Bodies of coyotes piled in the back of a truck after a killing contest in Sullivan County, New York, in 2020. The HSUS
Today Gov. Kathy Hochul signed legislation to ban wildlife killing contests in New York state. This is a wonderful moment for wildlife, as New York has been the scene of more than 20 of these senseless spectacles each year. The contests targeted a broad range of animals including coyotes, foxes, bobcats, squirrels, raccoons, crows, rabbits and woodchucks. The new law, to take effect in November 2024, will prohibit cash-for-wildlife competitions in which the objective is to slaughter animals for money and prizes.
We have long fought to end wildlife killing contests in New York; the bill was first introduced in 2006 by Assemblymember Deborah Glick. Since then, with Glick, state Sen. Tim Kennedy, our partner organizations and advocates across the state, we have pursued this legislation for nearly two decades Thousands of people contacted their legislators to urge support of the bill and Gov. Hochul to sign it into law. Our New York state director, Brian Shapiro, lobbied legislators year after year and amassed support from responsible hunters, wildlife-friendly farmers, veterinarians, wildlife rehabilitators, scientists, environmental advocates and others. This broad coalition was in strong agreement that wildlife killing contests are simply cruel and unsporting. Read more.
Every year as daylight dwindles and trees go bare, debates arise over the morality of hunting. Hunters see the act of stalking and killing deer, ducks, moose and other quarry as humane, necessary and natural, and thus as ethical. Critics respond that hunting is a cruel and useless act that one should be ashamed to carry out.
As a nonhunter, I cannot say anything about what it feels like to shoot or trap an animal. But as a student of philosophy and ethics, I think philosophy can help us clarify, systematize and evaluate the arguments on both sides. And a better sense of the arguments can help us talk to people with whom we disagree.
Therapeutic hunting involves intentionally killing wild animals in order to conserve another species or an entire ecosystem. In one example, Project Isabella, conservation groups hired marksmen to eradicate thousands of feral goats from several Galapagos islands between 1997 and 2006. The goats were overgrazing the islands, threatening the survival of endangered Galapagos tortoises and other species.
Subsistence hunting is intentionally killing wild animals to supply nourishment and material resources for humans. Agreements that allow Native American tribes to hunt whales are justified, in part, by the subsistence value the animals have for the people who hunt them.
In contrast, sport hunting refers to intentionally killing wild animals for enjoyment or fulfillment. Hunters who go after deer because they find the experience exhilarating, or because they want antlers to mount on the wall, are sport hunters.
These categories are not mutually exclusive. A hunter who stalks deer because he or she enjoys the experience and wants decorative antlers may also intend to consume the meat, make pants from the hide and help control local deer populations. The distinctions matter because objections to hunting can change depending on the type of hunting.
What bothers people about hunting: Harm, necessity and character
Critics often argue that hunting is immoral because it requires intentionally inflicting harm on innocent creatures. Even people who are not comfortable extending legal rights to beasts should acknowledge that many animals are sentient – that is, they have the capacity to suffer. If it is wrong to inflict unwanted pain and death on a sentient being, then it is wrong to hunt. I call this position “the objection from harm.”
If sound, the objection from harm would require advocates to oppose all three types of hunting, unless it can be shown that greater harm will befall the animal in question if it is not hunted – for example, if it will be doomed to slow winter starvation. Whether a hunter’s goal is a healthy ecosystem, a nutritious dinner or a personally fulfilling experience, the hunted animal experiences the same harm.
But if inflicting unwanted harm is necessarily wrong, then the source of the harm is irrelevant. Logically, anyone who commits to this position should also oppose predation among animals. When a lion kills a gazelle, it causes as much unwanted harm to the gazelle as any hunter would – far more, in fact.
Few people are willing to go this far. Instead, many critics propose what I call the “objection from unnecessary harm”: it is bad when a hunter shoots a lion, but not when a lion mauls a gazelle, because the lion needs to kill to survive.
Today it is hard to argue that human hunting is strictly necessary in the same way that hunting is necessary for animals. The objection from necessary harm holds that hunting is morally permissible only if it is necessary for the hunter’s survival. “Necessary” could refer to nutritional or ecological need, which would provide moral cover for subsistence and therapeutic hunting. But sport hunting, almost by definition, cannot be defended this way.
Sport hunting also is vulnerable to another critique that I call “the objection from character.” This argument holds that an act is contemptible not only because of the harm it produces, but because of what it reveals about the actor. Many observers find the derivation of pleasure from hunting to be morally repugnant.
