Tag Archives: trophy

‘”Sportsman’s” Act’: You Shall Not Pass

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Wildlife Photography ©Jim Robertson

Wildlife Photography ©Jim Robertson

http://www.all-creatures.org/articles/ar-sportsmans-act.html
An Animal Rights Article from All-Creatures.org

FROM

Franziska, Northwest Animal Rights Group (NARN)
February 2015

Take more action here: Oppose Trophy Hunter Supported Sportsmen’s Act

Once again, a small faction of wealthy trophy hunters is pressuring your elected officials to allow the importation of — are you SERIOUS? — threatened polar bear trophies from Canada. They also want to open millions of acres of public lands to “sport” hunting and commercial trapping. And they want to do it without evaluating possible implications for animals, habitat and the opinions of Americans.

One definition of the word “sport” is as follows:

An activity involving physical exertion and skill in which an individual or team competes against another or others for entertainment.

I will let you contemplate such things as baiting, blinds, beer, hunting accidents, night scopes, decoys, lures, hounds, high-powered rifles, crossbows, camouflage AND MANY MORE as you mentally list the reasons hunting and trapping ARE NOT SPORTS.

In view of that…let’s shoot down the mis-named “Sportsman’s Act”.

Once again, a small faction of wealthy trophy hunters is pressuring your elected officials to allow the importation of — are you SERIOUS? — threatened polar bear trophies from Canada.

  • They also want to open millions of acres of public lands to “sport” hunting and commercial trapping.
  • And they want to do it without evaluating possible implications for animals, habitat and the opinions of Americans who enjoy our nation’s wild spaces without having to kill the inhabitants.
  • This bill would also permanently strip the Environmental Protection Agency of the authority to regulate lead shot and other ammunition under the Toxic Substances Control Act, and would add lead sinkers and other fishing gear to the existing exemptions.
  • To add insult to injury, the bill would direct up to $10 million annually toward improving access to landlocked public lands, allocate a larger proportion of existing federal funding to building and maintaining shooting ranges on federal and non-federal lands, and require federal land managers to consider how their plans may impact hunting, fishing and recreational shooting.

Do I need to remind you of the suffering involved for animals left to die slowly of bad shots, for their families and children, for animals trapped for days in agony, whose only release is (maybe) the trapper and his dogs? Hunting and trapping are NOT sports. They are HORRORS.

Please, if you don’t already know who they are and how to get in touch with them, find your federal legislators here [U.S. Senators and U.S. Representative]. Make a brief, polite phone call today to urge them to OPPOSE S. 405, the Sportsmen’s Act, and protect our wildlife and wildlands. (I know you don’t FEEL polite. I don’t either. But let’s pull ourselves together.) Follow up with an email (links at the same site above).

Who the Fuck Hunts Giraffes for Sport and How You Can Stop Them

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Please sign and share these petitions.

Stop trophy hunting giraffes
http://www.thepetitionsite.com/929/929/857/stop-trophy-hunting-giraffes/
…
Stop hunting giraffes for sport
http://forcechange.com/12033/stop-hunting-giraffes-for-sport/

Stop any kind of safari hunting in South Africa
https://www.causes.com/actions/1742571-stop-any-kind-of-safari-hunting-in-south-africa

Stop the savage and sickening trophy and sport hunting
http://www.thepetitionsite.com/1/stop-the-savage-and-sickening-trophy-and-sport-hunting/

Complete ban on trophy hunting in South Africa and a full census
http://www.gopetition.com/petitions/complete-ban-on-trophy-hunting-full-census-carried-ou.html?

Stop the legal killing of wildlife in trophy hunting
http://www.gopetition.com/petitions/stop-the-legal-killing-of-wildlife-stop-hunting/sign.html

End WWF partnership with pro-hunting lobby
https://secure.avaaz.org/en/petition/Yolanda_Kakabadse_is_WWFs_International_President_and_USAID_WWF_End_your_partnership_with_the_USA_ProHunting_Lobby_Group/

Ban lion farming and trophy hunting
http://www.thepetitionsite.com/147/069/549/ban-lion-farming-and-trophy-hunting/?cid=FB_TAF

Stop the canned hunting of large cats in South Africa
https://www.change.org/p/ms-lakela-kaunda-stop-the-canned-hunting-of-large-cats-in-south-africa

USF&WService save the lions from mass extinction
https://secure.avaaz.org/en/petition/US_Fish_and_Wildlife_Service_Save_African_Lions/?sfmqQib

