of your stock when things are booming and your up to high stock levels , is not a major.
However , when things are bad , and you have already lost a big percentage , the loss of another 50 can be catastrophic.
To then carry on loosing stock becomes terminal.
You can not breed replacements as fast as they're dying.

That is where some populations are at now ,
and even worse ,
past that.

The hunters have failed miserably.

It is so serious now ,
we can't afford to experiment to see if they can up their game.

It is so serious that there are not enough in some populations to even run the experiment.

As I stated before ,
we have plenty of spare humans ,
Millions of them ,
but
we don't have any spare wild animals

and in the endangered or threatened , or at risk ,
we don't even have healthy population numbers.

And all of that , is only part of the problem ,
then you have to take into account ,
human dishonesty ,
human greed ,
arrogance ,
corruption ,
ignorance ,
political instability ,
corruption ,
greed ,
the unknown future ,
of droughts , floods , diseases , fertility , and such , on dramatically inadequate populations.

Just one of those , next year , could be the end , for a population that is already at serious risk ,

and you may have just shot the ones

who would have been survivors.

 

Hunting has changed quite a bit in the last few years. Fewer people are subsistence hunters. Poachers are kept in check better than in the past. Here in the U.S. land for hunting has become scarce. Equipment for hunting has become expensive. Hunters have had to change. Where people used to hunt freely there is no longer land to hunt on.
Hunters now form clubs where they buy or lease areas to hunt. They manage the game so there will be more animals and better quality animals to hunt. This has worked out great for both the hunters and the animals. Animals are given a safe place to live and multiply. Hunters are able to kill larger and more healthy animals.

In foreign countries it has been a slower road. Game farming has been slower to take hold. It will work there in the same way it does here in the U.S. How large an animal or how small an animal is has nothing to do with it. Hunters want to be able to hunt animals. They have found out that the only way they can keep on doing that is to manage the wild animals in such a way that they continue to be more and more animals to hunt. No hunter wants to kill all of the animals then have nothing to hunt. They are willing to spend a lot of money to keep what animals we have and to work to increase their numbers.

 

So, where Shooter lives we have deer.
Lots of deer; the last census puts the herd at 40+.
The thing is, this isn't out in the country.
It's a rural area, part of one of the largest cities in Colorado.

Shooter went to mow his front lawn a few months ago, and discovered a couple of deer lazing about on his lawn.
When he started his lawn mower, the deer were not moved.
Really. They just lay there and acted a bit offended.
As if Shooter was bothering their lounging, and should shut off the noisy thingy and leave them alone.

Anyway, recently the council has started discussing allowing legal hunting of the deer.
Cause, you know, they're reaching the point that the neighborhood can't support such a large herd.

As one would expect, the battle lines are being drawn.
One camp is frothing that Bambi and her brood should be left alone, cause, you know, they were here first.
The other camp is saying it's humane to quickly kill a deer rather than let it starve, and "yummy! Venison".
Shooter suggested, if we're going to allow hunting in the neighborhood, perhaps we ought to restrict it to bow hunting, cause, you know, he really would be upset if a 30.06 round came sailing through his front window. He'd be upset if an arrow came through as well, but you know the point he was making.

The save Bambi crowd booed him.
The Venison! crowed booed him.
So fuck em all.
Let them eat cake, Shooter says.

 

Yeah , deer easily become more or less domesticated quite quickly.
When we were researching the possibility of farming them in the 60's , there were several farms where they layed around the homestead area , just like sheep , unbothered by human activity.

(we weren't allowed in the end ,
due to being outside their feral range ,
and them being pests in this country)

We also tried to get a few bison , but not allowed because they were introduced . only allowed in a zoo.
The zoo had a small herd and not enough room. We had 5,000 acre , 2000 perfect for bison , remote and a very secure perimeter. But no way in those days.

 

That should be even more reason to look at farming wild animals in places like Africa. We know for sure what they have been doing in the past will not work.
Deer are a lot larger than chickens. I can remember years ago people thought the same about deer and elk farming.

Elephants, rhino, and hippo are still being killed at a faster rate than they can multiply. If you can remove one of the major killers of those animals you are will be on the right track. Land owners are a major killer of such animals. They kill them because they eat up crops and grazing domestic animals could use. While these animals do not prey on domestic animals some others do. Land owners also encourage poachers to hunt on their land. There are many large tracts of land bordering preserves where animals are killed for crossing an imaginary line.

Making it where the landowners can make more money off the wild animals than they do domestic animals will encourage the land owners to protect the wild animals. It will also make the land owners want to get rid of the poachers so they can make even more money on the wild animals.

 

For those Americans who care about the future of elephants on the African continent, the decision to allow the importation of elephant trophies from Zimbabwe and Zambia by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (FWS) is the right one. Although the controversy surrounding this decision has clouded the truth and it may seem counterintuitive to some, allowing these imports is the very best thing we can do to save elephants.



Africa is an amazing place, and all those who visit the continent come away truly inspired by its endless beauty, its diverse people, and the remarkable wildlife that inhabit the landscape. For more than a century, Americans have traveled on safari to witness Africa’s wonders, including the apex of African wildlife, the elephants.



In some areas of the continent, however, the African elephant is in trouble. Driven largely by China’s illicit ivory trade, illegal poaching has decimated the population in some countries, especially those where well-regulated hunting has not been embraced. In other countries, where hunting has provided the incentive for protecting the herd, the population is healthy.

In Zimbabwe and Zambia, for example, government wildlife biologists have determined that hunting is a necessary component of their overall management plan, and have successfully implemented such programs to maintain a healthy population.

 

I've been to Africa several times and I never even saw one fucking monkey. They burn down every tree.
We hired guards to guard our camps, and the fucking guards went out at night and pillaged the local villages.
So we took away their guns and gave them 2X4's notched out for their hands. Chad and Niger are not nice places.
The beautiful places you see on TV are game reserves and private ranches. I never saw those places.
I saw people living in mud huts, no electricity, and always had their hands out begging for food.
I saw the women carrying large loads of wood on their head headed back to the village. The men just squatted
on the dirt telling stories and drawing in the dirt with sticks. The women planted the crops, the men did nothing.

Africans suck at conservation. If left alone, there will be no elephants one day.