In 2015, American dentist Walter Palmer found this out after his African trophy hunt resulted in the death of Cecil the lion. Killing Cecil did no significant ecological damage, and even without human intervention, only one in eight male lions survives to adulthood. It would seem that disgust with Palmer was at least as much a reaction to the person he was perceived to be – someone who pays money to kill majestic creatures – as to the harm he had done.
The hunters I know don’t put much stock in “the objection from character.” First, they point out that one can kill without having hunted and hunt without having killed. Indeed, some unlucky hunters go season after season without taking an animal. Second, they tell me that when a kill does occur, they feel a somber union with and respect for the natural world, not pleasure. Nonetheless, on some level the sport hunter enjoys the experience, and this is the heart of the objection.
Is hunting natural?
In discussions about the morality of hunting, someone inevitably asserts that hunting is a natural activity since all preindustrial human societies engage in it to some degree, and therefore hunting can’t be immoral. But the concept of naturalness is unhelpful and ultimately irrelevant.
A very old moral idea, dating back to the Stoics of ancient Greece, urges us to strive to live in accordance with nature and do that which is natural. Belief in a connection between goodness and naturalness persists today in our use of the word “natural” to market products and lifestyles – often in highly misleading ways. Things that are natural are supposed to be good for us, but also morally good.
Setting aside the challenge of defining “nature” and “natural,” it is dangerous to assume that a thing is virtuous or morally permissible just because it is natural. HIV, earthquakes, Alzheimer’s disease and post-partum depression are all natural. And as The Onion has satirically noted, behaviors including rape, infanticide and the policy of might-makes-right are all present in the natural world.
Hard conversations
There are many other moral questions associated with hunting. Does it matter whether hunters use bullets, arrows or snares? Is preserving a cultural tradition enough to justify hunting? And is it possible to oppose hunting while still eating farm-raised meat?
As a starting point, though, if you find yourself having one of these debates, first identify what kind of hunting you’re discussing. If your interlocutor objects to hunting, try to discover the basis for their objection. And I believe you should keep nature out of it.
Finally, try to argue with someone who takes a fundamentally different view. Confirmation bias – the unintentional act of confirming the beliefs we already have – is hard to overcome. The only antidote I know of is rational discourse with people whose confirmation bias runs contrary to my own.
This article is republished from The Conversation, a nonprofit, independent news organization bringing you facts and trustworthy analysis to help you make sense of our complex world.The Conversation has a variety of fascinating free newsletters.
Posted Mon 18 Dec 2023 at 10:00amMonday 18 Dec 2023 at 10:00am
Black Mambas members like Leitah Mkhabela are having a significant impact on illegal poaching in South Africa.(Supplied: Rivoni Mkansi)
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Waking up to the sound of an apex predator nearby might be unsettling for some people, but Leitah Mkhabela thrives in a wild environment.
“I used to wake up when the chickens made noise in the community. And now that I’m in the game reserve, I have to wake up when I hear a lion roar,” Leitah tells ABC RN’s Late Night Live.
Leitah is among the more than two dozen women who form the Black Mambas, an all-female anti-poaching unit in South Africa that has been in operation since 2013.
“The Black Mambas ladies mean business,” she says.
This is because they’re responsible for protecting wildanimals of all sizes, including rhinos, lions, pangolins and elephants, over an area of 20,000 hectares in Olifants West in Greater Kruger National Park.
Rhino horn and elephant ivory are still part of a profitable illicit trade for poachers across the continent, but thanks to members of the Black Mambas and to environmental educators operating in the area, there’s been a significant decline in poaching over the last decade.
This is how they’re turning things around.
Protecting borders
Two white rhinos in the Manyeleti Reserve in South Africa. One has been dehorned to project it from poaching.(Getty: Wolfgang Kaehler)
A regular day in the life of the Black Mambas, founded by conservation group Transfrontier Africa, involves waking up early and putting on a camouflage uniform.
The women don’t carry guns, so their main form of self-protection is blending into the landscape. They do this to guard against lions, elephants, buffalo or — just as dangerous — poachers, who often are armed with guns.
“We feel like if we want to use bullets, we might not win,” Leitah says.
“We cherish life; we don’t want to live in a village where there are widows and orphaned kids, so that is the reason we don’t carry weapons.”
Instead, as “the eyes and ears of the reserve”, they focus on the fence line.
Poachers often access the national park area by cutting down fences. Once damaged, animals can escape through them or dig their way under them into another reserve.
The Black Mambas pay particular attention to protecting endangered white and black rhinos, which are poached for their horns. According to a 2022 report, 195 rhinos died as a result of poachers in the park that year.
