In Zimbabwe, We Don’t Cry for Lions
nytimes.com
nytimes.com
http://danariely.com/2011/10/06/upside-of-irrationality-chap...
It is a known problem in behavioral economics called the identifiable victim effect:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Identifiable_victim_effect
Basically "Vivid, flesh and blood-victims are often more powerful sources of persuasion than abstract statistic". Most people love Lions and think they are awesome, and hate seeing them caged in zoos. Now we hear about this one lion minding it's own business being lured from a preserve and being killed by some rich American guy .... the lion becomes the flesh and blood victim. Problem like hyperinflation and massive death, while obviously much worse (and horrible) are much harder for the human mind to understand and just become a statistic.
It is extremely scary that this is a problem but it is fairly well known and studied. Stalin even knew about the problem:
"one man's death is a tragedy, a millions deaths are a statistic"
I obviously agree with you, just pointing you to why it is happening.
http://playingwordgames.com/2015/04/signalling-virtue/
The article this thread is associated with shows that different groups can rally around different values. If you were from that man's family in Zimbabwe you clearly would have a different take on it and use different 'virtue signals.'
1) It is an ongoing problem, not an isolated incident.
2) There is an easy resolution to people from the U.S. flying down there to go hunting that the dept of Justice can implement. Solving the Zimbabwean government's corruption requires more resources than the DoD and state department have available. Americans, particularly those who came of age politically in 2003-2007 are deeply suspicious of our ability to enact regime change.
3) This was the straightforward fault of an American. However the U.S. bears zero responsibility for Mugabe's actions unless you blame the U.S. for pressuring Ian Smith to resign.
4) There are small numbers of Americans that are upset about the fall of the Rhodesian government, but they irredeemably associated with murderous racism in the eyes of most Americans. Thus, there is no simple narrative that mainstream Americans can put forth as a solution or thing-that-should-have-been-done.
EDIT: People with no responsibility for causing the situation, no clear path to fix the situation, and only the power to create an atrociously bloody mess of the situation cannot be faulted for only being passively aware of the situation.
It is not invalid to be saddened by something just because there are worse things happening in the world.
Hopefully, though, this will shed some light on the situation in Zimbabwe. Seems like the country's a mess and lions don't have much to do with it either way.
But the lack of displaying caring behavior about the bigger issue while displaying caring behavior about the smaller issue can be a basis by which to question if they really care, or if the behavior is being expressed for some other reason. Many sibling posts here have other reasons for displaying caring behavior other than actually caring (some which have some scientific basis).
Well, yes.
> No one cares about animals being killed on mass so we can eat them, i know i don't, but oh no, a lion is killed, they are running out of those in Zimbabwe.
It's not about animal death, it's about killing an iconic animal (a lion) which we're already in danger of losing entirely. And -- to make it worse -- killing it for no other reason than for some kind of misguided personal glory. And on top of that doing so in a way that smacks of old school rapacious colonialism.
> Everyone will forget about this "massive tragedy" in a few weeks anyway.
Sadly, yes. And when you finally see that news report in a few decades about how the last wild lion finally got poached, well, you can rest assured that we'll all forget about that "massive tragedy" in a few weeks, as well. No harm, no foul.
Lions are not endangered. There are 20,000 of them in Zimbabwe alone.
Source:
Bauer, Chardonet & Nowell (2006) Status and distribution of the lion in E-S Africa.
Bauer,H.(2003) Lion conservation in West and Central Africa. PhD Thesis, Leiden University, The Netherlands
So would the issue then cover hunting as well, would there still have been an outcry if he did it legally?
So if you're asking if I care about people hunting lions legally? I don't like it and find it offensive, cruel, and destructive.
If you're asking whether I care about people hunting deer or rabbits? I don't like it, but I also recognize that it's much more complicated. And I don't think we're in danger of hunting those species out of existence, so it's a bit of a lesser issue. Also, eating when you've hunted does change the equation. I'm not a vegetarian. I understand that animals die so I can eat meat. Whether that's moral is a completely different issue.
