http://www.guardian.co.uk/envi...ican-hunter-trophies

I suppose they have to blame someone !
Same old ,same old story.

If you want to villainize something just make it look like rich white men are doing it. Even worse, enjoying it. Like I have said before this has nothing to do with saving wildlife. It is totally driven by the desire to control other people.

Think I will buy a life membership in PeTA and HSUS.....azzholes!!

Did any of you geniuses actually read the link?:

"The single biggest threat by far to the animals' survival is humans, though not necessarily western hunters. "It is just the very, very widespread killing of lions, mostly in a conflict situation, by anyone who is trying to farm livestock in Africa and finds it very difficult to co-exist with lions," said Luke Hunter, the executive vice-president of Panthera.

There is also a lot of pressure on lion habitats with wilderness areas shrinking to build roads – such as the controversial highway across the Serengeti – or to make room for agriculture.
However, other wildlife experts argued that a total hunting ban was a "nuclear option". They said responsible hunting could in some cases help conserve populations by maintaining wilderness areas. Existing US and international regulations, such as the Cites conventions against trafficking in endangered species, could also be reinforced to protect lions, they said.

"If you remove hunting, the very real risk is that you force African governments to generate revenue from that land and the obvious thing is cattle and crops which just wipe out habitats," said Hunter."

Are you denying that:

"Between 1999 and 2008, 64% of the 5,663 lions that were killed in the African wild for sport ended up being shipped to America, it said. It also said the numbers had risen sharply in those 10 years, with more than twice as many lions taken as trophies by US hunters in 2008 than in 1999. In addition to personal trophies, Americans are also the world's biggest buyers of lion carcasses and body parts, including claws, skulls, bones and penises. In the same years, the US imported 63% of the 2,715 lion specimens put up for sale."
The issue is simple:
What are the causes?
Which of these are the easiest to control?
We hunters talk a good game about the hunt and not the killing, not hunting with a tape measure etc. but how many would hunt a lion with only a picture to show for it?
Peter.

quote:

Originally posted by Peter:

Are you denying that:

"Between 1999 and 2008, 64% of the 5,663 lions that were killed in the African wild for sport ended up being shipped to America, it said.

The real number to compare is how many lions sport hunters have taken, to how many lions are killed each year by residents/rangers due to human/lion conflict. Compare the two numbers and see which group kills more lion.

quote:

Originally posted by Peter:
... but how many would hunt a lion with only a picture to show for it?

Many hunt tukless bulls and ele cows with nothing but pictures. It depends on the $$$ -

You can't charge full price for pictures.


.

Peter, I think that you miss the point here.

I did read the link.

It is typical journalism. Put your bias on top, and bury the oppositions points in the body of the piece, and make sure that your preferred side is cited to look authoritative, while the other is cited using just one name or anonymously.

While the HSUS and PeTA want to make it look like they care about the animals, they definitely have an agenda that indicates something other than animal numbers is their driving concern.

The comments on sport hunting are obviously poorly cited. Unfortunately, while sport hunted lion are very well documented, the non sport hunted category are not. A simple perusal of some of the scientific background data that has been posted here before, shows the gaping holes in it, and the scientists will admit to them. They all admit that local residents in conflict with large predators kill lots of them, they just have no idea how large the number is, or any way of quantifying it. As such, much as with other scientific "mandates" like global warming, while they don't know much about the whole, "Something needs to be done!" and the solution, as scientists, is to do something that is measurable, and that they can show they have "done something" about, even if it has no real effect.

Cutting the offtake of lion by sport hunters would cut the number of lion deaths "significantly" in their statistics- because they have no statistics to measure the loss of lion to nonhunting causes. These scientists are pretty shoddy in my book as they have not even attempted to do the first item of business in science, which is to get a documentable, reproducible handle on the issue at hand, ie lion numbers in the first place. Obviously, the perfect is the enemy of the good, and anecdotally, lion are not doing well as a whole. My suspicion is that lion hunting blocks are probably doing a lot better than most area with number of lion per square mile than anywhere else. That is also a anecdotal piece of evidence- and worth about as much as anything they quoted in that article.

Look at the article a little bit.

Its not sport hunting that they are bent out of shape about it seems, but rather AMERICAN sport hunting... the article is from the UK. No element of xenophobia from the europeans at all??

Face it, with the relatively controlled economies and tax rates in Europe, there are proportionally fewer folks who can afford to hunt lion. Add to the fact that hunting in a cultural sense in Europe is no where as predominant as it is in the US and you can see why a larger portion of the world's game trophies are headed to the US. If you got rid of the US government's insistence that they know more about how to manage other countries' resources than they do, it would likely be even more dramatic (You mean to tell me that the USF&WS knows more about Canadian Polar Bear than the Canadians?)