Zambian tourist board: to reinstate ban on hunting lions and leopards
https://secure.avaaz.org/en/petition/

Petition to UN: sue Panthera.org, WWF.org ,Safari Club International,Dallas Safari Club

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United Nations: sue Panthera.org, WWF.org ,Safari Club International,Dallas Safari Club

SIGN THIS PETITION: https://secure.avaaz.org/en/petition/United_Nations_sue_Pantheraorg_WWForg_Safari_Club_InternationalDallas_Safari_Club/?nmAoZib
This petition is awaiting approval by the Avaaz Community
United Nations: sue Panthera.org, WWF.org ,Safari Club International,Dallas Safari Club
813 signers. Let’s reach 1,000

Why this is important

A petition for the UN to sue Panthera.org, WWF.org ,Safari Club International and Dallas Safari Club,Craig Packer and Colleen Berg for deliberate lying and exaggerating lion populations in Africa for the money they get from lion trophy hunting.
SIGN THIS PETITION: https://secure.avaaz.org/en/petition/United_Nations_sue_Pantheraorg_WWForg_Safari_Club_InternationalDallas_Safari_Club/?nmAoZib
Posted February 4, 2015

A World that Never Was

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Revisionist history may seem like harmless, feel good child’s play, but the threat it poses (to all other animals at least) is that without hearing the real story, people will never learn from the past.

It’s tempting to want to believe that all that has gone wrong with the human race is the result of being led astray by our technology, and if we could just get back to our caveman roots, everything would be happy and harmonious like it surely was back then. But contrary to contemporary popular belief, that’s a world that never was.

Even the earliest human hunters drove countless species to extinction and exhausted their carrying capacities time and again, ever since plant-eating primates first climbed down from the trees and decided to take up big-game hunting.10418292_778659628825562_4081410081902108848_n

The notion of the peaceful savage has long since been disproven, but people want to cling to it rather than accept the truth about human nature. Just look at the dead-animal adornments any warrior or tribal chief wore, and it’s easy to see the roots of trophy hunting.

The thought that any spear-wielding species who took advantage of fire to herd animals toward a cliff or into a box canyon had an innate sense of ecological fairness goes against all that made us human—envy, lust, greed, gluttony, a lack of empathy and an over-blown ego are the kinds of things that ultimately define a hunter, whether the motive for their behavior is sport or subsistence.

Richard Wrangham and Dale Peterson summed up the chapter, “Paradise Imagined,” of their book, Demonic Males: Apes and the Origins of Human Violence, thusly, “There is no such thing as paradise, not in the South Seas, not in southern Greece, not anywhere. There never has been. To find a better world we must look not to a romanticized and dishonest dream forever receding into the primitive past, but to a future that rests on a proper understanding of ourselves.”

Humans have achieved an awful lot of success as a species over the years, but judging by our planet-crushing prowess, we may have finally breached our collective britches.

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‘Prince William HAS to stop being a hypocrite – especially when it comes to animal cruelty’

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http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/uk-news/prince-william-stop-being-hypocrite-4796300

Prince William has attacked the Chinese for their animal cruelty, but has he got any right to criticise, asks Mirror columnist Brian Reade  ….

Speaking at the World Bank on Monday, Prince William attacked them for their role in wildlife crime, accusing them of being major players in “one of the most insidious forms of corruption in the world” which is done to satisfy man’s “craving for trinkets.”

Words that leave the future monarch wide open to accusations of hypocrisy (and I’m not merely talking about having a dad who parades more trinkets on his chest than the worst tin-pot dictator.)

Because this is someone who, in February, went with his brother to the Duke of Westminster’s 37,000-acre hunting estate in Spain to shoot wild boar and stag.

On a previous visit to his godfather’s Spanish killing fields, the princes were said to have bagged 740 partridge in a day.

His defenders argue William was speaking for endangered species, not the plentiful ones.

But is he so thick he can’t grasp that species tend to become endangered after man has killed so many few are left?

I’ll answer that for you. Yes he is thick. He also comes from a family of animal-slayers.

In 2004 his brother was photographed grinning widely, in Argentina, over the body of a one-tonne water buffalo moments after he’d killed it.

Harry loves big game hunting, just like grandfather Philip, who, despite being a former World Wildlife Fund president, has been known to shoot tigers and crocodiles in India/

And closer to home, in a couple of weeks, the whole clan will walk off their sprouts around the Sandringham estate, blowing birds out of the sky, for no other reason than they can.