So it's again just about "us", about our own perverse pleasure of experiencing and projecting our own suppressed wilderness fantasies onto other sentient beings? And if the creature isn't "beautiful" by some random standard, well, sucks to be them? That's the exact "logic" all the trophy hunters have, they want to experience the majestic wilderness and be a part of the "circle of life" by a playing a faked game of life and death with a powerful beast. After all, where's the grandeur in hunting a mere cow, right? Of course, all in a highly controlled and for them completely safe and alienated fashion, with practically zero risk of being killed themselves.
> Also, eating when you've hunted does change the equation.
Unless you're in a specific situation where you're environmentally forced to hunt in order to survive, I don't see how it changes anything. Would you be willing to let your cat or dog be hunted by your neighbors on the condition that they eat them?
;-)
(Now I'm just being a goofball.)
A Black Rhino is rare, extremely rare
Even Tigers have it worse than lions nowadays
Pretty sure there's quite a large group of people that care about that...
On top of that, lions are regarded as noble animals, and this particular lion was killed in a dishonorable way, AND suffered for over 40 hours.
As far as suffering goes, milk cows in particular suffer their whole lives being literally raped, having suction devices affixed to their nipples, and their children taken away from them almost as soon as they're born.
True, but not with animals they have only seen picture of.
>On top of that, lions are regarded as noble animals, and this particular lion was killed in a dishonorable way, AND suffered for over 40 hours.
Dishonorable because it was a human who did it? Nature doesn't care about honor, really.
Secondly so many big problems are complex with multiple contributing factors and it's hard to tell the victim from the perpetrator and often times those roles change over time. Cecil's killing, much like the killing of a child, is very black and white. He was lured with game, shot with an arrow, suffered pain for 40 hours and was then shot and beheaded. There's no shades of gray in there like "Was he or she in the wrong place at the wrong time? Did they do something to contribute to their own demise via their behaviour? Are we going to find out some new fact in this case in 72 hours or at the trial that makes us realize there's more to this victim than we thought?"
I think it's this sense of losing for ever combined with the lack of any ambiguity that creates such a strong response. To address your post it is logical and explainable. You may not agree with it but it's certainly not irrational behavior.
The government isn't, really. They're issuing a temporary moratorium until the media attention dies down. They don't actually care; they're just playing the media.
In other words, they're doing the cynical thing to get the media off their backs until the story blows over, and then it'll be business as usual again (and like any other tempest in a teapot, nobody's going to care anymore by the end of August).
My theory is the average person doesn't cognitively absorb the human suffering because there's more guilt associated with it.
In the case of Cecil the Lion it's "stop shooting endangered species you stupid rich Americans" - it highlights the very real poaching problem which is destroying large wildlife in Africa, and which costs actual human lives to (something like 5000 park rangers have been murdered by poachers over the last 10 years).
Fix Zimbabwe's government? Well we tried that in Afgahnistan and Iraq and it didn't work. And we certainly have been trying things in Africa - I have an uncle who was there for years as part of the various support and aid missions the UK run in commonwealth countries which fund things like schools.
One of these problems we could not have our own citizens fall ass-backwards into making it worse (and have some scope to actually prevent). The other we're working on but feeling "the full force of the tragedy" every day is wildly unproductive.
Except offering controlled hunts can be used to the benefit of the endangered species. Direct benefits such as removing the male in charge once they have become too old to the indirect benefit such as the sale of such hunting rights providing funds to help the species in question.
This seems a bit far-fetched to me. I doubt that hunting parties care particularly about targeting males that have "become too old" (define too old). Also, to the extent that this would be a problem in the first place, nature has been handling this situation with what I can assume is remarkable efficiency for millions of years without relying on humans.
The second point you raise makes more sense; however, I'd find it hard to rely on a famously corrupt government to distribute funds from hunting to protect species and feed their citizens rather than protect and feed themselves.
