Hunting

[Richprins]

This should go under a seperate "canned hunting" thread. Most hunters disapprove of that.

Lion hunts do happen "normally", on open farms too, even with bow and arrow.

[Lisbeth]

There is a lot of general information on hunting-

[okie]

The national news on TV last night showed a couple of clips where lions are horrifically shot It was absolutely sickening and I really did not sleep well last night with those images still going through my mind

[Lisbeth]

Everything that has to do with firearms is terrible, especially if they do not have a chance

[Flutterby]

Couldn't read that article...I know it will just upset me!

[Richprins]

'Our government does not care about us - they only take care of wild animals'
2017-09-09 09:37

Mbulelo Sisulu, GroundUp
Nikelo Makeleni of KwaGubevu Village, King William’s Town, says many subsistence farmers have given up because of wild animals. (Mbulelo Sisulu)


Eastern Cape - Residents of KwaGubevu Village near King William’s Town in the Eastern Cape accuse wild animals of destroying their crops and eating their livestock.

Most of the villagers survive by growing maize and raising animals and selling goats to people for traditional ceremonies, GroundUp reports.

Nikelo Makeleni says that since hunting has been outlawed by the government, wildlife has become a real problem. “In 2005 I was arrested by rangers … I appeared at King William’s Town Magistrate Court.” He got off he says because the rangers bungled the case. But the “people of my village stopped hunting after I appeared in court”.

Vukile Tefi says he used to have more than 50 goats, but this year he says he has lost 25 to rooikat. On the night of 19 August he lost four goats. “This wild animal does not eat the meat. It only squeezes blood and leaves a goat like that.”

“Our government does not want us to hunt these animals but these bushes are not fenced so that our livestock can be safe,” he says.

Nkosinathi Nkrwentela says, “I am suffering because our government does not fence our bushes so that our livestock can be safe and we are not allowed to kill these wild animals.”

Nolusapho Daka has given up growing maize because warthogs destroy her crops. “Our government does not care about us. They only take care of wild animals … Our government does not even come up with a plan to chase away these wild animals,” she says.

Eastern Cape Rural Development and Agrarian Reform referred GroundUp to Economic Development Environmental Affairs and Tourism (DEAT). Its spokesperson Tobile Gowa said people could apply for the right to hunt.

Local councillor Robert Desi said at a meeting held by officials from DEAT, residents of KwaGubevu were told they must not hunt wild animals as they were not trained to do this. He said: “If they want these animals to be killed they have to write a letter or go to the department and ask the rangers to hunt for them.”

http://www.news24.com/SouthAfrica/News/ ... s-20170909

[Flutterby]

[Richprins]

[ANALYSIS] Trophy hunting could cause extinction in stressed populations



The Conversation | 14 minutes ago

This article first appeared on The Conversation.

People are now the most important predators for many animal populations on the planet, but people are rather different from ‘ordinary’ predators. While a lion or an eagle is just trying to get dinner, human predators can be motivated by other aspects of an animal than simply how much meat it can provide.

Trophy hunters obsessively target animals with the largest horns, antlers or manes. Poachers focus on elephants with the largest tusks – and there is a subset of insect collectors who will pay premium prices for stag or rhinoceros beetle specimens with really huge horns or mandibles.

All of these focus their predation on what biologists call ‘sexually selected’ traits. These evolve because they give the (usually male) animal that carries the trait an advantage in competition for mates, either by allowing him to dominate and exclude rival males – think of red deer stags – or because females of his species actively prefer to mate with males with large, loud or bright sexually selected traits, as in the case of birds of paradise.

How these sexually selected traits evolve is a question that has been a difficult issue for biologists for some years: why should females prefer males with a long tail or with especially bright colours – and what is it about stags with large antlers that allows them to win contests and dominate groups of females?

An increasing body of evidence now supports the idea that the expression of these traits is linked in some way to the genetic ‘quality’ of a male. Males who have lost the genetic lottery and who are carrying more than their share of genes that are detrimental to health do not have the resources to grow a big tail or a large set of antlers.

Conversely, those lucky males who happen to have a particularly good set of genes can afford the handicap of carrying around a super-sized rack of antlers or set of horns, or will be able to grow extra long and brightly coloured feathery plumes.

