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I guess the term "Animal Sanctuary" is still what I'm having trouble wrapping my mind around... I don't see any parallels between an "animal sanctuary" and a "zoo". Rather, I see them as complete opposites. There are no fences around a sanctuary. It's simply an area of land where humans are not allowed to hunt. The animals are free to roam wherever they desire, kill whatever they'd like to kill, and can leave whenever they want. So, if we compare that to a zoo, which is a defined/enclosed area where the animals are trapped, you can draw conclusions that say that a wild animal in an animal sanctuary would be more likely to kill you than one would in a zoo setting. Zoo animals get spoon-fed the same food everyday (by humans!) from the same spot and grow accustomed to having people around them all day, every day. Wild animals living in an animal sanctuary still hunts and kills a different life-form every day in order to stay alive. No medical staff, no trainers, relatively no humans at all...
Yes, most likely he had other people with him and could very well have been on top of a vehicle that would have given him a sense of security, but to say that it still wasn't dangerous is up for debate. Most times when you hunt predators like that, they won't let you hunt from the ground, because you WILL get killed. It's a liability thing. Most times hunters want to get as close to their prey as possible before killing it. That's what hunting is (for most hunters, at least. Yes, there are some sick mofo's out there that get off on killing, but not many): out-thinking, out-tracking, out-stealthing another living being. It's not about shooting and killing something. Just like riding a dirt bike isn't about arriving at your destination, it's about experiencing the ride along the way...
Keep in mind too: assuming that particular lion just walked right over and took the arrow without putting up a fuss is ridiculous. To assume that the hunt was easy is to assume that the lion was stupid. Which, in my mind, is equally as disrespectful as shooting one out of a zoo. There's a reason lions are at the top of the food chain. And it's not like they are the biggest baddest animals in Africa. There are other animals that can kill a lion. They're the top killers in the land because they're smarter than the others.
Don't get me wrong, I agree, it's sad, it's inhumane, and it's morally wrong. But it wasn't shooting fish in a barrel. To be honest, I don't like the fact that somebody from America is legally allowed to go kill something in another area of the world, but that's not my decision to make. I'm essentially playing devil's advocate on this one, simply to try and shut-up people who think they have "hunting" all figured out (especially the people who have never hunted before). Just for clarification, I used to be a hunter and I didn't like it. I don't like killing things. But somehow I still think that if compared hunting that lady that almost killed me vs. hunting a lion, I'd be safer hunting against that stupid c***. And yes, I would shoot her from roughly 500 yards and leave her on the ground for the coyotes. The circle of life, bitch lol
What helps that economy most is all the Revenue they make from tourist paying to go on Safaris just to take pictures/photos of the Animals. What one sick fuck who want to just kill stuff for pleasure pay can not possibly compare to the amount of money thounsands of families pay to see the animals alive. Keep shooting the damn animals and soon non will be left for the Safari tourism.
There are just some sick fucks out there who get pleasure from killing stuff and enjoy trying to impress others by killing animals that never had a chance from thier high powered scopes and weapons.
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http://mobile.nytimes.com/2015/08/05/opinion/in-zimbabwe-we-dont-cry-fo…
In Zimbabwe, We Don’t Cry for Lions
By GOODWELL NZOU
August 4, 2015
Winston-Salem, N.C. — MY mind was absorbed by the biochemistry of gene editing when the text messages and Facebook posts distracted me.
So sorry about Cecil.
Did Cecil live near your place in Zimbabwe?
Cecil who? I wondered. When I turned on the news and discovered that the messages were about a lion killed by an American dentist, the village boy inside me instinctively cheered: One lion fewer to menace families like mine.
My excitement was doused when I realized that the lion killer was being painted as the villain. I faced the starkest cultural contradiction I’d experienced during my five years studying in the United States.
Did all those Americans signing petitions understand that lions actually kill people? That all the talk about Cecil being “beloved” or a “local favorite” was media hype? Did Jimmy Kimmel choke up because Cecil was murdered or because he confused him with Simba from “The Lion King”?
In my village in Zimbabwe, surrounded by wildlife conservation areas, no lion has ever been beloved, or granted an affectionate nickname. They are objects of terror.
When I was 9 years old, a solitary lion prowled villages near my home. After it killed a few chickens, some goats and finally a cow, we were warned to walk to school in groups and stop playing outside. My sisters no longer went alone to the river to collect water or wash dishes; my mother waited for my father and older brothers, armed with machetes, axes and spears, to escort her into the bush to collect firewood.
A week later, my mother gathered me with nine of my siblings to explain that her uncle had been attacked but escaped with nothing more than an injured leg. The lion sucked the life out of the village: No one socialized by fires at night; no one dared stroll over to a neighbor’s homestead.