If I were the China Daily cartoonist, after I’d finished with the CIA, I’d have sketched a chinless wonder pointing a smoking gun at a wild boar with blood running from its guts spelling out the words “Do as I say not as I do…”

If I were a photo-journalist on that paper I’d be asking my editor to send me to Sandringham to film the hypocrites in all their blood-lusting glory, and then ask: “Is it OK to sadistically kill wild beasts if it’s on one’s own land, or one’s rich friend’s land? And if it’s for fun?”

I know the Royals are led to believe they rule us by divine decree, but who toldthem they also have the right to decide which creatures get to exist and which ones don’t.

As an endangered species themselves, you think they’d be more careful.

Should shooting animals for sport be banned?

 

Just Because It’s Legal…

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…Doesn’t make it right.

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Tolerance has it limits. Laws change and evolve with the times. Things have gotten a little better for human rights and a whole lot worse for animals and their rights. It depends on who’s making the laws. Today’s Nazi party is run by sport hunters and their game department lackeys. The victims have no say in the matter. We must be their voice.

Abolish Atrocities Against Animals Today!

Safari Club–Center of Rhino Hunting Controversy–To Auction Off More Rare Animal Hunts

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http://theirturn.net/rare-animal-hunt-auction/

The 6,000 member Dallas Safari Club will auction off rare animals hunts this weekend during the banquet at its annual convention, which is a “showcase of hunting, sporting and outdoor adventure,” according to the Club’s website. During the auction, “bidders of any age or gender” will have the chance to bid on “amazing items,” including “youth hunts in New Zealand and Texas, a challenging Mid-Asian ibex hunt in Russia, and a bongo hunt in Cameroon.”

One of dozens of animal hunts at Dallas Safari Club Auction

The 2014 convention made international headlines when one attendee, Corey Knowlton, paid $350,000 to shoot an endangered black rhino in Namibia. Mr. Knowlton, who has purportedly received death threats, tells critics that he is motivated by “conservation.” Specifically, he claims that his substantial contribution will be allocated to rhino conservation efforts and that killing the rhino in question would actually benefit other rhinos in the area who he has been attacking.

But, if conservation is really Mr. Knowlton’s motivation, then why doesn’t he allocate a small part of his winning bid to relocate him?  And, if he’s concerned that the menacing rhino is harming the others, then why hasn’t he  shot him down hasn’t he done it in the 12 months since he won the bid?  Could it be because the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service has not yet issued a permit to import the rhino’s body and that Mr. Knowlton has no intention of returning from Africa without his “trophy.”

In an interview with Jane Velez-Mitchell on JaneUnchained.com, Christopher Gervais, the director of the Wildlife Conservation Film Festival & Biodiversity Conference, says that killing animals is not the way to preserve them: “You do not hunt a vulnerable species in the name of conservation. Other organizations are conserving without hunting and killing.” Conservation funds. he says, can be raised through photography safaris during which animals are shot with cameras instead of guns.

Shooting rhinos with cameras

Your Turn

Please sign the petition to the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service to deny a permit that would allow 2014 Dallas Safari Club auction winner Corey Knowlton to import a black rhinoceros trophy from Namibia.

Minnesota Department of Natural Resources Urged to Stop the Trophy Hunting of Wolves

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copyrighted wolf in water

http://www.humanesociety.org/news/press_releases/2014/11/mn-trophy-hunt-wolves-111714.html

Nov. 4 vote in nearby Michigan highlights overwhelming opposition to this needless killing

The Minnesota Department of Natural Resources is being urged to stop the trophy hunting of wolves, in the wake of the nation’s first statewide vote on wolf hunting in last week’s election.  In nearby Michigan on Nov. 4, voters overwhelmingly rejected two wolf hunting measures, Proposals 1 and 2, with the “no” side winning by a 10-point margin and a 28-point margin, respectively. On Proposal 2, the “no” side received more than 1.8 million votes, more than any candidate who won statewide office, and prevailed in 69 of Michigan’s 83 counties.

This was the first statewide vote on wolf hunting in any state since wolves were stripped of their federal protections under the Endangered Species Act, and since more than 2,200 wolves were killed across the Great Lakes and Northern Rockies regions over the last two years. The Humane Society of the United States is urging decision makers in Minnesota to pay attention to this vote in Michigan, and see how regular citizens feel about the trophy hunting and trapping of wolves.