SELECTIVE HARVEST

This is useful for our understanding of animal behaviour, but it also has wider implications for the evolution of these species. Researchers have recently found that strongly sexually selected species can evolve faster in response to environmental challenges than species where mating is more random.

Because males with higher genetic quality gain the majority of matings in these species, their good genes can spread through a population much faster than they would if mating were random. This means that strong sexual selection can allow a population to adapt faster to a changing environment, and in some scenarios these species can avoid extinction when the environment changes because of this fast evolutionary response.

In our newly-published research, we asked the question of how this might change when those highest-quality males are removed by ‘selective harvest. It’s prohibitively difficult to test these ideas with real hunted populations, so we developed a computer simulation which allowed us to examine what happens when you take these animals out of a population.

Our results are clear – and worrying. If the environment is relatively stable, then even quite severe harvesting of high-quality males is sustainable. But if the population is already stressed by a changing environment, then removing even a small percentage of the best males can lead to extinction. The trouble is, almost all animal populations today are facing increasing stress from changing environments.

This goes against the conventional wisdom. Since there is usually little paternal care of offspring in these animals – and because it seems reasonable to assume that females will not have problems getting fertilised if we remove, say, 15% of the males – it is usually assumed that trophy hunting and similar selective harvests are unlikely to drive animals to extinction when only a small proportion of males are hunted. Our results suggest otherwise.

BETTER MANAGEMENT WOULD MAKE A DIFFERENCE

Should we, therefore, ban trophy hunting and insect collecting? The argument about trophy hunting in particular goes on – but we do not think that our research adds great weight to either position. So far, it is only based on a computer model – clearly we need some tests of our results based on real data.

What we might consider, however, is changing management practices. We examined how different management altered the outcome of our model, and again we found a clear result. If a minimum age limit is applied to hunted animals, so that only old animals who have already had a chance to mate and spread their genes are removed, then the increased extinction risk that we found goes away.

If a population must be hunted, then restricting hunting to older males only and managing the population sensibly by adjusting quotas when there are signs of stress should ensure that any risk of extinction is minimised.

Rob Knell is a Reader in Evolutionary Ecology, Queen Mary University of London.


http://ewn.co.za/2017/12/01/analysis-tr ... opulations

[Lisbeth]

Opinion: Hunting’s threat to conservation


Photo of a lion hunt for illustrative purposes only

Opinion post: Written by Steve Wiggins and Chris Mercer
Peter Flack’s (“South African lawyer, business man and hunter”) recent piece in the Daily Maverick, titled “It is canned killing, not hunting, that hampers conservation efforts” (17 December 2017) offers a hunter’s perceived threats to conservation in South Africa (and beyond):

1. Canned hunting;
2. hybrid breeding of target species; and
3. the animal rights movement.

Dealing with those claims seriatim:

Canned hunting

How can ‘canned’ possibly be a major threat to conservation on the basis advanced by Flack; namely, the absence of fair chase – where in theory, the hunter’s quarry has a (limited) chance to evade its own unnatural death? What on Earth does fair chase have to do with conservation? Whether a target is fairly chased or not, it still bleeds and dies and is removed from the environment. On the contrary, there is an argument that the canned hunting of captive bred lions causes less damage to lion conservation in one respect than hunting wild lions, with all the damage the latter causes to pride dynamics. I am not hereby endorsing the hunting of wild lions – rather I am pointing out the shortfalls in Flack’s logic.

No, the real objection that Flack has to canned hunting is that it is a reputational threat to the existence, “good reputation” [sic] and profitability of the whole hunting industry. He fears that the increasing public disgust ‘canned’ is causing is pulling down the whole trophy hunting industry with it.

We should not forget the negative conservation implications of ‘canned’ (the hunting and lion bone trade) due to its lack of any credible proven positive conservation contribution or conservation need.

There are no proven conservation benefits of ‘canned’ (‘captive’, ‘ranch’) – but quite the opposite, with the potential detrimental impact still to be adequately acknowledged and addressed by the Republic of South Africa’s Department: Environmental Affairs (DEA);

In their 29 November 2017 “Open letter to Secretary Zinke: The African Lion Conservation Community’s Response,” the need for any conservation (re-wilding potential) from South Africa’s ‘canned’ industry was rejected.

Hybrid breeding

Indeed the cross-breeding of species to produce mutant freaks for the hunting industry merely underlines the threat that hunting poses to wildlife.

