Any animal killers here?

[4mastacker]

Plenty of grey tree rats in evidence along me canal yesterday - there were some big 'uns; pity no-one had a convenient shotgun to hand. A couple of mink were also spotted; bad news for the wildfowl which seemed to be recovering their numbers.

[Capetonian]

The Continental Telegraph

Africa World

Botswana’s Elephant Problem – Just How Do You Make Wild Elephants Valuable?

The only way they'll survive is if they're valuable

Things that human beings find valuable tend to increase in number, things that humans find valueless tend to decrease. Things that humans find costly – which have negative value to humans – tend to disappear. In these simple statements of fact we have the basic problem faced by Botswana over their elephant population. And thus this proposal for a cull, those elephants culled being turned into pet food.

Somehow, that Botswanan elephant population has to be turned into something which produces value for Botswanans. Otherwise that elephant population will disappear over time. Just because that’s the way we humans are.

Botswana may lift elephant hunting ban and turn culled animals into pet food There would be a great deal more value if the tusks could be turned into ornaments of course. Conservationists have expressed “huge disappointment” after the government of Botswana’s said it would consider lifting a ban on hunting elephants and turning culled beasts into meat. The recommendations were made in a report presented to president Mokgweetsi Masisi late on Thursday. Botswana has around 130,000 elephants, the largest population in the world, and has long been hailed as a safe refuge for the species amid an Africa-wide poaching crisis. But some Botswanan MPs argue the population is out of control and presents a danger to the lives and livelihoods of small scale farmers.

130,000 elephants have a certain detrimental effect upon the livelihoods of peasant scale farmers – still most in Botswana. That is, there’s a negative cost to having them around. That’s going to lead to a tendency that the elephants disappear.

Yes, of course, elephants can also have a positive value. It’s possible to charge us rich westerners to go and see the elephants in Botswana, obviously enough. And there’s certainly enough of us who insist that the mere existence of elephants somewhere is of value to us.

But the preservation or not of those herds is going to depend upon the net value of their existence being positive for those they exist among. The entire trick, the game if you wish, is to engineer a rise in the positive value of existence so as to create that net positive.

For, whatever the shoulds and oughtas, only those things which have a positive capturable value to humans will survive being among humans. Killing some to make pet food seems one possible way. Allowing trophy shooting of the old bulls perhaps – elephants being matriarchal and bulls being in oversupply. Ivory would be even better if it weren’t for the stupidity displayed on the subject.

Hell, even taxing Greenpeace to buy the land the elephants roam upon would work.

But to all opponents of the pet food scheme. What, exactly, is your plan to produce that positive value? Because it really is only that that’s going to preserve the herds.
Tim Worstall

[Cacophonix]

The Continental Telegraph

Africa World

Botswana’s Elephant Problem – Just How Do You Make Wild Elephants Valuable?

The only way they'll survive is if they're valuable

Tim Worstall

The human race, vermin, who understand the commercial price of everything and the ultimate value of nothing!

"And crawling on the planet's face,
some insects called the human race.
Lost in time, and lost in space.
And meaning."

RIchard O' Brien

Sadly we are not even as useful as insects like the bees whose destruction could bring our little fool's paradise to an end!



Caco

[Ex-Ascot]

Interesting article Cape. Sure the old lone males could be shot it would not affect a herd. Or even take out a young bachelor herd. But you bring the w@nker American hunters into here and are they going to stop at that? They will shoot at any ellie they see. The return to hunting is out of the question. I have addressed this point here, if you cull you have to take out the whole herd at once. This idea of dog food is ridiculous. Ellie herds are between 10 to 100. Take an average of 50 and the average weight of an adult of about 5 tonnes. How are you going to transport 250 tonnes of meat out of remote bush to a processing factory in temperatures of up to 50 degs before it rots? They haven't got the resources or intelligence to cope with these logistics. Even if they butcher and dry the meat in the bush it is going to take a team of hundreds to achieve this for a whole herd. We haven't got that number of experienced folk here to do it. And, we do not have the number of trucks to take them out there. Also, can dried meat be used for dog food? Dunno. Maybe. Ellie dog chews. Also, how many folk here feed their dogs on dedicated dog food? Most of the dogs live on road kill, donkeys etc and rubbish bags.

It is an election thing. They have to balance up this very stupid idea against very inflated tourism income.

[Mrs Ex-Ascot]

This is a very well written and balanced article from the Beeb, and in my opinion accurately reports the current situation here.



Edit; for some reason I can't post the link.

BBC News article titled; Elephant Poaching in Botswana 'no hoax'.

(https://www.bbc,com/news/world-africa-4732124)

[Woody]

Interesting article, must be very difficult balancing the needs of the locals with those of the tourists, but hopefully they won’t allow any hunting especially the “canned “ variety.

[Capetonian]

Canned 'hunting' is truly an obscenity. Anyone involved in it should be treated the same as paedoohiles who travel.to poor countries to kiddy-fiddle.

[Flintstone]

Better still. Tell a parent elephant that the 'hunter' tried to fiddle with their offspring.

Law of the jungle, innit?

