Wayne Bisbee is founder of Bisbee’s Fish and Wildlife Conservation Fund, a nonprofit organization that promotes conservation programs through science, education and technology. The opinions expressed in this commentary are solely those of the author.
(CNN)The recent illegal killing of Cecil the lion in Zimbabwe has understandably generated passionate and emotional responses from around the world.
I agree with the common sentiment that the circumstances around Cecil’s death are abhorrent and those responsible should be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law. I also think it’s unfortunate that legitimate hunters are given a public black eye by this case.
Let’s face it, we all feel strongly about this issue, whether we’re animal activists, conservationists, or hunters. Many of us have the same basic goal: to ensure that endangered species are here for generations to come.
That’s why I advocate conservation through commerce, which are controlled and high-dollar hunts whose proceeds benefit animal conservation. This is one of numerous legal, logical and effective tools to humanely manage resources, raise awareness of endangered animals, and help fund solutions.
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Yes, I am an avid hunter. I enjoy the thrill and challenge of stalking an animal and providing a more natural, healthier meat protein source to my family than what is available from the commercial food industry.
Today, most hunters see the activity as sport. But hunting has been around as long as man and it’s not likely to go away any time soon. Billions of the world’s human population eat animal meat for protein, and this is not going to change. So the reality is that somewhere, somehow, millions of animals are killed every day to sustain human life.
Does that mean I hate animals? Absolutely not. I love wildlife and I’m not alone among hunters. In a study published in the March 2015 issue of The Journal of Wildlife Management, researchers from Clemson University and Cornell University found that “wildlife recreationists — both hunters and birdwatchers — were 4 to 5 times more likely than non-recreationists to engage in conservation behaviors, which included a suite of activities such as donating to support local conservation efforts, enhancing wildlife habitat on public lands, advocating for wildlife recreation, and participating in local environmental groups.”
Hunters are more likely than non-hunters to put our money and time where our mouths are. It makes sense when you think about it. Hunters have a vested interest in keeping exotic and endangered animals from going extinct.
It’s about resource management
All animals, from wolves to rhinos to humans, are hierarchical. In the animal kingdom there are alpha males who try to eliminate competition. An older member of a herd often isn’t ready to step aside just because he can no longer perform his reproductive duties.
Older, post-breeding males are also very often aggressive and interfere with the proliferation of the rest of the herd, especially in the rhino species. That’s why a legitimate trophy hunt to benefit conservation can remove a problem animal from a herd. …
No one thinks that putting a suffering dog to sleep is inhumane. The same logic applies to hunting …
[WTF? Does that mean shooting an animal with an arrow and pursuing it for 40 long hours before killing it is considered “humane” for hunters? I’ve heard enough. If you want to read more of this bullshit article, it continues here]: http://www.cnn.com/2015/08/11/opinions/bisbee-legal-hunting/index.html
Exposing the Big Game 
Yes.. I call bullishit, too. And the money spent by trophy hunters goes directly into the pockets of the guides and landowners, not conservation groups. So he gets a thrill out of hunting and killing? Sicko…
“Older, post-breeding males are also very often aggressive and interfere with the proliferation of the rest of the herd, especially in the rhino species. That’s why a legitimate trophy hunt to benefit conservation can remove a problem animal from a herd.” (from the article)
Let’s insert the word HUMAN where it says rhino and then allow us to cull the violent, older, male herd of hunters. (Just a suggestion). It’s best for the human population and management.
Good suggestion
Reblogged this on Wolf Is My Soul.
Geez Louise, one of those guys that just loves wildlife to death.
