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Comment by truth_sentinell | Hacker News Reader

Please stop saying that hunting is a solution to preserve animals. It's cruel and non-sensical. Hunters actually say that they help preserving animals. Bitch if you wanted to help you'd be donating, not bragging your vanity and your hollowness on some poor's animal corpse.

Saying hunting is a solution is like saying killing poor people is a solution to poverty...[..]

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Hunting itself doesn't preserve animals, but the desire to hunt for sport over profit (i.e. poaching) allows for a system that preserves animals. Hunters want to keep hunting, so they have implemented a sort of market for tags that makes sure populations remain healthy.

Right now it seems like the majority of money coming into organizations tasked with preserving wildlife comes from hunters. After all, it is in their best interest that the wildlife sticks around for as long as possible. If we take away hunting, how many do you think would donate in lieu of buying a tag?

If you are interested at all in understanding the pov of hunters, I'd recommend the Radiolab episode "The Rhino Hunter". There's a bit more to it than "bragging your vanity and your hollowness on some poor's animal corpse." http://www.radiolab.org/story/rhino-hunter/

I understand but it is really messed up that people even consider that moral. I'm sorry but I can't get any "a bit more" out of killing indefense animals for pleasure. It's just irrational. I believe these thirsty people for blood are just one step away from killing people. There's definitely something wrong in their heads.And the vast majority are white middle-class gun lover (nationalist) people. There must be some correlation.

If you feel like killing something, play some cod, jeez.

You obviously didn't do any research into the subject you are talking about, or are just ignoring it, so let me inform you.

You know what's even more messed up than killing an animal? Humans suffering and dying due to extreme poverty.

Rich hunters come to these countries with lots of money that they pay to the locals and government in order to hunt these animals. The locals then use that money to help conservation efforts with animals as well as help provide food, shelter, and clean water to the population.

Yes, your favorite looking animal that you've never actually seen in real life will die, but the lives of thousands of humans will be improved because of it. People who vehemently speak out against these things like yourself just come off sounding like ignorant children.

Yes I'm ignorant, but your reasoning is wrong. I already say I understand that, but I refuse to even consider it as a solution as you apparently are. So we should just let these people kill animals at will because it provides a "greater good"? By your same lane of reasoning you should accept paedophiles there (when animal go extinct) because they pay money and help support the community by doing so. Oh, wait, but in this case you can't consider because it's a human live and animals are not as valuable, right?

> You obviously didn't do any research into the subject you are talking about, or are just ignoring it, so let me inform you.

Can you provide some research?

Sure.

http://www.africanwildlifeconservationfund.org/wp-content/up...

Trophy hunting alone brings in over $200 million USD a year to Africa's economy.

So what's your takeaway form the paper?

$200M isn't much on a continental scale. Also where exactly is this money going?

"New legislation is also required to tackle some problems associated with trophy hunting. For example, ownership of wildlife should be devolved to communities to permit direct receipt of benefits from hunting and thus create clear incentives for sustainable wildlife management"

Yeah, that will be easy to pull off, I'm certain of that.

The GDP of the entire content of Africa is $2.39 trillion, just the USA alone has a GDP 7x their entire content. It would be roughly equivalent to bringing in $1.4 billion into the US economy.

Do you have any actual evidence to add to your argument? Or just more ignorant sarcasm?

And this guy thinks every buck goes directly into tribes and such. Reality check: that's not how the world works. They probably get peanuts -if they get anything at all-. Please stop being delusional and justifying non-sense with more non-sense.

> Do you have any actual evidence to add to your argument?

No, just like you don't. The paper you posted doesn't cut it because it only discusses how much money was made, not the wellbeing of the fauna.

> $1.4 billion into the US economy.

So that's relatively nothing.

You're confusing conservation with animal welfare. They're two different goals which are often contradictory. You may be right that killing poor people would be a solution to poverty. But we don't do that because we think saving human life is more important than solving poverty. We could also minimize elephant killing by exterminating the species. That would ensure nobody ever inhumanely kills an elephant again. But preventing elephants being killed isn't our most important goal that we're willing to sacrifice everything else for.

Is it not true that some wealthy hunters pay very big dollars to hunt one big game animal, and that money is then used to assist a large number of other animals?

How do you know where the money is going? You can pick an example of what you consider a successful conservation program in an African country and we can speak about it in very concrete terms.

I don't know much about it, other than afaik it is done in some countries and seems like a reasonable idea to me.

It might be true, but like I said, read the analogy.

This one: "Saying hunting is a solution is like saying killing poor people is a solution to poverty"?

Unless people are paying to kill poor people, and that money is in turn used to benefit poor people, it seems like a poor analogy.

Besides, you seem to think it doesn't matter whether 1 animal dying to save 10 (completely made up numbers). That's fine as a personal philosophy I suppose, but be prepared for people to disagree with you.

Bitch if you wanted to help

Please don't do this here. Regardless of how strongly you disagree, please don't resort to name-calling.

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