When the lion was finally killed, no one cared whether its murderer was a local person or a white trophy hunter, whether it was poached or killed legally. We danced and sang about the vanquishing of the fearsome beast and our escape from serious harm.
Recently, a 14-year-old boy in a village not far from mine wasn’t so lucky. Sleeping in his family’s fields, as villagers do to protect crops from the hippos, buffalo and elephants that trample them, he was mauled by a lion and died.
The killing of Cecil hasn’t garnered much more sympathy from urban Zimbabweans, although they live with no such danger. Few have ever seen a lion, since game drives are a luxury residents of a country with an average monthly income below $150 cannot afford.
Don’t misunderstand me: For Zimbabweans, wild animals have near-mystical significance. We belong to clans, and each clan claims an animal totem as its mythological ancestor. Mine is Nzou, elephant, and by tradition, I can’t eat elephant meat; it would be akin to eating a relative’s flesh. But our respect for these animals has never kept us from hunting them or allowing them to be hunted. (I’m familiar with dangerous animals; I lost my right leg to a snakebite when I was 11.)
The American tendency to romanticize animals that have been given actual names and to jump onto a hashtag train has turned an ordinary situation — there were 800 lions legally killed over a decade by well-heeled foreigners who shelled out serious money to prove their prowess — into what seems to my Zimbabwean eyes an absurdist circus.
PETA is calling for the hunter to be hanged. Zimbabwean politicians are accusing the United States of staging Cecil’s killing as a “ploy” to make our country look bad. And Americans who can’t find Zimbabwe on a map are applauding the nation’s demand for the extradition of the dentist, unaware that a baby elephant was reportedly slaughtered for our president’s most recent birthday banquet.
We Zimbabweans are left shaking our heads, wondering why Americans care more about African animals than about African people.
Don’t tell us what to do with our animals when you allowed your own mountain lions to be hunted to near extinction in the eastern United States. Don’t bemoan the clear-cutting of our forests when you turned yours into concrete jungles.
And please, don’t offer me condolences about Cecil unless you’re also willing to offer me condolences for villagers killed or left hungry by his brethren, by political violence, or by hunger.
Goodwell Nzou is a doctoral student in molecular and cellular biosciences at Wake Forest University.
'And please, don’t offer me condolences about Cecil unless you’re also willing to offer me condolences for villagers killed or left hungry by his brethren, by political violence, or by hunger.'
I think this bloke may be overlooking the billions of dollars worth of aid America has been donating to African regions since the 1960's, along with setting up numerous Health Programs and clinics etc. I mean, its not as if America set up the biggest ever initiative to combat Aids & HIV in Africa or anything....
Why are Americans, or anyone else for that matter, not allowed to object to the pointless slaying of animals, particularly those almost certain to face extinction in the near future?
It's a classic "first world problems" thing...We in the first world have our priorities so mixed up, and our heads so far up our butts that we don't recognize real issues when we see them. In the third world...those guys have real problems so they have bigger things to worry about than a stupid lion.
Further, American's, particularly urban Americans, have completely forgotten where animals rank in the grand scheme of things. Urban Americans think they are family, and somehow equal to people...we name them, put them in family photos, dress them up, let them live in our houses, ride in our cars, take them to doctors, paint their claws, brush their teeth, buy funeral plans for them and a whole bunch of other nonsense.
Rural Americans and even more so third world people, know where animals rightly rank in the world. They are tools and/or food, PERIOD. And are treated as such. Respected, yes, but never thought to be part of the family or even remotely equal to humans. EVER.
So the media tries to frame this lion as a "beloved" lion...as though the local people "love" him. This man plainly said that Africans don't love lions...they are scared of them and have no problem with them being killed. It was the American media, and spoiled American sheep that bought their line, that turned this into some type of local travesty. Zimbabwean's don't care about Cecil (they are glad he's dead)...but spoiled rotten American sheep with mixed up priorities are making death threats over it. Its ridiculous.
I look at trophy hunting the same way I look at smoking...Not something I'd ever do. Not something I'd want my kids to do...but I'm not going to protest, or petition governments to ban it, or vandalize smokers property, or picket over it, or villanize all smokers, or demean all smokers, or call smokers names or lose any sleep AT ALL over the fact that its legal.
Anyway, there is nothing wrong with thinking trophy hunting is cowardly, or thinking its wrong, and then choosing not to participate...but its so shallow and stupid for spoiled rotten Americans to react the way they did over this Lion, when there are WAY more important issues in the world...it just makes us look like the spoiled rich kid, who threw a fit that the brand new BMW M3 he got for Christmas, was the wrong color. It's pathetic.
As far as Americans looking like spoiled rich kids, I think you can ask most people from another country and they will say most Americans always look that way, and I think they would also agree with the defenders of Cecil.
