On the Australian ABC (Australian equivalent to BBC and US PBS) yesterday evening there was a horrific documentary on the canned hunting industry in South Africa. Quite simply canned hunting is where beautiful animals such as lions,elephants and even rhinos are bred on farms for very rich shooters to come and shoot them in enclosures. It is barbaric. Just vile. Disgusting. The shooters call themselves hunters but there is no hunting involved. The clients for this barbarism come from across the world but the majority of them are Americans. I feel like vomiting just thinking about it.
Why would you want to pay an enormous sum of money to shoot a beautiful lion in an enclosure for a trophy to brag about ? The word depraved immediately springs to mind. Australia has strict laws banning the importation of any such "trophies" fortunately.
As an antidote to this awful tale I went and found a slide I took a few years ago at an elephant orphanage in Sri Lanka. It shows an elephant handler with some of the animals. The orphanage cares for wild elephants hurt or orphaned in road accidents or whose mothers had abandoned them or were unable to care for them. It was a beautiful place with beautiful animals and people who truly cared for the animals. I was using a Canon SLR with an L series 70-200mm f2.8 lens and Fuji Velvia film.The lens was absolutely superb with a constant f2.8 aperture over the full zoom range.The IQ was just brilliant but that lens was a big,heavy and very expensive piece of kit. I sold it a few years ago before my back gave out.
I didn't see the show in question and I might have a different perspective on it if I had watched it but for me it's not a black and white issue.
ReplyDeleteObviously in a utopian world we all care enough about our environment to protect and to preserve what we have, but is that reality?
We must at least give some merit to the idea that if we expect less-affluent nations to protect natural resources (animals and otherwise), we had better stop telling and threatening them and start working with them to provide some reasonable alternatives.
I am not a hunter (and have in fact never and will never fire a gun). I find the idea of killing an animal for no reason than enjoyment, hard to imagine but...
Unfortunately the reality is hunting gives an alternative dollar value to animals that would otherwise be gained from poaching. This might be a sad reality but it is true.
I also wonder if those expressing moral outrage are vegetarian, farming or hunting their own meat or, at the very least, going to the trouble (and expense) of buying humanely-raised meat. Otherwise, it's somewhat hypocritical to express grave concern for animals just because most of us are protected from the gruesome reality of factory farming that gives a great number of the populate the burgers and steaks they love so much.