The ideal is that hunting these animals are in general illegal and you are given permission only for a single pre-selected individual. The licenses for such would go on bid and the highest bidder wins the right. I think this has been done before to some success.
>nature has been handling this situation with what I can assume is remarkable efficiency for millions of years without relying on humans.
And in many cases nature has allowed a species to go extinct as well. The specific case would be a patriarch that prevents younger more fertile males from propagating while his own genetics is weakened from age (consider in humans how age of either parent correlates with birth defects). It is an overall rare case, but the idea is that permission to legally hunt an endangered animal will sale for a high price if for no other reason than because it is so rare.
>I'd find it hard to rely on a famously corrupt government to distribute funds from hunting to protect species and feed their citizens rather than protect and feed themselves.
Yeah, it only works if you have a decent enough government. Which brings in the question of if fixing the government may be more important a goal not just because of how it benefits humans but how it can benefit the endangered species. (Not to say we have any good way to do such.)
But as they say suffering is part of the human condition.
In other words, there is a good chance you are wrong.
Lets forget all about destroying a scientific work of decades just for fun; If you sell only 6 photographic safaris each year just because this particular lion permited turists to be at 10 m you earn about $29,000 each year. (I think that just doing 6 photo safaris in a single year is a ridiculous low and ultra-conservative estimate).
Multiply this for the last 13 years and you'll have earned at least 375,000 dollars (If we assume only a single jeep and tour-operator doing business in the park, something that is false, obviously). Just a pale shadow of the real monetary value of the animal. Is not unreasonable to asume a damage over the million dollars here.
So if we cry for starving people, this single animal has been feeding african toddlers and their families, for its entire life and could continue doing this for other 3 or 5 years maybe, except because it was killed, just for fun, and his head is converted to a valuable object that can be re-selled maybe tomorrow. For the hunter's point of view, is an investment.
I also want to do some charity. Will you sell me the liberty statue for a 0,01% of its real value please?. Hey, is for a good cause... be richer. I'll give valuable facebook likes to the poor starving children of Minessota also. I promise.
My point being, we seem to value them more in our actual interactions, but when it comes to discussing rights and laws, we still value them less. So my actual question is why do we have this discrepancy. We cry on the death of a lion more than a human, yet putting another lion in a cage for our own amusement is allowed but doing the same with a human is considered extremely wrong.
We call that an open office working environment. It's not very humane, but no one cares.
Our strongest instinct is survival, closely followed by resource appropriation. Both are the enemy of wildlife, yet we love wildlife. To remove the contradiction we'd have to dominate our survival instinct and reduce our own population, with all the awful moral and ethical consequences (for humans) that that would entail.
The only sad thing about a species going extinct is it is one less species for us to study and learn from. It's a drastic loss for science and the only hypothetical loss for people at large is if there was something of value lost (e.g. discovery of a gene that cures a disease that only the now-extinct animal naturally produced)
You can especially kill off most apex predators without issue. Which is why the loss of a lion isn't a big deal.
Now if all producers were to go extinct and the bottom feeders of the food chain(s) such as plankton were to vanish from the Earth? Most, if not all, life as we know it would die from starvation. The animals with the most adaptive and most abundant food sources would live the longest, but eventually they would also run out of food!
A lion isn't a producer nor is it the bottom of the food chain. So a lion dying or lions going extinct really doesn't matter outside of scientific studies.
I'm not saying that avoiding the extinction of a species is not a noble endeavor, I'm just questioning the impact of not doing so.
So don't learn from our mistakes, basically?
This is among the most ignorant things I have ever read. Terrible article from a person with a terrible mentality.
"We Zimbabweans are left shaking our heads, wondering why Americans care more about African animals than about African people."
And the paragraph directly after:
"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."
"Please don't care about the animals in my country more than you care about me and my countrymen" is a reasonable request. I don't see anything terrible about it. I'm not sure why you dropped the surrounding context.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_authoritarian_regimes_...