To me most of the outrage seems to have died out, but I certainly don't get caught up in all of the media hype.
"There should NEVER be any "outrage" over killing or injuring an animal for any reason"
Such a sweeping and crazy statement given that it's a know fact that most people who mistreat animals will do the same thing to their children.
So Titan, in the picture, no big deal to you?
"They are tools and/or food, PERIOD. And are treated as such. Respected, yes, but never thought to be part of the family or even remotely equal to humans. EVER. "
That picture doesn't show any respect. . . That's not treating an animal as a tool or food. That's evil and torture for no reason. You're vastly misinterpreting what Titan is saying. . . Not surprising.
That's like posting photos of the Holocaust and saying "See, it's bad when people die." You're technically not wrong, but you're not right either. You're moving laterally in our vertically stacked argument.
You may want to come up with an argument, gather some facts, structure it in an organized manner, end with a conclusion, and then support it with personal experience. Only then can we start to have a meaningful discussion about the topic. Simply posting photos and going "Well, what about THIS shit?" doesn't do anything to further discussion on the matter at hand...
Pit Row
Let's just say that someone uses your driveway to turn around in and runs over your rake. You probably aren't going to comfort your children on the loss of that yard rake, or be extremely upset if the person doesn't even stop to check on the well being of that rake.
If they were to run over your family dog in your driveway instead, things change drastically.
I learned some very difficult-but much needed, and very healthy-lessons as a boy, growing up on a farm. My family had a dog, that I really liked. The number one rule on the ranch, is that dogs don't chase the horses. My dog got out one day, and was spotted by my uncle (who lived up the road) chasing the horses in the pasture...he shot my dog. Was I sad? Sure....But I got over it, and we moved on with our life and got another cattle dog. We didn't have a funeral, or have a huge family feud with my uncle or yell at him. It's a dog. Not a child.
We raised pigs and calves from babies (bottle fed them), got plenty attached to them. Then watched them get shot in the forehead, tied from their back legs and held upside-down from the front end loader, skinned, butchered and then we ate them.
Animals are respected, and cared for (they have to be when they are your source of sustenance), they are never abused (I got whooped with a belt one time because my grandfather saw me throwing rocks at one of his cows), and even "loved" to a certain extent. But they are not thought to be equal to humans.
Hunting for food. Rising your food. Killing predators to protect livestock. Using animals to make a living (for survival anciently, and to pay the bills in modern times). The way humans have done it since the beginning of humans...keeps animals in their proper place in society.
Multi-generational City people (the longer people live an urban lifestyle the worse it gets...I've been living in a "city" for 15 years and I'm already seeing my perspectives change-I don't even like to hunt any more) have NONE of those experiences and as a result, in my opinion, they develop a convoluted and unhealthy perspective on the role animals play in our society. And they assume they are equal to people. So they get "outraged" when a lion gets shot, and make death threats to trophy hunters (when there are far more important things to worry about int he world).
I look at that picture of the dog, and I think that's sad and unfortunate and move on with my life. I don't get outraged. I'm not going to jump to the conclusion that because he'll tie up a dog and leave it to starve, he'd do the same to one of his children, I'm not going start an online petition to ban greyhound racing. I'm not going to vandalize the dog owners property. or petition government for more laws. I'm not going to picket their business, or make death threats. And hope they rot in prison. Its just a dog. It's not a human. I don't support it, I don't encourage it. I'd NEVER treat an animal that way. Animals deserve respect. But I won't call for the guy that did its head, either.
How people treat animals has been used as a useful piece of evidence when exploring psychopathic tendencies.........
And after reading that post do you really think I'm saying animals are the same as a rake or shovel? Come on...
"Animals are respected, and cared for...they are never abused...and even "loved" to a certain extent. But they are not thought to be equal to humans."
" I'd NEVER treat an animal that way. Animals deserve respect."
When was the last time you had respect for a rake or shovel or "loved" a rake or shovel, and felt a shovel deserved respect? Animals aren't inanimate objects...but they are still tools.
Anyway, I'm not going to argue opinion with you. (And really that's all this is. My opinion.)
You've said animals are either food or a tool. Obviously that was silly, or you wouldn't have considered that picture of the emaciated dog as torture.
Couldn't it be proven to be much more traumatic to the fish than a bullet to the head like during a hunt?
Even plants communicate with each other.
put your money where your mouth is and buy up all the hunting permits..... or stfu
yea, and i can almost guarantee you theres not one damb veegan here in this thread either!
serve em a good steak and they enjoy the shit out of it but wanna wish harm to those who collected it for them!
seems logical
This post. This post right here!!
Well said, man - well said!
Post a reply to: To Langstons point....