To prevent poaching, the women also perform regular “roadblocks”.
“We search every car that comes in and out of our reserve to make sure that people don’t come in with things like illegal firearms or take illegal horns or bush meats out of the reserve,” Leitah says.
When she and the team aren’t repairing fences, they’re on the lookout for other signs of poachers in the area, like dogs barking or gunshots.
They also remove snares and animal traps from the area.
Felicia Mogakane, a Black Mambas operations room manager and sergeant, says that when the wildlife ranger unit first formed, it wasn’t uncommon for them to remove anywhere between 100 and 200 snares each day.
Changing the ‘mindset’ of all ages
Today, Felicia says it’s rarer to come back with snares after a patrol.
Felicia Mogakane inspects a Mopane tree damaged by elephants while on an early morning snare sweep.(Getty: Ilan Godfrey)
She attributes this in part to a project the Black Mambas run called the Bush Babies Environmental Program, which focuses on educating more than 2,000 schoolchildren in villages surrounding the national park.
The educators teach children about the importance of animal conservation, and that it’s illegal to kill native animals.
“We believe that education can change the mindset of the people,” Felicia says.
She says poachers are “the people who are living in the communities — they are the fathers and the uncles”. So when children go home and tell their family what they learnt from Black Mambas and Bush Babies, it starts important conversations and the education has a flow-on effect to adults.
Part of that education is about setting misconceptions straight.
Two members of the Black Mambas show primary school students in South Africa how snares entrap vulnerable wildlife species.(Getty: Ilan Godfrey)
“Old people in our community … even now, they think that the animals belong to white people because the reserves and the lodges are for white people,” Felicia says.
“So we’re trying to educate them that these animals are not for white people. They’re our historic, iconic animals.”
Since working with the Black Mambas, Leitah has also changed the mindset of older generations, including within her family.
When her parents learnt she was joining the anti-poaching unit, they “were not happy about [it]”, she says.
“Because we grew up in a village where we’ve been told that only men can be rangers … My mum said, ‘You’re too beautiful to work in the game reserve; you can be a teacher; you can be a nurse.'”
But Leitah felt compelled to do something she considered “unique” instead.
“I heard about this post in Olifants West [and] that they wanted women to protect the iconic animals. So with the little information I had, I decided I was going to apply.
She says the three months’ preparation to become a Black Mamba was the “hardest training she’s ever done”.
Trainees run nearly five kilometres daily and focus on survival tactics in the bush, without regular access to food or water.
“After my training, I went home, and I was so thin because we were trained like soldiers … My mum was crying. She said, ‘What were they doing to you in the bush?'” Leitah says.
“And then, when I started talking to her, she could see that now the lady that she’s talking with is no longer a young lady. She is a woman now.
“After that … I started working as a professional Black Mamba.”
The unit has had some government funding in the past, but they mainly rely on ongoing sponsors and donations.
Since Leitah and Felicia joined the Black Mambas in 2013,the group says it has reduced poaching in the area by more than 60 per cent.
“There’s a lot of success which has been happening since 2013, which I’m proud to be a part of,” Leitah says.
7 hours ago Featured, Local News, News Comments Offon 81 Year Old Wisconsin Man on the Road to Recovery Following a Tragic Hunting Accident 1,004 Views
A terrifying hunting accident ends miraculously after a Wisconsin man begins a road toward recovery.
About a month ago 81-year-old Ed Mongin of Wisconsin was hunting with his party of ten on federal land in Iron County. While at his location a tree limb was broken in a windstorm, falling on him. After attempts to contact Mongin failed, his party went to his location searching, where they did locate him. Mongin was able to communicate that he believed that he may be paralyzed and to not move him. DNR officers Alex VanWagner and Kyle Romzek were called to the scene.
Determining that an ambulance could not make the trip on the forest roads, the officers drove medical responders to the scene with their equipment. Mongin was transported to Aspirus Iron River Hospital, where his family was told that he was lucky to be alive and would likely not walk following head and vertebrate surgery.
Several days later VanWagner contacted the family to check in on Mongin’s surgery. The family told him that Mongin was surgery was successful and he was able to recover feeling in all of his limbs. Even being able to stand and hold a conversation afterward. Since then Mongin has begun physical therapy. Michigan DNR officers are fully licensed law enforcement officers who provide natural resource protection ensure recreational safety and perform life-saving operations when called upon in the communities they serve.
Those interested to read more about Ed Mogin and the Michigan DNR officers who responded to the call can find a more detailed story of events from the Michigan DNR here.