However, when it came to Vietnam, we merely fought a war to keep Vietnam on our side. South Vietnam was not free and democratic, so there was impossible to "keep" it that way.
It's possible, maybe even likely, that a victorious South Vietnam would have eventually opened up and turned to democracy, as happened in South Korea and Taiwan. But I think it's important to recognize how two-faced US policy was in these places, fighting "for freedom" by propping up dictators.
freedom and good life for vietnamese people was not considered much when that war was planned (beginning by staged US Tonkin gulf accident to get a foot in situation, in good ol' Gleiwitz nazi style). it was all about influence, having foothold out there so soviets don't take it all around, keeping armed forces trained in real life scenarios (train your forces in small war to be prepared for big one) etc. US was very much anything but a good guy there. Saying North vietnamese did worse things doesn't make you automatically a good guy, does it.
Nah, Vietnam is just another topic in US history americans should feel ashamed of. Quite a few I met that are not teenagers actually do. And look at result - they lost the war, they screwed up that country really bad (ie many birth defects many years after the war thanx to Agent Orange spraying), and at the end, country found its way to +-democracy in peaceful way, although it took some serious time. But you can't make that much money from selling arms in peace, can you
You can't easily compare "unprovoked cruelty against animals" with "everyday life below the poverty line".
the animals are defenseless objects of our actions. While people get the life they've built, and specifically what i understand about the Zimbabwe situation - a lot of the issues there are recent (couple decades) self-inflicted by the government upon their people with support of the people. Should US change the government there?
What are you going on about?
A lion will hunt where there is food for it. Even if there's a single village in all of Zimbabwe, it will go there and take the easy meal. There's nothing easier than eating livestock. The livestock is trapped, defenseless, and absolutely tasty.
> There are no condolescence for those deaths caused by one's own mistake.
What mistake? Existing?
> Here at least American's are being right to care about 3000 tigers or lions instead of over 7 billion humans.
Can you help everyone out? Please go to Zimbabwe and feed yourself to a lion. It will help the lion out. It will provide several days worth of sustenance. You're a bit more bony than a cow, but I'm pretty sure the lion won't complain too much. On top of everything, there will be one less human around! Win/win!
What is a human's rightful land?
Do realize there is no "rightful land" in nature, which is the only sphere in which lions operate?
It simply IS ignorance at the root of his childish complaints. It's ignorance to the fact that one problem - lions - is of a vastly smaller scale than another problem - human rights issues in Zimbawabe - and thus the solutions to said problem are far, far easier to apply. In short, we want to help where we actually CAN help. But decades of failed US intervention have proven one thing time and time again: our help never sticks until you start helping yourself.
http://www.globalhumanitarianassistance.org/countryprofile/z...
Imagine a world where the US economy is reduced to ashes and people are starving in the streets of New York, and the rest of the world is only outraged by somebody shooting a specific moose in Alaska.
Secondly, suffering happens everywhere every day. Are the American people supposed to maintain a constant level of outrage about every single instance of suffering?
The analogy looks spot-on to me, just substitute 'Zim' for 'US' and 'Harare' for 'New York'.
OK the first one is open and shut ad hominem attack. Unless I'm totally sleepy and missed something obvious.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ad_hominem
I'm too low on caffeine and sleep right now to absolutely decide if the second one is Ignoratio elenchi or Illicit major. It could be an example of both arguments at the same time. I think the illicit major argument is stronger as in more closely targetted whereas the ignoratio elenchi argument is broader so the Illicit major argument fits "tighter" which makes it more accurately descriptive. On the other hand he's clearly leading at a I.M. attack but he definitely did a I.E. attack so ... Maybe the right way to phrase it is "it is an I.E. logical fallacy attack that appears to be intended as a I.M. logical fallacy attack".
