Sick ****

[Grant]

I'd ****ing kill this **** with my bare hands. Can't obide animal cruelty of any kind. ****ing scum.

 

[Tenebrous]

This blokes just a gutless **** with too much money, hope he gets lynched.

 

[Simply Sci-fi]

I agree with all of the outrage hurled at this dentist who killed a lion. We find it abhorrent but I'm sure that among this gentlemen's friends and family, it must be something to brag about.

It seems to me that the only way that people's habits will change is via peer outrage. If enough people are outspoken about, say wild animal hunting, it may de-incentivise people from doing it. That may be the case for other conservation issues such as buying ivory products. Perhaps, also for many of the other scourges of the world, such as manipulative/exploitative landlords and employers.

I feel that we in the West, sitting in our comfortable arm chairs need to see the bigger picture. We need to be willing to incentivise local people not to take part in hunting, because when it comes down to the prosperity and their families, the money from game hunters is extremely tempting. Lions outside of the National Park attack the livestock of local farmers, which is also an issue.

If the West does not become more involved in the problems of Africa and attempt to raise people's prospects, we'll probably see a great many species brought to the edge of extinction. Western countries are making ever greater technological advances while other parts of the world are still in squalor.

 

[Mr-shifter]

From my understanding of big game hunting, the government of whichever country you are going to go to has to grant a license to kill a particular animal. They have to cull a certain amount of animals per year because as bizarre as this sounds, parts of Africa aren't as big as they used to be. The wildlife used to be able to migrate from one side of the continent to the other to maintain access to water. There is now a road network and development across the continent that largely prevents this. Any given area can only support a limited number of animals.

So rather than culling the animals themselves, the governments of some of the countries use this license system to supplement their income. Whilst they are doing this there will be no shortage of americans with huge bank balances that want to go to africa and pretend to be the great white hunter. Sadly I don't see them giving up this source of income. There is a solution to controlling the number of animals that inhabit an area, as this is often done with elephants, but can largely be done with most known big game in an area. The females can be darted with contraceptive drugs. In the case of elephants this was done yearly. By controlling the birth rate in this way the number of animals stays known. However the number of permits sold drops to zero.

I think Craig has hit the nail on the head with how you deal with these people. This guys business is now ruined. People will express their outrage at his actions by not allowing him the means to do it again, i.e. cutting off his income. Wether he gets extradited to face charges in zimbabwe or not, he has ruined his life through his actions. This will be his punishment at the very least, and I don't think this is something he will ever be able to shake as long as he lives.

 

[Tenebrous]

Well at least he'll now struggle to get his "trophies" back to America as it looks like a lot of the airlines are banning to transportation of big game items into the states.
I'm so glad this is rumbling on and not fading away.
Trophies sorry in mean head and skin of a once majestic animal, killed for fun.

 

[weasel]

From my understanding of big game hunting, the government of whichever country you are going to go to has to grant a license to kill a particular animal. They have to cull a certain amount of animals per year because as bizarre as this sounds, parts of Africa aren't as big as they used to be. The wildlife used to be able to migrate from one side of the continent to the other to maintain access to water. There is now a road network and development across the continent that largely prevents this. Any given area can only support a limited number of animals.

So rather than culling the animals themselves, the governments of some of the countries use this license system to supplement their income. Whilst they are doing this there will be no shortage of americans with huge bank balances that want to go to africa and pretend to be the great white hunter. Sadly I don't see them giving up this source of income. There is a solution to controlling the number of animals that inhabit an area, as this is often done with elephants, but can largely be done with most known big game in an area. The females can be darted with contraceptive drugs. In the case of elephants this was done yearly. By controlling the birth rate in this way the number of animals stays known. However the number of permits sold drops to zero.

I see the logic, although surely it makes more sense to send the animal to somewhere else that doesn't currently have an abundance of said animal. I mean other African countries rather than Zoo's but even a zoo is better than shooting the thing. I know a lot of African countries are dirt poor and corrupt as they come, Robert Mugabe is a prime example, but is the few thousand dollars that this brings in really THAT important to them?

 

[Mr-shifter]

I see the logic, although surely it makes more sense to send the animal to somewhere else that doesn't currently have an abundance of said animal. I mean other African countries rather than Zoo's but even a zoo is better than shooting the thing. I know a lot of African countries are dirt poor and corrupt as they come, Robert Mugabe is a prime example, but is the few thousand dollars that this brings in really THAT important to them?

I think some of the surplus animals end up in Game reserves and are taken by safari operators. I think there are just too many to do this for all of them.

These countries have corrupt systems, so it's not necessarily money going to the top of the tree. Some of these hunts cost upwards of $35000 to kill the animal, as well as a similar amount to prepare the skin and head and get it sent back to wherever. The starting fee is just to pull the trigger. In a country that's dirt poor, that's a lot of money that would go into greasing the many layers of administration that need to ok this thing. Sadly, you can see why this sort of practice will unlikely go away.

Hopefully, when people see this guy pot less and resented for the rest of his life for what he has done, having ruined his business and made himself unemployable, and probably selfishly ruined the lives of his family anyone who was considering a big game hunt will think again about the potential consequences.