As to the sale of lion parts- I cannot guess where they got those statistics. It sure was not documented in the article. Are we talking museum specimens? whole specimens only? their idea of reporting is remarkable for its leaving more questions than it answers, and predictably answered in a way to promote their bias.

As for your crack about hunting with a camera, well, my last lion hunt that is all I did shoot a lion with- because I didn't get a shot at something I was allowed to shoot. I was likely a lot less annoyed about the whole situation than some idiot photosafari type who wants a refund because they didn't see a single lion to take a picture of, and I probably paid 10-15 times what the photosafari type does, in an area that they would not go in because game is wild and not available for pleasant viewing.

The article in short was so poorly done that snarky comments are really the only response that most folks who disagree with them will give.

cr thanks for your reasoned response.As I was alluding to, the statistics you are asking for are extremely difficult if not impossible to get, therefore what do? Nothing? Answer, the things we can control. In this case it is Hunting, and American hunting in particular. The point is that while we are debating this the lion population is decreasing. If nothing is done, then in a few years lions will be in the same situation as tigers ie. no hunting and still decreasing populations.
I still think that we should stop treating these guys as "the enemy" (eg.they just want to control people not save the lion (BS in my opinion) because, guess what, they will still be able to photograph these animals in parks and we will not be able to hunt them.
My original point was that the article DID present both sides of the argument, you just have to read the whole article.
Just my 2 cents, Peter.

Peter,

I think that the "scientists" involved such as the Joberts really DON'T care about the fate of the lion. It's all about money and "being important" to someone like that. HSUS is another example of an org that really doesn't give much of a damn about animals, its money to them also. Take a look at some of the stories about poor abused animals and then look at where their money goes (fundraising and legal action) to see that is the case. To me, to think otherwise is fatally misguided.

Now, the average wildlife scientist may have a bias, but is willing to let evidence point where it may. Similarly, the average contributor to HSUS may be concerned about the well being of animals, and is just ignorant of what is being done in their name. These folks may be reached with good research and a laying of facts before them. Supposedly, CITES and other government bodies are supposed to use facts and not emotion to make decisions on these issues, but who knows what will happen.

I get your point that both sides were presented, but it was by someone who was trying to skirt with the borders of journalism. You can't read that piece and think that there are two reasoned sides, but rather it reads like a person who is trying to explain why Galileo was excommunicated to a modern audience.

I think we do need to consider those who are deliberately skewing the debate without attempting to use logical evidence as the enemy. They are. The uninformed need to get some decent information in front of them. Unfortunately, as the media has folks in it who are there "to make a difference" as opposed to journalists who are there to get the information out. No one in media seems to be willing to use the logical example of Kenya and its wildlife as opposed to Tanzania and its wildlife and strict nonhunting and hunting being the biggest difference between the two publicly.

What to do? Let the local wildlife authorities do their jobs and lets get a real scientific study of the issue done with real scientists, not some publicist like Joubert. There have been folks advocating this here, but maybe the government should be helping with unbiased research instead of having politically motivated agendae being driven down our throats.

quote:

Originally posted by crbutler:
Peter,

I think that the "scientists" involved such as the Joberts really DON'T care about the fate of the lion..

Folks - Lets be very clear. Neither Derek Joubert or his wife are scientists, period! They are anti-hunting film makers, nothing more.

Aaron,

That's why I put it in quote marks.

I think National Geographic calls them "scientist in residence" or some such hogwash. I think that the popular perception is that they are scientists. Just having a PhD or publication in a peer reviewed journal does not make you a scientist though, either. In reality its a mindset of curiosity and following the scientific method that makes one a scientist.

quote:

Originally posted by crbutler:
Aaron,

That's why I put it in quote marks.

I think National Geographic calls them "scientist in residence" or some such hogwash. I think that the popular perception is that they are scientists. Just having a PhD or publication in a peer reviewed journal does not make you a scientist though, either. In reality its a mindset of curiosity and following the scientific method that makes one a scientist.

Agreed! I too was just emphasising your point.

quote:

I think that the "scientists" involved such as the Joberts really DON'T care about the fate of the lion..

And, I am sorry, but statements like this really blow my mind. Why in heavens name would you attribute this view to someone else when (I assume) you would not attribute this view to yourself? The answer I suspect is that by making this attribution you relieve yourself of having to answer the points they raise. This is nonsense! Why do people who have a different view than yours always have to have evil motives? Answer: because if I believe that then I don't have to worry about answering them!