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ignoratio_elenchi
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Illicit_major
I've toyed with the idea of tags for social discussion sites that include individual logical fallacies as tags. You know, like venerable ole slashdot and "+1 informative" it would be interesting (for a startup?) to have a social media discussion tagset of the usual logical fallacy arguments, so people can +1 or -1 depending on their personal tastes. I tolerate I.E. attacks in general better than I.M. yet I.M. are so funny they show up in comedy so I'm not even certain which I'd upvote or downvote. Probably a mod like (-1 Ad Hominem) is not too controversial. I would guess the second statement would get both tags, actually the whole comment would get all three tags, most likely. Also this post was a good example of having to handle tags that are both "intended" vs "actual". This makes it hard to figure out how to deploy as a social discussion site modset, and being hard yet obviously useful would make it a good startup germ of an idea. As usual it'll all be in the execution not the mere simple idea.
http://www.globalhumanitarianassistance.org/countryprofile/z...
http://www.theguardian.com/global-development/2014/jul/15/ai...
More like: don't criticize others for not learning from their mistakes when you're making a point of not learning from making the same mistakes yourself.
He's pointing out the hypocrisy of berating others' treatment of nature when you live where everything natural has been bulldozed and paved over for hundreds of square miles.
Instead of using their time in the spotlight to draw attention to what they would consider to be more worthy pursuits, they are indignant that we are not already familiar with their country's most pressing issues and equally outraged about them.
This article is import, even if it isn't particularly well-written or well thought out. It's important because it resonates a very important idea that the west is psychologically disconnected from Africa and Africans in the cruelest of ways. It reminds us that Africans must really scratch their heads as they struggle to figure out our unique branch of apathy/concern that's both cruel and emotionally unbalanced.
Comments like this violate the HN guidelines, which say:
When disagreeing, please reply to the argument instead of calling names. E.g. "That is idiotic; 1 + 1 is 2, not 3" can be shortened to "1 + 1 is 2, not 3.
The comment would be better if shortened in this way, and perhaps also if it made its substantive point (about learning from mistakes) a bit more substantively.
Except that America stirred up this issue only because it was done by a rich American. Zimbabwe aided by claiming it was an illegal poaching, arresting the guides and then asking America to arrest and extradite Walter Palmer.
Lions are scary when they aren't in a national park and being monitored by research scientists, but that's not what happened. This would be like a foreign tourist luring a wolf out of Yellowstone and then killing it outside of the park boundaries. It's straight up illegal poaching.
Saying that someone committed a crime is a Big Deal. In many jurisdictions, it is considered slander or libel unless you are making a formal charge. You need something a lot stronger than something you read in a newspaper to back it up.
This is what people understand - Lion Conservation status: Vulnerable
"The lion is a vulnerable species, having seen a major population decline in its African range of 30–50% per two decades during the second half of the 20th century. Lion populations are untenable outside designated reserves and national parks. Although the cause of the decline is not fully understood, habitat loss and conflicts with humans are currently the greatest causes of concern."
They dont own the Lions, the Lions happen to live within the same lines drawn on a map as they do. The Lions neither know about or care about these lines. That in no way makes these Lions the propery of people from Zimbabwe.
In the same way that the rainforest destruction is everyones problem, not just a problem for those living in the rainforest.
Also the world hardly operates according to that concept of owning that you mention with regards to environmental protection. Is the international community pledging resources to support countries that choose to protect the environment instead of seeking so-called economic development? See for example this https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yasuní-ITT_Initiative
Isn't this due to the explosion of human population levels though? We're encroaching more and more on the natural habitat of pretty much every species on the planet except for those in the deep ocean and even they are affected by us in other ways.
There are several issues. Not just one.
That's on point.
This is simply another form of ecosystem imbalance; we kill lions, we use medicine to encourage unfit humans to survive and reproduce and intensive agriculture to produce many times more food than could be grown using natural methods. The effect is the same as with any other predator-prey imbalance: the prey animal populations expand far beyond the ecosystem's carrying capacity, leading to stress, disease, weakness, starvation, and numerous other ills among the prey population. Eventually the prey population is reduced dramatically as nature kills off huge numbers of unfit animals.
