Well written article from Outside Magazine about tigers, rhino's, poachers, and India.

http://www.outsideonline.com/o...a-Bullet.html?page=1

Interesting article. Might make a bit more sense to hunt the area in a sustainable way and make the area really pay for the locals...but I guess shooting the poachers outright is a workable second-best option.

Great comment after the article.

Completely aside from the moral question about shooting poachers, how about harvesting a few animals per year in a sustainable way to make the wildlife REALLY pay the locals so they need not starve enough to resort to poaching and therefore need not be killed for poaching? Then hire the reformed poachers as hunting guides for visiting hunters. Let's say the area is losing 5 tigers per year to poachers. It's all but guaranteed that the first legal tiger hunt in India in decades will net a million dollars from a visiting sport hunter. Subsequent hunts taking place each year would probably not bring that much less. That money would go a long way toward creating a local "investment" in wildlife don't you think? Legally shooting one will absolutely generate enough revenue to save the other four so why not do it? Given the numbers of Rhino they lose per year and the fact that foreigners regularly pay $60,000 to hunt White Rhino and $250,000 to hunt Black Rhino in South Africa, harvesting less than half of their current poaching losses within a legal construct will generate sufficient revenue to protect those that would have been lost otherwise. Again, so why not do it and watch the population increase? Sure, as in Africa there will be leakages due to corruption, but look at the statistics describing Elephant populations in Kenya since hunting has been outlawed and in Zimbabwe since hunting was legalized and tell me that it hasn't worked. The question for ideologue environmentalists then becomes this ..."Do you hate hunters more than you love wildlife?"

+1 to all above

However the hypocrisy and corruption ensure that that day might never come.
Secondly the love for money overcomes all.
I do hope i live to see the day that this happens but seeing the current trend, i doubt it ever will.

Frostbit,
I was discussing that very thing with an antihunter the other day and finally I got her to see the ratioonale of the whole thing. However she was just a "Green " not an real nut job.
It did surprise me when she fianally agreed with me.