You can tell where they’re going: “I understand the emotion that Cecil’s death aroused, but . . . ” ‘I’m also upset about the way Cecil died, but . . . ” “I realize laws were probably probably broken, but . . . ” “The lion was a favorite in Zimbabwe, but . . . ” “Cecil’s suffering was really unfortunate, but . . . ”
BUT the gist of it is, we (the ones who object to trophy hunting, all hunting, what happened to a “mere” animal are wrong. Then the writers proceed to set us right about how hunting is necessary, babies are being killed, poor people are being ignored in the interest of a lion. And besides Cecil was past his prime at age 13
Well most of the hunters are past their prime too and pretty pathetic specimens compared to the animals they kill. People have a right to their causes, and personally I resent having human rights activists assume they have a right to impose a hierarchy of just causes with animals at the bottom. And I will never buy the claptrap that hunters are looking out for the wildlife they love every time they load up.
Kill to save! What a positively novel approach to justify murder! Not. The same tired bullshit peddled by yet another twisted fuck..
“Hunters are more likely than non-hunters to put our money and time where our mouths are. It makes sense when you think about it. Bullshit! What really annoys me is this B.S. the hunters are giving the public how they all love animals. I guess they love animals because the animals give them the “thrill and challenge of stalking” and killing. That is one pathetic excuse and the other good one is when they compare hunting with playing gold. Golf, really! For them killing animals for fun and trophy is equal to playing gold! What a crock of ****.
The only truth this Mr. Neanderthal has said is that humans are killing millions of animals. That is the only truth they can offer to justify their need to kill.
Right
Yeah, I guess the bastard who diliberately shot my sister’s dog and presumably cut off her scalp for the bounty on a ‘feral dog’ loved her so very much.
(sarcasm)
No kidding!
A dead animal is a dead animal. Poached or hunted. Stop the bullshit. Play video games if you like to shoot and kill.
So the “Journal of Wildlife Management” commissioned a study supporting trophy hunting. What a surprise! This is the organization of professional trophy hunters working for state game departments.
He presents yet another rationalization for an abhorrent activity (recreational wildlife killing). Hunting is a primitive part of the past. Hunters like to portray themselves as conservationists. They are not. They create distortions in wildlife ecology interfering with tropic cascades. The so called trophy hunting conservationists fuels an act that should be discontinued.
Aldo Leopold, is considered a “pioneer” of wildlife management, a “science” he defined as “the art of making land produce sustained annual crops of wild game for recreational use” (Wikipedia, Wildlife Management). He was one of the early supporters of predator control for the benefit of increasing recreational killing opportunities for hunters in game herds (called game farming nowadays). He supposedly saw the wisdom of having a “few” wolves on the landscape after just opportunistically shooting one because it happened into his gunsight. He witnessed the light going out of the wolf’s eyes as she died and experienced remorse. He had been responsible for killing about 300 southwestern wolves in “predator control” (Game Management, Aldo Leopold, 1933). It is uncertain, I think, that he would have come around to trophic cascade wildlife ecology, rather than a minimalist, marginalizing view of predators, the hunter attitudes of game farming for maximum recreational killing. He was a hunter with hunter values, and rancher values, and mythology, veiled and open, an irrational bias against predators, seeing them as ravagers of ungulates rather than the healthy positive trophic cascading apex predator. After all, wildlife was to be “managed” as an annual recreational killing harvest and controlled as pests. So, Aldo Leopold was not really the conservationist he has been romanticized to be, but rather an avid “hunter conservationist” and a wildlife “agency conservationist”, the very people who are often if not usually the enemy of the wolf, predators balanced ecology. But, he may have evolved.
References:
https://exposingthebiggame.wordpress.com/2015/08/06/cecil-the-lions-death-highlights-the-work-to-be-done-to-protect-wildlife/
Game Management, Aldo Leopold, 1933
Wikipedia, Wildlife Management
Sand County Almanac, Aldo Leopold
Green Fire: Aldo Leopold and a Land Ethic for Our Time
http://www.aldoleopold.org/…/places.shtml The Aldo Leopold Foundation
https://exposingthebiggame.wordpress.com/2015/08/12/in-defense-of-legal-killing/
Trophic cascade – Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trophic_cascade