You're welcome to call me callous, but I choose not to cry for humans, African or otherwise.
Thank you. You're insipidly callous.
That belief system is missing the reality of the similarity between individuals in different classes, the current trends which seem to actually aim toward inverted population movement, massive resource efficiency improvements possible with better application of technology to society, and the inherent value of human life vs. lower life (see ideas like the noosphere).
People are more socially capable than that, so I wouldn't look to such a base motivation first. Especially for people who don't deal with the scarcity of resources in day to day life. In general people are just taught to hate eachother.
Whether it's the countrymen of a foreign land when our government is mad at their government; or our next door neighbors that don't share the rigid political ideological of our favorite bloggers. We are taught to hate every single day.
I think human life in general is held in higher regard than animal life by the majority of the humans on the planet if you really stop and think about it.
Aid provided to Zimbabwe is not reaching the people because of Zimbabwe's government, not because it's not being sent.
There's also PEPFAR which is notable for how many lives it has saved for Africans with HIV.
Still, I'm pretty sure that the average American neither knows nor cares about either program and wouldn't raise a finger if either went away. But they care a shitload about the lion.
If we're going to use 'Average American' as a measure, they don't give any more shits about lions, or any other animal, than the Zimbabweans do.
...
heh, wait a moment...
But you're right, it's not a big issue. There are other issues, which is why the US does more than just have citizens post to Facebook about a lion.
http://www.theguardian.com/global-development/2014/jul/15/ai...
the animals aren't yours or anybody else's. They belong to that planet which we just happen to share. Human race, having achieved the ability to destroy the planet's eco-sphere, thus got a duty of steward of the eco-sphere which it has been carrying poorly so far.
Anyway, killing big game this days is a serious mental sickness.
There is difference between desires and behavior. Inability to control desires resulting in a behavior intentionally damaging another sentient being(s) is a mental illness. Lack of empathy is a characteristic of psychopaths.
I'm not to say you are fully without a point. Consider manual breeding of animals and what exactly is involved, which is done primarily for profit and which would be considered very anti-social behavior if done for more personal reasons. I dare say this is one place we are hypocritical as a society (compare treatment of dogs and pigs).
well, once the artificial meat comes into our life, only psychopaths would be consuming meat.
> (compare treatment of dogs and pigs)
things change. 10 years ago i was laughing at vegetarians, while since then i've stopped eating pork, beef, lamb, etc. because it is highly sentient beings. ( still eat poultry though. The day will come here too.)
As a species, we have a well documented history of not going with scientific advancement and sticking to the old way. Also, why aren't they already psychopaths for eating pork (a very intelligent animal) when fowl and beans will provide them the needed nutrients?
Psychopathy is when injury/harm is caused intentionally. Most people just don't recognize what they are doing (in many situations they think it is acceptable to cause injuries to or to harm even fellow humans whom they value more than animals, and just 100 years ago it was ok to perform dissections on live animals without anesthesia). From my personal experience - it dawns slowly on you. I was a happy pork eater in the past. And at some point, when i really saw the intelligence of the animals (an amazing feeling by the way) - i have to credit my cat here, being among the most intelligent creatures i've met he taught me to see the intelligence of others - i backed off the mammals meat at least.
any non-mentally ill adult present would use the situation to explain that it isn't acceptable.
> Its built-in. We are hunters.
yea. Hannibal Lecter.
Did they have the "duty of a steward" regarding the ecosphere?
No. Neither do humans. There is no such duty.
We would be wise to maintain an ecosphere we find livable and convenient. Possibly, even probably, this includes protecting natural diversity and endangered species. We don't have to, of course. Humans are organisms like any other and organisms often engage in behavior that leads to their eventual extinction. I personally would also prefer that we try to maintain 'natural' ecosystems and diversity as much as possible. But that is merely a preference.
