A petition to Ban Trophy Hunting in South Africa
 

Following on from the Maggie petition details posted on Fodors by OnlyMeOirish I would like to post details of this campaign led by Chris Mercer of the Campaign against Canned Hunting <b>www.cannedlion.co.za</b>

&quot;The new year is well and truly on its way and the cruelty continues.

Minister van Schalkwyk, (Minister of the Environment and Tourism South Africa)believes that the sort of behaviour you see in the picture at http://www.cannedlion.co.za/articles...ations2007.htm is acceptable.

For those of us who feel that our heritage is being destroyed, by South African land owners and South African hunting operators and many overseas hunters then it is time to do something about this.

I do not mean one letter. I mean that it is time to really get involved. It is time to think of every influential person, celebrity, priest, government official who you know and to approach them with requests for help to stop the killing of our wildlife.

It is time to get the church involved, approach your local minister, ask them if they think that this is how God’s creatures should be treated.

It is time to speak to your travel agents and ask them to approach government through their tourism bodies to identify reserves and resorts, such as Pilanesburg where they hunt, so that ethical tourists may choose to avoid such facilities.

It is time to expose every hunting lodge and hunting safari operator in South Africa.

It is time to approach the airlines and petition them to ban carrying hunting rifles and trophys.

Trophy hunting is deemed a ‘sport’. Killing exquisite animals is fun. Taking a life that these hunters have no right to take. They are destroying beauty and a gene pool that our wildlife cannot afford to lose. How dare these hunters, safari hunting operators and land owners think that our wildlife is theirs to destroy. Our wildlife heritage belongs to us all and is something we borrow from our children.

If we are not prepared to get involved and get active then we will lose it all. Please forward this as far and wide as you can, lets make each letter count.

<i>Our website <b>www.cannedlion.co.za</b> will draw to your attention specific clauses in the new hunting regulations which provide the loopholes for the hunters to continue business as usual.</i>

The petition can be found here:

<b>www.thepetitionsite.com/takeaction/160781929</b>

Current signatures: 2,299.
Goal: 5,000.

Matt

Thanks Matt,
Will give the link to some friends .

Matt,

I've jumped on board.

John

Matt,
Thank you for posting. I have added my signature to the petition.
I totally agree that all trophy hunting 'operators' should be outed - if that happened I'm sure it would have a big affect on their revenue as I for one, knowing someplace promoted trophy hunting, would nEVER knowingly visit.

Lets hope this cause is as successful as Maggie's!

Imelda

Thanks for bringing this to our attention Matt - have signed petition and will write to Minister van Schalkwyk on the weekend.

<i>Do all you can / with what you have / in the time you have / in the place you are.— Nkosi Johnson</i>

Jude
PS: for those Fodorites thinking that us bunny huggers are taking over the earth - be assured that is the plan :))

one question - here in the US I believe indigenous peoples are allowed to hunt and/or fish if that was part of their heritage. Would this be allowed here also? And, would any necessary culling be allowed, although, please don't flame me, I don't know much about this issue, and I bet that culling is controversial.

As prelude I think I should repeat that I have no desire to trophy hunt, canned or wild, any animal anywhere.

However I believe this is another case of outsiders pressing unfunded demands on the locals. You are trying to brow beat the Minister into going along with you in the vain (all senses of the word) pretense there is some sustainable Disney-like version of economics and the environment which, if one had enough devotion to heart and heritage, could be reached without requiring any real cash outlay.

Whenever someone says their heritage is being destroyed they need to define what they mean by heritage - last year?, last generation?, two generations ago?, pre or post Apartheid?, pre or post colonial?, some sort of average over some defined time frame? Do only certain SA land owners have heritage which carries weight and the rest not? How do you square letting one group of people kill lions for status and not another? You need to make this really clear. Especially if that's the only coin you're offering on your side of the interchange.

I have no problem with people trying to preserve certain places, animals, or things. I'm involved in some attempts at this myself. But to think this can be done without real money to the scale of the issue is wrong. Don't confuse posture and petition with doing something useful.

I mean this all in the most kind sense. This is a complex and small world we're in. :-)

I will sign anti-hunting petitions in foreign countries when my own people have stopped hunting in my own country -- but not earlier.

And I will sign them anywhere, anytime, in any country in the world, including my own!

Bunny-huggers, tree-huggers, lion-huggers, ele-huggers, cheetah-huggers, deer-huggers, leopard-huggers, buffalo-huggers, all animal-huggers, stand tall and unite!! ;-)

Do you really think that large tracts of land (like the Selous in Tanzania for instance) will remain &quot;wild&quot;, and not be turned into farms and villages, if hunting is banned? While I find huntind disgusting, its benefits (if properly managed -- licenses for older animals that can be removed from the gene pool, for example) substantially outweigh its downside, in my opinion.

&lt;&lt;It is time to get the church involved, approach your local minister, ask them if they think that this is how God’s creatures should be treated.&gt;&gt; I'm not sure why we can eat certain animals but not kill others (why can I kill and eat a cow but not kill a wildebeast?), or murder people (and claim we are merely enforcing the death penalty)!