The Michigan election results mirror public opinion polling showing that Minnesotans, by huge majorities, appreciate wolves and want them conserved. In 2012, before the first wolf trophy hunting season, the DNR conducted an online survey, and 79 percent of residents opposed wolf hunting and wolf trapping.

Howard Goldman, Minnesota senior state director of The HSUS, said: “Michigan and Minnesota are states with strong hunting and farming traditions, and the resounding votes in Michigan demonstrate that voters think trophy hunting and commercial trapping seasons for wolves are premature and unacceptable.  Nobody eats wolves, and there are already tools that exist to manage problem animals.” I’m confident that Minnesotans would have voted similarly if they had a chance to decide this issue directly.”

Minnesota is home to approximately 2,400 wolves and the DNR set this season’s hunting quota at 250 (30 more individuals than permitted in the last season). In 2013, a total of 602 wolves died, and the numbers of wolf packs have declined from 503 in 2008 to 470 in 2014 – a loss of 33 entire packs of wolves. Biologists warn that hunting this iconic species—even at low levels—harms not only the animals but also pack dynamics.   When fellow pack members are killed, wolf packs can disband, leading to starvation of the pack’s youngest members.

Wolves keep deer and other ungulate herds healthy and scientific studies show that because of wolf predation, both plant and animal communities become far more diverse. The Minnesota DNR’s own data show that wolves prey on miniscule numbers of livestock.

Goldman continued: “We want state lawmakers and the Minnesota DNR to take heed of the overwhelming votes in Michigan. Most voters want wolves and their packs protected from needless killing, and they recognize wolves bring economic and ecological benefits to the state.”

Minnesota permits cruel and unsporting trophy hunting methods to kill wolves, including trapping the animals with leghold traps and neck snares. The state also allows hunters to lure in wolves using electronic calls and bait.

 

Media Contact: Kaitlin Sanderson

Trophy Hunter = Serial Killer, Any Questions?

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One of the would-be hunter-commenters here recently demanded I explain why I compare hunters to pedophiles and serial killers. Since, as a rule, I don’t approve comments from hunters or their apologists (and because I felt it was so bloody obvious), that question hasn’t been answered here since June 10, in a post entitled, Poachers and Pedophiles are Like Apples and Oranges.

But now that Corey Knowlton has added his voice to the choir of Fuddself-confessed twisted-psycho-hunter-perverts with the telling statement to the WFAA, “I’m a hunter; I want to experience a black rhino. I want to be intimately involved with a black rhino,” it’s time to re-examine the connection in a little more detail. What kind of mind uses the word “experience” for the act of taking a life? Ted Bundy called his murders “possessing.” Like a trophy hunter, he felt entitled to claim another’s life for his own pleasure. In his case, the lives were young co-eds and 12 year old girls—in Knowlton’s case, endangered rhinos. Ted Bundy’s third person narrative of his predations could easily be mistaken (aside, perhaps, from the level of literacy) with Ted Nugent describing one of his trophy kills: “The fantasy that accompanies and generates the anticipation that precedes the crime is always more stimulating than the immediate aftermath of the crime itself. He should have recognized that what really fascinated him was the hunt, the adventure of searching out his victims. And, to a degree, possessing them physically as one would possess a potted plant, a painting, or a Porsche. Owning, as it were, this individual.”

Pertaining to the likes of Alaskan trophy hunter turned-serial killer, Robert Hansen, who preyed on exotic dancers and child6-4Hansens-trophy-goat prostitutes, in addition to Dall sheep, mountain goats and countless other species, conservationist Gareth Patterson wrote: “Certainly one could state that, like the serial killer, the trophy hunter plans his killing with considerable care and deliberation. Like the serial killer, he decides well in advance the type of victim–that is, which species he intends to target. Also like the serial killer, the trophy hunter plans with great care where and how the killing will take place–in what area, with what weapon. What the serial killer and trophy hunter also share is a compulsion to collect trophies or souvenirs of their killings. The serial killer retains certain body parts and/or other trophies for much the same reason as the big game hunter mounts the head and antlers taken from his prey…as trophies of the chase.”

And, as I put it the last time I addressed the pedophilic serial killer/trophy hunter connection: …the analogy between a trophy hunter and a serial killer has been well established—both are single-minded in their quest for the kill, placing their own perverse desires above the self-interests—indeed, the very lives—of their victims. Both perpetrators like to take souvenirs from their kills, and neither one cares what the rest of the world thinks of their actions.