[Ex-Ascot]

Just felt something on my arm. Thinking it was an ant or a fly I swatted it. It was a minuscule Praying Mantis. It seems OK. There was one on my arm yesterday in my outside office could have been the same one. They are very reluctant to leave you. Incredible bad luck for me if I had killed it.

[Undried Plum]

Just out of interest, what is the 'Ounce of Fives Group'? I've heard of a bunch of fives, but never an ounce of. Google doesn't help.

5s are a good cartridge load for squirrel. A single pellet hit will kill the fecker stone dead. 7s are just too fine and 4s or 3s have too few pellets in a load to be sure to hit the bastard. 7s are better for rough shooting of partridge etc. You'd use 3s for something chunkier like a hare, or even a fox if you can get close enough.

[Hydromet]

Thanks for that, Undried Plum. It makes sense, of course, just not something I had considered.

[Hydromet]

Ex Ascot, if those baby mantises (manti?) are amazing - small but prfectly formed replicas of the adults. Had the good fortune of watching an egg capsule hatch and about a dozen little guys 3-5 mm long crawling out and making their way in the big wide world.

[Mrs Ex-Ascot]

Another American woman who likes to kill animals for fun; https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/articl ... -lion.html

Seems that at least there are some Americans who want to put a stop to trophy hunting.

[Flintstone]

5s are a good cartridge load for squirrel.

With my semi-automatic (shotgun) I load with 1 x No1 50g followed by 5s. The first shot takes out the drey with the subsequent rounds used to finish off any survivors.

There are rarely, if ever, any survivors.

Sticking with the subject of clearing squirrels as vermin I have just obtained one of these (below). Runs off CO2 bulbs, is fixed to a tree or post and baited with hazlenut paste. Squirrel puts its head inside, trips the trigger which fires a captive bolt. The counter clocks up a kill, the device automatically re-sets ready for the next one. It's DEFRA approved and a much better proposition than Venn traps or cages. They also make them for mice, rats and mink (different sizes and different bolt).

[Mrs Ex-Ascot]

This article is not for the faint hearted; I am still feeling nauseous. https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/articl ... rkets.html

[Flintstone]

I saw the headline to that link and clicked 'X', that's just horrible.

I wouldn't feel the same way about a cage full of chickens and someone could argue that I was being irrational but I cannot even begin to countenance dogs as food.

[Capetonian]

That probably rules out Indonesia as a holiday destination for me.

Adding to the list of places which I won't go to for ethical reasons.

[Ex-Ascot]

This rules out Spain for me:

https://globalanimalwelfare.org/top-10- ... -in-spain/

[Capetonian]

The Spanish attitude to animals is utterly disgusting. As the article above mentions, it's not just the ritual torturing of bulls in front of bloodthirsty spectators, there's a whole lot more.

Bull torturing is banned in the Islas Canarias, and in the Catalan Provinces.

[Capetonian]

Seems that the UK has its own pathetic Walter Palmer.

Revealed: The retired British businessman who is one of the world's top big game hunters

Wearing khaki fatigues with his rifle slung over his shoulder, Malcolm King grins as he lifts the head of his latest blood-stained kill for the cameraman. The huntsman has travelled around the world shooting hundreds of wild game for fun and become the envy of his fellow hunters.

His name appears more than 30 times on awards pages of an international safari website for completing goals requiring shooting some of the African ‘big five’, made up of the lion, leopard, elephant, rhino and buffalo.

An investigation by The Telegraph has established that this respected hunter is a British pensioner, father of two and wealthy businessman. The 74-year-old director of a property managing agents, based in the British Virgin Islands, is a member of the Safari Club International (SCI), an organisation promoting hunting as conservation.

One SCI award - the “Grand Slam Cats of the World” - required four creatures be killed from a list that includes an African lion, leopard, cheetah, wildcat, cougar and lynx. The “African 15” category he is listed as having also won needed one of the ‘African Big Five’ to be shot. He is named as having completed the “Grand Slam African 29” which needs a minimum of three of the ‘Big Five’ killed, along with 26 other creatures.

When Mr King was tracked down to his offices in Gloucestershire, he refused to say which animals he has shot or whether he had imported trophies to the UK or his home in Jersey. He denied being a trophy hunter, insisting he was simply a huntsman who has now retired.

As a businessman with “extensive business ties” in South Africa, he said he had joined business acquaintances on local hunts for meat, adding it was “no different to stalking or culling animals in the Highlands” and insists “there is nothing wrong with it if done ethically and legally”. He added: “Everything I have ever done has been legal and with correct paperwork.”

But the revelation that a top huntsmen is British has shocked animal rights campaigners. Eduardo Goncalves, founder of the Campaign to Ban Trophy Hunting, said Mr King was Britain’s Walter Palmer, the American dentist who controversially killed Cecil the Lion on a big game hunt in Zimbabwe. Mark Jones, of the Born Free Foundation, said: “That a prolific huntsman hails from the UK and been given ‘awards’ by Safari Club International for the sheer number and variety of animals slaughtered is truly shocking.”

