President Kikwete of Tanzania has announced that thousands of Massai are to be evicted from their land in order to create a game(lion) hunting reserve for wealthy tourists.
These proud and wonderful people have lived on the Mara for thousands of years, peacefully and in harmony with their environment. They are of great importance to anthropologists, their way of life must be preserved.
Do you understand why some men feel that they need to shoot magnificent animals from afar with a very powerful rifle? It isn't brave, it isn't clever, it isn't necessary, so why do they do it?
My personal opinion as a BSc psychologist is that these men are so innadequate and feeble in the world of men that killing a ferocious animal makes them feel a hero, they are disillusioned that others are impressed by them. The lion trophy hunters are all very rich, but trophy hunters exist in all classes, some hunt badgers, others foxes, the psychology still applies.
Are we still that primitive that some of us have the primeval urge to be blooded by our kill? Why hasn't the human race realised yet that our planet is dying on it's feet due to our mismanagement of it's wonderful resources.
I am saddened on a daily basis by the behaviour of humans, so much so that I now no longer consider myself a member of that primitive simian species.
Thanks for the link David I seem to have stopped getting emails from them, I understand the need sometimes to cull animals, also to provide food. But trophy hunters leave me cold. (My ads seemed for a while to be all for ladies underwear, I did look for some online over Christmas to buy my partner, thankfully they seem to have gone now.)
Not humans, Europeans and the capitalist model. Indians were sustainably hunting bison for millennia. No we never learn. Recently I read on a lamppost, "War is hope." Probably true with the current western models.
OK, it is a valid point. However, justify closing tribal land to people who have lived on it for perhaps a thousand years or more by presidential diktat! That is another story as well and Jakaya Kikwete stands to make millions from the deal personally. Justify that....
My point was that without hunters who bred the animals for sport and bought up their old range, the animals would have disappeared into extinction. As I recall there were less than 100 bison left in the world,
To agree with all the others, YES, they are totally inadequate males (generally) Not sure how you would describe the female ones though - sick maybe?
I'm afraid it is one thing I hate here, as I did in Australia by the way, is the 'Chasse'. I will give credit for them not using the term 'Hunting' as this has no relativity to anything I ever heard of as Hunting. 'Chasing' seems about right.
Yes, I DO understand about animal controls, but that should be done by those professionals who understand why some things need to be done, not gun-happy amateurs getting their jollies.
Relevant because…on France 5 just now (14:00-15:10) there was a programme ‘Les Masaï et le Lion’ which I only watched for 5 mins but which seemed to be about preserving the hunters’ sprinting and spear- (read ‘javelin’-) throwing skills, while preserving the lives of the lions. Just a thought.
Yes but as it happens the Masai and their cattle have been there for hundreds of years or longer, lions were always there too so they co-existed. Masai are migratory but not nomadic, moving from grassland areas to the other through the seasons to feed their cattle.
Big cats, such as lions, hunt as a group only every few days and to eat, so the lost of cattle occasionally was always calculated into the way of life. The actual local population of lions was facing extinction and the ones being brought in are mainly being bred to be hunted in reserves elsewhere and would be in a closed part of the new hunting park.
That, Chris, is not what you or I probably think is good environmental management. In this case the lions are your wolves and the cattle the bison. In Masai tradition only individual lions who go 'crazy' and kill arbitrarily have ever been hunted, much the same as the relationship between North American native peoples and wolves.
Cattle and lions do not exist together peacefully. I am not a hunter and would consider myself an environmentalist. I am constantly reminded by comments like these of the American wolf and bison. Both were on the edge of extinction because of the conversion of their range to domesticated livestock and farming. They and their environments were saved only because they were sport animals preserved by the hunters in order to hunt the individuals. Now they are again being released into the wilderness.
I think its important when folks get into the general debate (as opposed to this specific debate) on hunting to distinguish between hunting for the sake of it and hunting for a genuine purpose including food. Unless someone is a veggie its tough for them to make a strong case against hunting for food since any meat eater can only really discuss the method of dispatch and a good hunter will presumably not wish to wound but to kill quickly and cleanly, there is a point where it is really only a matter of small detail whether your meat comes from an abatoire or from a local hunter.
I am not aware of many who eat big cats so the food argument goes out the window - there are occasssional valid reasons for shooting a big cat but I doubt your average big game hunter is concerned with those reasons.
Modern hunting does need regulation, tribal culture populations will be directly affected ( the population may shrink or move on ) if over hunting depletes their main game - modern trophy hunters are not affected in the same manner, if the prey dries out in one region they can just jet across the globe to a different location, if they get peckish and have already shot everything worth eating they can pile into the local MacDonalds. In general I would expect local hunters to be more concerned with the long term viability of the game in question - non-locals are just as likely to 'shoot themselves in the foot' as heli-skiers who apparently see no disparity between their need for snow and their CO2 footprint.
The key point for me here as a non-veggie is jutification and sustainability.
OMG i am glad I have free as a provider - such a difference! to NOT see gun pub, wow, what a "coincidence", eh, with the topic. that in itself is a good thread. searches and the corresponding pub and emails...i digress. I am so saddened by the treatment of the Massai to provide priviledges for bloody thristy lion-killers - the rich who hunt and devastate for fun and thrills. repugnant but yet not surprising :(
Yes, and I have no problem with hunting as our table has often proven. However on this occasion the issue is an exclusive hunting park set up across what has been the tribal land of an ethnic group who already have less than 20% of the area they herd their cattle in. Incidentally, they do not kill the cattle to eat but live off the milk. The animals are being imported from other African nations in part and bred in others to be released into the park with a survival expectation of a couple of hours. They do not even propose allowing the animals the dignity of trying to properly get away and conceal themselves and anyway the park will have a massive double fence to stop them escaping (and people getting in). Hunting can do as you say Chris and certainly the quotas and season here in France tend to help both maintain populations and conserve habitat. Jakaya Kikwete appears to have vested interests in this project more than actually doing something truly beneficial to his lovely country.
Ease on Steve, Glen was asking an opinion in a country where hunting is at the heart of its culture. He also addressed people who are not already avaaz petitioners. Both are a fair way of making a link in the person to person chain.
As it would happen, I told some French acquaintances who hunt to look out for this one on avaaz.fr and they were all so appalled they supported it.
We are all singularly and collectively responsible for the fact that we are being herded by, albeit, stealth means to live in a “Neo Feudal State of Fear” where there is a deliberate erosion of the quality of life for the many to the advantage of a few.
Rather than inadequacy it is more likely that shooting animals for pleasure is a statement of strength to mark the place of the few in the Feudal system.
Now the responsibility bit...when I look at myself as a UK resident then I should have done my bit to complain about our Royalty breeding beautiful Pheasants for the pleasure of killing them. Also the same applies to Landowners and those awful actors that torture fish for the sake of TV ratings.
The cure...I would cast these people in the roll of bullies and they should be dealt with in the best way...humiliate the monsters and shame them in front of their peers. They try and run the World on greed and fear, and that needs to be turned against them.
How?...someone a lot younger than I should start a name and shame website and give as much accurate detail as possible about individuals indulging in 'Brutal Slaughter for Pleasure'.
Also...the site could run slogans such as...don't buy products from Country xxxxx because they eg. kill whales.