In nature, might makes right. We're a part of nature like any other. Killing big game (even for recreation, not just for food), a human behavior that goes back hundreds of thousands of years, is certainly not a mental illness. It might be wise (if you have the preferences mentioned above) to institute laws and norms against engaging in that behavior, particularly towards vulnerable species, but that doesn't make it an illness.
>Did they have the "duty of a steward" regarding the ecosphere?
>No. Neither do humans. There is no such duty.
How about the alien civilization controlling our sector of the galaxy - do they have the stewardship duty, in particular not damping toxic waste onto our planet, not hunting us?
>In nature, might makes right.
until a species develops to the stage when it recognizes that "right" has different definition.
>Killing big game (even for recreation, not just for food), a human behavior that goes back hundreds of thousands of years, is certainly not a mental illness.
Mental illness is a deviation from reasonable behavior for the species. It may have been reasonable yesterday, and not hunting was sign of abnormality back then. Time change and species change with it. We left a lot of things in the past which today would be considered a sign of mental illness, like human sacrifice for example.
No. I would certainly hope they don't hunt us or use Earth as a dump, but there is no duty for them to not do so, or some kind of inherent right enshrined in cosmic law for us to have undisturbed development.
> until a species develops to the stage when it recognizes that "right" has different definition.
There is no development towards some kind of ideal morality. That's a colossally egocentric view to take. I'd say it's even rather ethnocentric since there are some cultures who, generally speaking, have quite different views than you do.
> We left a lot of things in the past which today would be considered a sign of mental illness, like human sacrifice for example.
Did we really?
Perhaps the rituals and names have changed, but imaginary alien anthropologists would not see much difference between abortion, martyrdom, death penalties, mob killings, voluntary euthanasia, some kinds of homicide, and the kinds of human sacrifice that occurred in our past. To be sure we would make our excuses, but the peoples of the past who committed human sacrifice also did not consider it abnormal or wrong and sometimes were so convinced of their duty they volunteered themselves for sacrifice.
Can we just forget about the dentist? He's not a poacher! Maybe he's just a bad person?! No one really knows. But he's not a poacher.
/* If you want to see what a poacher does and if you don't want to sleep for a few days then just ask me for a video of a live Rhino, suffering, with half it's face chainsawed off for his horn... (Brings me half to tears to just describe the video!) */
He's not what's important here. People are loving the animals that they care about to death. They're so against someone killing them that they're hurting the hunting, and in turn, the conservation industry.
One of the most beloved people on Earth, Nelson Mandela, hunted and described the benefits that hunting had on conversation: http://imgur.com/a/ZJ0QK
Nelson is cited for marketability, for the real numbers there are plenty of credible sources and institutions that'll provide the same information.
FYI the author talked about this in the article as he also mentioned their president had a baby elephant slaughtered for his birthday.
> The lion was in a national park that brings in significant tourism dollars for the state, they quite literally were crying for this lion.
While I agree that it seems like the author is missing some perspective from the park / tourism side of things he did offer a different perspective I haven't read about. I'm sure someone from their parks service would have yet another perspective.
Still, it's good to hear about these types of issues from other perspectives for I fear of drowning in an echo-chamber that is American news.
This really highlights asymmetric power relations in the issue:
It's easy to gang up online against a wealthy, white, male dentist. Mobbing Zimbabwe's president, on the other hand...
Having said that, he is right on " ... don’t offer me condolences about Cecil unless you’re also willing to offer me condolences for villagers killed ..."
In this specific case though, I would also argue given the declining numbers of lions, the anger is justified.
But just because it's the same here, and because there are worse things there, can't we just agree that culling these magnificent animals should be done by officials as the grim task it is, and not by rich for recreation?
Lions that attack villagers do have to be killed sadly, but why not embrace Eco tourism instead of trophy hunting for the ones that are not a threat?
Some conjecture:
Do Zimbabwe villagers live in denser cover? If so, maybe sport hunting increase the threat by forcing lions closer to villagers? That would add a bit of irony to the situation.