&lt;&lt;It is time to get the church involved, approach your local minister, ask them if they think that this is how God’s creatures should be treated.&gt;&gt;
Something different you can do, www.ushmm.org/conscience/alert/darfur/what/

Interesting concept, murder. That to me is a totally different subject. I don't know why it's being lumped into sport/trophy hunting.

People aren't killed for &quot;sport&quot; that I'm aware of. If I'm wrong, please correct me. And governments don't allow people to pay high dollars to go out and shoot another person for fun, and mount them on the wall, unless you're including assassins, who are killing against the law.

It's a little extreme, but ya know, maybe if that did happen, then humans would have a better understanding of the pain and suffering inflicted upon animals, of what it feels like taking away another animal's father or mother for fun or being stalked for the &quot;chase&quot; of the hunt. Maybe then we could honestly say all God's creatures are treated as equals.

Bottom line is, Matt posted this for those of us who choose to stand up for something we believe in. You can choose to sign the petition or choose not to sign it, but this does not have to turn into another debate on hunting.

My point was, to those that believe in a god and the concept of &quot;god's creatures,&quot; was how a minister/reverend/priest/rabbi/etc. could countenance the death penalty -- that was why I introduced murder.

Are we going to ask the church to get involved in banning fishing, pesticides, animal testing, banning pets, raising veal, chicken, etc. in small pens, trapping animals for fur, and so on?

&lt;&lt;You can choose to sign the petition or choose not to sign it, but this does not have to turn into another debate on hunting.&gt;&gt;

What do you mean by &quot;turn into another debate on hunting&quot;? If it walks like a duck and quacks like a duck, its a duck...and the OP is a diatribe against hunting. By the way, I am personally opposed to hunting, but I also enjoy a sophisticated discussion, not sophistry.

&quot;This exquisite Leopard measured 7 foot 1 inch, 160lbs with a skull measurement of 16 1/8 and this man took its life
and its genes from us forever.&quot; What a loss of a tremendous life. And for what?

Let Matt do what it takes to enact change, if that's what he wants to do or has to do to stop this atrocious sport. Who are we to tell him otherwise? If he can make a difference by getting his minister or church involved, then good for him. If it helps to accomplish his goals, who are we to tell him not to go after them?

We don't have to decide whether or not Matt should go after the ministers or churches, travel agents, etc. Those people can decide for themselves when approached by him.

I don't think it's a bitter attack on anyone, it's his way of taking this campaign one step further to put an end to something he is passionate about. So be it.

I just want to chip in here and say that I am not the petitioner: it is a petition linked to <b>www.cannedlion.co.za</b> (Chris Mercer)someone well known in South Africa for his work campaigning against the canned hunting industry. So I did not pen the diatribe as Thit Cho described it, merely copied it from the petition site.

All of the points made thus far in the thread are interesting views, and although (I believe) we all have conservation as the end goal it's how that it is achieved is where some of us disagree.

My personal view is that canned hunting itself is an atrocious &quot;Sport&quot; and one wonders how much of the income filters down to local communities or helps conserve the environment or species. But that is my personal view on &quot;Canned hunting&quot; - whilst Thit Cho's comment on Selous does not refer to canned hunting per se and may indeed have some relevance.

But to those who have signed the petition, thankyou and for those who have chipped in here likewise.

Matt

Divewop - I think you're missing one of thit_cho's good points about appealing to the clergy on this issue. Given the fact that many churches are ok with the death penalty, what's the likelihood you'll to get the support you're looking for animal-rights-wise?

Chris Mercer's entire emotional approach is flawed from the get go. In fact all such emotion laden but real world economics empty efforts are very weak. If you want to sign an online petition, gnash your teeth, rend your garments, and hold your breath - that's fine. But it's not doing something substantive to fix the problem.

Prime example is the elephant Maggie in Alaska. If everyone who signed the online petition donated $25USD would she still be there? I doubt it. At the very least an elephant expert could have come up to put her on a regime to become healthy enough to make the trip south. Instead people congratulate themselves that the Board of Directors of the Zoo said she could go south when it was feasible. Clearly a &quot;no-cost&quot; parry against an equally cheap &quot;no-cost&quot; thrust.

On the original post, it was a little difficult to distinguish between what Chris' thoughts were and yours.

Thanks for clearing all that up, Matt.

The diatribe (from Canned Lion) doesn't, in my opinion, adequately differentiate between canned hunting (which is deplorable on every level) and trophy hunting (which is mentioned in this thread's title), and all I was pointing out is that there would be substantial unintended consequences if trophy hunting were banned. I will sign the petition, after I read it, if it specifically (and only) refers to canned hunting, but as I read the original post, it recommends, for example, that we lobby airlines so that they stop carrying rifles and trophies (that, in my view, is overbroad).

Favor-
Without belaboring a point and turning this into a discussion on religion, as far as capital punishment/the death penalty goes, there are many churches and religions against it, especially in the modern world.

But you do bring up a good point, I wonder if it would help if everyone who signed a petition also donated funds to move these campaigns further along. That is something that is yet to be seen.

Below is a good example of a project intervening on behalf of wildlife for all of us to keep an eye on to see if money (and clout) will help. Time will tell.

http://allafrica.com/stories/200706040440.html