And then there is this:
"Just having a PhD or publication in a peer reviewed journal does not make you a scientist though"
Oh? What does? Science operates by peer review. That is the ultimate standard. When you defend your thesis you don't defend it before the national republican Party Convention, you defend it before scientists who are knowledgeable in your chosen field. When you publish, before it is even accepted, your paper is passed for critical comment to experts in that field. If it is considered an advancement of knowledge then it is published and, always, with critical comments by fellow scientists. THAT is how science operates. Now I know that you think that the National Academy of Sciences is full of liberals. Why? Well it must be because they have come out and stated that global warming is settled science. You don't like that view, so, therefore, they must have evil motives = liberals! Boy, life is really pretty simple!
Peter.

Peter,

To be a scientist requires a method of thought. Identify a problem, propose a cause, develop a theorem, and test it with experimental evidence sound familar?

Just because you have a PhD does not make you use that method of thought, ergo sum, a scientist. It also means one CAN be a scientist without having an academic degree.

There are a number of journals out there (lots in my field of medicine) that are "peer reviewed" but not scientific, if you catch my drift.

Mr. Joubert is obviously more interested in his agenda than any serious scientific debate, otherwise his "work" would not be as it is. His work is, as you put it, "before the Republican National Committee", not really scientific in nature.

I did not say the man is evil, but rather he is so far down his ideological road that he cannot conceive that he is wrong. That is a hallmark of a ideologue, and in fact the antithesis of a scientist. You decided to bring politics into this. With regards to global warming, its pretty unscientific to state that it is unequivocally man made. Heck, they have revised the theory (which is normal scientific practice) when the observations have not coincided with their evidence. My problem with anthropogenic global warming is not CO2 levels, but rather the fact that CO2 levels have not been connected with real- world evidence of climate change as the theory predicts. I am NOT political as far as science goes, give me factual information, and I accept it. The whole commentary on the USF&W may have come across as conservative because of my choice of examples, but trust me GW Bush and his administration have not been our friends either.

I assume that you must have a job in academia to defend the National Academy of Sciences so vigorously. I don't have a membership in NAS, so I am not horribly familiar with how that particular scientific body works.

I have typically used medical issues as my principal area of evidence because I am familiar with it. Example, the CDC. They do very good work with regards to infectious diseases. They allowed themselves to become involved politically with the whole gun control issue, and under the guise of "public health" published a bunch of very poor research that besmirched the CDC quite badly, that has since been disproven by other researchers, but that would have been (and was by many of us, but as a community doc, I was not invited to the table) picked apart by any reasonable group of peer reviewers with a practical experience in the matter.

The issue is that science has become a commodity, and there are large numbers of people (bureaucrats in the academic institutions) who are more worried about an agenda or their careers than being scientists.

I think you need to look at yourself, and what you just wrote and you can see that you are doing what you are claiming I am doing. Conservative = uneducated, ignorant people who are ideologically unable to see the truth when it is put in front of them.

I think that you can be reasonable here, but you seem to have decided that because I don't see any positive in Joubert's work, and his unwillingness to realize when someone points out that his "research" has horrible holes in it, and he still propagandizes, that he is the enemy of scientific thought and reasonable wildlife management practices, that I am incapable of understanding that many of the people who I don't agree with may well be well meaning. I can understand that, but a select few are not capable of being reasoned with.

Peter,
I read the link before I responded...also forwarded to a number of friends......your point???

Boy, thanks again cr for a reasoned post! if I came off the way you describe then I apologize. It was not my intention. I am not aware of Joubert's "ideological road" but I have heard some interviews with him and his wife. They are, as was posted above, film makers. As such, they spend hours in the field every day, year in and year out, observing and filming lions. They do not just show up for a 21 day lion hunt, look for a shootable lion, shoot it and leave. Their observations of lion behaviour are just that, observations, but based on extensive hours watching lion behaviour. As such, their observations should be given some credence. My concern is that we reject their conclusion just because we find it unacceptable, and then look for ways to demonize them just because we don't want to be bothered refuting whatever it is they assert.
Now, we seem to be getting past the original subject which was I believe a recommendation that the USA enforce the existing CITIES regulations or regulate in some additional way rules governing importation of lion "parts".( As I recollect, this was done a year or two ago with the polar bear hunted in Canada). We all agree I believe that lion populations are much less than they were, and that there appear significant dangers to the continued existence of viable numbers of lions, such that their continued hunting is in jeopardy. The question is: What can be done? Whether we like it or not, something WILL be done. We are either part of the debate or not. I am suggesting that labelling people of different views in a derogatory fashion is not the best way of claiming a seat at the table. We continue to assert an adversary relationship with those who hold differing views, and I claim that this will not accomplish our objective, which, I believe is to safeguard lion hunting. So, the question remains: "How do we best safeguard lion hunting", bearing in mind that decisions will be made not just by us, but also by people who watch Joubert's films, watch National Geographic programs, and watch You Tube videos of canned lion hunts in RSA. It is public opinion and governments that will decide this debate, not just hunters.
Again, I appreciate the tone with which you have conducted your side of this debate, and I hope that I have not crossed the line.
Peter.

