"Ethical" Hunting Is Bollocks - No Matter What Trophy Hunters Say!

Sabrina Corgatelli - another trophy hunter - is proud of her game kills and claims "the hunter is the true conservationist for the lions". One wonders what she's smoking to blow such smoke.



Incredibly, even as Cecil the Lion's magnificent image was displayed on the Empire State Building over the weekend, and we learned no PR firm wants Cecil killer Walter Palmer as a client, other sordid truths have emerged. Now trophy hunting varmints and slime balls are crawling out of the wood work to try to defend their hunting as "ethical".  What they don't understand is that merely because trophy hunting of endangered animals is lawful or legal doesn't make it ethical.

The nasty truth that many outraged folks calling for Palmer's head don't yet grasp, is that in a number of African nations - including Zimbabwe, Tanzania, Namibia, and South Africa - lion hunting is perfectly legal done under the cover of "conservation". All these nations have made a metaphorical 'deal with the Devil' to preserve lions by killing them!  They actually issue licenses for kills, as well as lion quotas. In South Africa - as shown in the documentary 'Blood Lions',  nearly 1,000 lions bred in captivity are slaughtered every year by rich trophy seekers for an average of $20,000 a head.

A separate industry allows tourists to fondle and cuddle lion cubs earmarked for trophy kills later. As we can see from this, targeting Walter Palmer is not enough. His disgraceful and cowardly trophy hunt scheme - in luring Cecil from his sanctuary to kill him - is only the 'tip of the iceberg'. We now need to go after the whole deplorable enterprise of trophy hunting and the African nations that enable and support it via the ruse of "conservation".

Incomprehensibly, all those sad nations that have lost their ethical principles maintain that their legal hunting industries actually contribute to the welfare of species, including declining ones like lions (now bagged at the rate of 600 a year), rhinos and elephants - whose offspring actually die of grief after their mothers die. (See, e.g. the documentary, 'The Orphan Animals of Tsaavo')

According to unprincipled defenders hunting is a "source of needed foreign exchange, job creation, community development, and social upliftment", this according to S. African Development Minister Edna Molewa in a July 23rd statement. She claimed the industry is valued at $490 million a year, but most sensible conservationists - real ones - believe this to be inflated to bolster the argument that hunting is an economic boon and actually helps endangered critters.

One wonders what planet she's living on, and also the planet inhabited by the African leaders trying to defend this loathsome industry and its literal blood money. Because you can't defend declining species by issuing quotas and collecting  money from their slaughter.  Specious arguments from legal lion hunting nations have then allowed trophy hunters to crawl from their warrens and try to defend themselves.

Such as Sabrina Corgatelli - the "huntress of Idaho"  - featured on an ABC News spot last night, who posted photos of herself with her kills in South Africa online.  She actually had the temerity to claim:

"The hunter is the true conservationist for the lions"

Then bragging on her Facebook page how she "took down an old giraffe and I couldn't be happier".

She then whined "So many people are calling me a poacher because they don't think it's legal."

No, some of us know it's legal  - given the Devil's deal made by the previously identified African nations-  but that doesn't make it ethical. The end never justifies the means, even if the end is supposedly "protecting lions" or generating jobs - that doesn't justify the means of allowing their slaughter in trophy hunts!. Sorry, that's the way it is, deal with it Missy Huntress.

Even as she blurted those words, we've also learned Americans import 64 percent of all lion trophies and Zimbabwe (which has now halted lion trophy hunts) is looking for another American maggot, Jan Seski from Pennsylvania -


 an oncologist who also has money to burn on killing these majestic beasts. This even as a N. Carolina attorney Karen Shanahan has also crawled out from his rat warren to defend the practice last night on CBS.  Shanahan bragged he's hunted in three African countries and bagged "an elephant and a lion" and asserted "it's all legal".

Again, maestro, legal doesn't mean ethical.  Sad you don't know the difference.

The time is now to cease singling out these reprobates for shame while a swath of African nations is allowing an entire disgusting industry to savage its most precious and declining species. Because any numb nut knows that when 600 kills are allowed a year out of a population of only 25,000 lions, it's unsustainable.

Time now for social media to target the whole trophy hunting industry. Also, those out only for condemnation now need to get on board to spread the campaign to donate to bona fide conservation programs in Africa, such as:

http://www.ifaw.org/united-states/node/12276

 Then poor African nations don't have to resort to expedient deals with the rich white Bwana hunter devils under mock conservation programs.. Meanwhile, we need to make these brash and sanctimonious hunters- who really believe they're saving lions-  feel the same shame as if they were defending cannibalism!

In addition we need to pressure the airlines to cease transporting trophy spoils back to the States. At least Delta has already come out and made clear the airline will no longer be transporting African trophy spoils back to the States.

See also:

http://www.smirkingchimp.com/thread/eric-margolis/63263/for-cecil-the-lion