Of course even a glimpse at the US visa system shows that there is no such option, that many visas are just temporary and tied to employment or studies that will eventually end, and honestly the only real option left is to just marry a US citizen, an option which is already becoming more and more difficult. The far-right is unwilling to understand this and how if their grandfathers in the 20th century had been faced with these strict immigration rules they would been forced to return home and stay there when in reality many came here unannounced and uninvited, just as illegals do today.
Back to the lion issue, the problem with this line of thinking that rejects the idea that opinions from outside the US hold any value nor should be considered at all is that it doesn't solves the problem. Hunting in Zimbabwe, a dirt-poor country with a collapsed economy, its actually the only way some people have to make a living. US environmentalists much like the far-right don't share that problem with the other side and thus can afford the luxury of disregarding their suffering and even ask the foreigners for further sacrifices so they don't have to admit they were dead wrong.
"Using the calculations of Hayward et al. (2007), biomass density of preferred lion prey in Gonarezhou national park was calculated... the protected area could support enough preys for between 115 and 357 lions.
... the 2014 census found 33 lions in the protected area.
Lions where positive only in the 5% of the points analyzed in the census.
For the Tuli Safari Area the scientific model predict a population of about 40 lions and the 2014 census found...
zero lions
Source: "Surveys of lions Panthera leo in protected areas in Zimbabwe yield disturbing results: what is driving the population collapse?" Groom et al. 2014.
Models also predict that the park could support a population of Hyaena of 354 animals... 2014 census found between 400-490 hyaena in the national park instead.
This is hardly a surprise because is the same ecological rule for the whole freaking planet earth: Mesocarnivore liberation. Same that leads to the american coyote, and the english fox and the jackals now expanding to the west and reconquering Europe. You are bassically destroying the big fauna in cascade. A really expensive mistake.
> How many people in Zimbabwe can be fed for $25,000, the price of hunting a male lion?
This will depend on how many money and goats they have still after figthing the strange new hyaenas plague. And don't forget the bovine tuberculosis also.
Ok I have one idea, If we wipped the local lion pride we could kill also those 50 new hyaenas!.
(some months later) end of the hyaena problem, hum, how this new 500 jackals appeared?
How are there 7 billion of us when we hate ourselves and each other so much?
However yes, we can be angry about the Cecil incident. It went viral for whatever reason, other incidents didn't. That's the nature of social media, you'll have to get used to it. No, we don't have to "fix" Zimbabwe or the world before being angry at one needless death, thanks.
The author's point about lions scaring villagers when he was young is interesting yet not a justification, these lions are now in a reserve and the species is now vulnerable, if not soon to be endangered. Of course behind the words there is always the lingering self-serving idea that people are so much more important than our cousins in the animal kingdom. Well, guess what at 7 billion vs. 25k lions, which population could use a little thinning?
[1]: http://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2015/08/cec...
PS: I was wondering if Palmer's PR team paied for this NYT article.
Because there are 7 billion of us on the planet and only 30k lions left. We have had it really good (including Zimbabwe in terms of population growth) for 150 years, yet we have decimated our kindred animals using excuses like "conservation" or "danger". This article takes an instinct that was relevant 300 years ago and shamelessly punts it into our modern age, circumstances having changed enormously, in order ultimately to push another agenda.
Not really sure how Cecil the Lion fits into HN, oh well.
Btw, I appreciated your Wiki link above.
I agree, and I thought of that before posting it, but the reality is, I assume I'm sending aid to Africa already. I imagine most American's assume that is the case as well. We may not know about USAID specifically, but we assume we are sending it. So, it's not something we need to get worked up over.
Effectively, it's taken care of.
He should sound much happier, then. Because we're on our way:
http://blogs.scientificamerican.com/extinction-countdown/afr...
Assuming the sale of 1 of those 7 billion could save N of those 3000, how big would N be before you support it? If need be, you don't need to pick the 1 at random but can select based on what ever criteria you desire.