Well Tom, I don't know how to say this, but let me try. The subject heading was "Lion decrease- our fault". The text was a link and then a statement:
"I suppose they have to blame someone !
Same old ,same old story."
I quoted points from the article that was linked showing that the link was NOT claiming it was "our fault" but in fact showed competing views as to the fault.
Sorry I don't know what else to say!
Peter.

Call a spade a spade. Given the chance the "folks" would kill off every wild animal on the face of the earth.

Peter,

I am glad you can see what I am saying is not any personal reflection on you. I don't think you have crossed the line, but I am puzzled that you keep defending some rather indefensible types.

I will grant that my personal experience with lion behavior would be less than a film maker's such as Joubert, but then I would think a PH has as much or more experience with the lions as Joubert does, and you don't hear them agreeing with him much, either. I don't reject Joubert's conclusion because I don't agree with what he says, but rather because he does not logically think. His conclusions are not scientific in nature, and he oversimplifies way too much. His conclusions are not supported in scientific literature by and large, and thus he should be told that he does not have a place at the discussion until he becomes better educated and willing to use scientific thinking to solve the problem.

The only way you can counteract a person who's only appeal is to emotion is to show that he is dead wrong, and that his emotion is wholly inappropriate. A lion is not a big kitty cat.

The original commentary had nothing to do with CITES. The US is a member of CITES, and actually has regulations that are tougher than what CITES demands. The polar bear argument is a farce on its face. The polar bear is controlled under CITES, and was before the AGW crowd got the polar bear considered an endangered species because of the "future threat" of AGW. The environmentalist lobby felt that by getting a few "high profile" animals listed as endangered (despite increasing numbers in some populations in Canada) they could use that as a "big stick" to get carbon regulation in place without having to convince the pesky republicans in congress to pass a law. The ban on hunting imports (and it is a total ban at this point) has cost several native communities their biggest cash commodity, with no scientific evidence to back up that the ban on hunting them in the US and importation from other countries is going to do anything. In fact, the USF&W folks talk about the "need for carbon regulation because of loss of sea ice in the future" as the reasoning here, and have never justified an immediate impact on the bear. This is the kind of "regulation" that HSUS and PeTA want used on the lion. The hunting populations are studied extensively in the areas that are hunted, and a quota used to be set based on the game counts- although it seems that in Zambia lately, it has been circumvented by politicians just like here in the US.

My suspicion is that your comment on lion "parts" is based on the numbers out of the lion farming industry of South Africa, but again, given the reluctance of the people who wrote the article to cite their sources and information in any meaningful way, I cannot know for sure and thus, I cannot refute what they say (which is why they write it in that manner in the first place...)

I understand your point that public opinion can be part of what we will be up against. Unfortunately, that is likely to be impossible to effect much because of the lack of good science education for the past 20 years, and the glorification of anthropomorphized animals of all sorts by the Disney crowd. The best we can hope for is to keep the public as a whole relatively out of this, and keep the issue in the scientific evidence realm. The African governments are pretty good about wanting to see value for the lion- after all, they live with them.

I don't disagree that the YouTube SA shoots are a disgrace and hunters should really reconsider what they put out there, but I think you can find a lot of stuff out there that is distasteful totally unrelated to hunting as well.

The increase in lion take over the last 10 years coincides with the growth in the canned lion industry in SA.

It is pretty obvious that lions are in decline in the wild. It probably is due to governement desire and so they don't mind setting the quotas high.

In any event if they succeed in this and list the lion like the Cheetah and the black faced impalla then they will decline at an even faster rate. Somehow that will also be out fault.

Note that the the next major country that will experience the complete loss of wild lions is Kenya and they haven't allowed hunting for 40 years.

A number of years ago our hunting party found the remains of a male lion in a snare. Based on the number of snares we picked up and I saw accumulated at the camp I have to believe poachers are a significant killer of lions. I would be very interested to get input from some PHs to hear their thoughts on poachers and lion.
I also remember a segment on 60 Minutes discussing the killing of lions using a product named Furadan which I believe was a pesticide. This was being done to prevent lions killing cattle. If a cow was killed, the carcass was laced with this product and no more lions.
The few hunting firms I have talked with in Tanzania have vigourous programs to shoot only older animals and in fact one would only shoot three from their concession although they have five on quota. They felt five was too many!
As someone pointed out Kenya is experiencing a decline in lions yet has not hunted them for forty years. How is this possible?
Why is it the first place to place the blame is hunters? Unless someone generates a comprehensive report of the problem and its causes rather than a snapshot of a segment I have little confidence in their findings.

I soon expect a "scientific" article proving that Lions, Rhinos and Eles are only poached for food because the Colonists are starving the natives since slavery was abolished...evil Capiltalist hunters are the root cause