If the breeders will do anything to grasp at the almighty dollar then this supports our view that hunting is not about conservation at all, but is driven by commercial profiteering.

Animal rights

It is popular in hunting circles to blame ‘animal rightists’ for hunting’s shortcomings and to throw epithets like ‘radical, extremist, and a threat to conservation.’ But these labels assume that hunting is conservation. The animal welfare movement certainly damages the hunting industry, but whether it damages conservation depends on the proven truth of hunting’s animal welfare claims, and the falsity of hunting propaganda. The truth is always subversive of an entity built upon lies.

Accordingly we would contend that the three major threats to conservation in Africa are:

1. The unrelenting growth of the human population which is devouring the wilderness and causing massive habitat loss for wildlife.

2. The lamentable failure of African governments to devote available resources to protecting wilderness and existing wildlife populations.

3. The hunting industry. Not only does the hunting industry inflict massive damage upon wildlife populations in Africa, but by expanding its profitable business model of breeding wildlife species as alternative livestock, the industry is effectively changing the land-use from the serious business of producing food for the nation, to mere entertainment.

Is it really in the national interest that vast tracts of land which represent food security are being converted into providing hunting entertainment for a wealthy elite?

Compare the three items above that Flack contends are the major threats to conservation with our own. We doubt if there is a single conservation scientist in the world who would agree that the Flack list is defensible.

The assertion is made by Flack that the “1977” trophy hunting ban implementation in Kenya and Botswana’s move to ban trophy hunting in 2014 have been “manifest disasters” for wildlife because of the loss of trophy hunting’s claimed ‘benefits’ – an oft repeated pro-hunting mantra.

Scientists conducting a 2009 study (“Effects of human – livestock – wildlife interactions on habitat in an eastern Kenyan rangeland”) – they believe the surge in domestic livestock is predominantly accountable for the drop in Kenya’s wildlife population – the three main causes cited for the drop in wildlife numbers are illegal poaching, larger numbers and ranges of domestic livestock, plus changing land use patterns on the ranches. There is no mention of trophy hunting’s absence as a cause/effect for the decline in Kenya’s wildlife since the ban was implemented in 1979.

Is Kenya an example of what will happen if trophy hunting is banned in a country? No, it is not. Kenya would seem to be an example of poor land management, poaching and wanton over-grazing, based on a culture where a man’s wealth and social status is directly linked to owning large herds of cattle, which dominate the grazing available to the detriment of wildlife.

Botswana’s tourism figures surpassed 2 million in 2016, so clearly there is demand within Botswana for non-consumptive tourism (and long may it continue).

In support of his ‘hunting is a saviour’ arguments, Flack states “some simple, scientifically established facts” including the statement at point 5 of his article: “…those [endangered species] that had been hunted most assiduously had recovered best, for example … rhinoceroses …” So, the claim is hunting saved the rhinoceros (referring to ‘Operation Rhino’ in the 1960s no doubt) and by logical extension of this claim, “assiduously” hunting and killing endangered species is a guaranteed saviour.

However, it is also a ‘fact’ that unregulated and excessive hunting pre-‘Operation Rhino’ overwhelmingly contributed to the decimation and plight of rhinoceros in the first place:

“South African populations of black and white rhinos (subspecies C. s. simum), both of which had been nearly extinct in the year 1900 due to uncontrolled hunting…” (“Sustainable rhino horn production at the pointy end of the rhino horn trade debate,” Taylor et al., Biological Conservation: Vol. 216, page 60 – 68, December 2017).

So, any claims that hunting was the saviour of the rhinoceros as a ‘fact’ are somewhat disingenuous. Hence, any claims that “assiduously” hunting therefore must be endured as the saviour of all endangered species should be treated with incredulity.

About Chris Mercer
Chris Mercer founded and runs the NGO Campaign Against Canned Hunting, an international group of activists working to bring the despicable business of canned lion hunting to an end. He lives in the Klein Karoo where he runs a wildlife sanctuary. He is the author of a book about the Harnas Lion Foundation in Namibia titled For the Love of Wildlife, and also the book titled Kalahari Dream that describes the seven years he and his partner Bev spent rescuing wildlife.

[okie]

Now there is a very nice , big fat grimacing trophy that will cook well
And his female companion will also go down well on a side platter