Last year Mr King celebrated his 74th birthday on a 10-day safari trip in Cameroon. An online account of that expedition reveals how respected he is in hunting circles. Stiliyan Kadrev, who runs the Balkan Hunters Club and produced a film of the tour, told how his “English client … needed a number of specific animals from the rainforest”.

“Malcolm King has been actively engaged in trophy hunting worldwide since 2000,” he wrote. “Lots of world-renowned hunters may feel envious of his extensive trophy collection. It contains some of the hardest and most desired trophies from Asia, Europe and America, as well as from Africa.”

Explaining how salt blocks were used to lure some animals, while hunting dogs tracked others, he said a 15-year-old buffalo was wounded, then tracked before eventually being killed by the group. He wrote that Mr King “had not expected an early stroke of hunting luck” and “got the hardest African trophy - a forest buffalo” which was skinned, cut up and smoked.

The next day they killed a black-backed duiker and “Malcolm was visibly pleased”. Finally, Mr King used a “one-barrel shotgun” to blast a Bates’s pygmy antelope which he “had long craved for”. Mr Kadrev added: “He was very happy he was about to add such a rare species to his collection.” Mr Kadrev told the Telegraph: “He is perhaps the greatest English hunter in present times.”

Mr King was brought up in the Somerset countryside where he learned to shoot and hunt. The SCI has 50,000 members worldwide and insists it promotes “ethical hunting based on the concepts of science-based sustainable use” to “conserve wildlife”.

Mr King said Cameroon was his last trip and he had retired due to failing health. However, Mr Goncalves insisted that Mr King’s tally of kills suggests he has shot many more animals than the American who killed Cecil the Lion. “King is among the world’s ‘elite’ big game hunters - very few have amassed so many of the industry’s obscene awards. He has travelled to every corner of the globe to shoot endangered animals for amusement.

“If you add the minimum number of kills needed for all his awards, it comes to well over 500. International law allows wildlife serial killers to get away with murder.”

Elephant feet, polar bear skins and a rug made from a slaughtered lion are among the endangered species parts shipped into Britain as trophies in a single year, the Telegraph can reveal.

A total of 86 rare animal body parts, many from creatures threatened with extinction, have been imported into Britain during the financial year 2017-18.

Analysis of the macabre catalogue held by the international body controlling such shipments reveals how a thriving trophy hunter industry exists with huntsmen eager to celebrate their kills with garish mementos.

Under international rules such trophies can be brought into the UK only if they do no affect the survival of any species.

The details of the imports come as The Telegraph reveals that a prolific big game huntsman is a British pensioner who has earned numerous hunting awards after killing some of the so-called ‘Big Five’ - lions, leopards, elephants, rhino and bison.

Malcolm King, a 74-year-old businessman now living in Jersey, is believed to have ticked off hundreds of wild game to scoop the awards over several decades of shooting.

The father of two last night refused to say whether he had imported trophies to Britain, and insisted he was not a “trophy hunter” but a huntsman. There is no suggestion he has broken any laws.

While poaching involves illegally shooting endangered species, many countries permit professional hunts, often allowing older or weaker animals to be killed. Hunting campaigners, including Mr King, claim their ‘sport’ helps conservation and can provide much-needed tourism to often poor areas.

However, animal rights campaigners have condemned the practice. More than 150 MPs have signed an Early Day Motion (EDM) calling on Environment Secretary Michael Gove to ban the importation of trophies. More than 280,000 people have signed an online petition urging Defra to ban lion trophies being shipped to the UK.

Trophy hunting imports have already been banned by France, Australia and the Netherlands. According to files held by Cites, the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species which oversees the agreement governments have signed concerning the trade and movement of wild animals, 82 of the most endangered species or creatures whose future is threatened if trade not carefully controlled were imported to the UK in 2017-18.

Chris Packham, environmentalist and television presenter, said trophy hunting made him “ashamed to be a British conservationist”.

“The fact this is happening spits in the face of the nation of animal lovers that is ever more rapidly realising that there is no longer enough wildlife to waste and that thus killing wildlife for fun is a dying business.

“Conservation can and does work globally without killing for fun. Culling may be necessary but that should be scientifically informed and strictly regulated.

“I, like most others, would like an immediate ban on the importation of trophies to the UK . This sanction has had a proven and rapid impact elsewhere.”

Joanna Lumley, the actress and animal rights campaigner, said: “I am opposed to any kind of hunting, and think the people who are trophy collectors are unfathomably dreadful.”

Zac Goldsmith, MP for Richmond and animal rights campaigner who tabled the EDM, told the Telegraph: “Trophy hunting involves killing some of the most beautiful wild animal species on earth simply for fun.

“It is not only damaging to the endangered species themselves, the evidence shows that importing the parts also provides cover for a brutal illegal trade.

“In more ways than one, it therefore harms the communities that rely on wildlife for tourism income. It is high time we banned the import of the so-called trophies to the U.K.”

A spokesman for the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs said under Cites rules such trophies can only be brought into the UK under strict rules.

Earlier this year, environment minister Therese Coffey said she was planning a roundtable discussion with organisations from all side of the debate surrounding trophy hunting in the near future.