This thread certainly was a great read.

But I especially liked what I read about the human population growing too big.

Good points were made by Napamatt, Leely, PredatorBiologist, Kavey, ...

What Kavey wrote about the human race not facing extinction etc... my thoughts exactly!

It seems I'm not alone after all! LOL

It's actually one of my big frustrations; nobody who is in the position to make a statement about this dares even to mention it! Let alone dares to do something about it.
I'm talking about politics of course; if a politician would express himself "anti-growth", it would be political suicide (or so they think). In my country, our government now pays IN FULL for any IVF treatment. How crazy is that?!
Another example; Mr. Gore woke lots of us up with his "unconvenient truth", and also shows us that horrible graph about the population sky-rocketing ...but in the end, when proposiong solutions, where's the statement "stop breeding like rabbits"?

I could go on all day.

Most of the times when I bring this sorta thing up, I get into a situation much like Kavey described; I get the evil look, or a disgusted look.

The only ones who dare to say the truth are some scientists, and some narrators on wildlife-related TV channels.
I heard one guy say the other day "we used to protect the people from the wild, now it's high time we start protecting the wild from humans".
But I guess he's addressing the wrong people; we know!

Perhaps it's time we start sticking together. Form a group. Join hands and put our shoulders under a common set of statements regarding this issue.

We'd need a website, some slogans to wake people up, etc...

And in the end perhaps we'd be big enough to influence any government decision that has an impact on human headcount.

I think it's high time...

Sorry just read a few of the comments here and firstly there is no difference between sport conservation hunting or whatever people call it and poaching,
in corrupt African countries no habitat will ever see a single cent of the " Big Bucks ", I actually like some of the stats you read about - 75% of buffalo escape lion hunts, thereafter hunter shoots buffalo in the head, I guess survival of the fittest just went out the window.
One more thing just to bring to people notice, park fees are USD 40 per person, and vehicle entrance with drive is about USD 20 per day (increasing to USD 60 in May 08), and with Mara doing a minimum of 1000 people per day in from mid June to November in one reserve, Nakuru probably 500.....
U still need more money for conservations??.

Imi: no doubt corruption and simple mismanagement can negate any kind of conservation efforts and make increases of funds a moot point. However, the fact that all the other major safari countries have protected about 3 times as much land as Kenya (see my stats in a previous post) it would appear that they are having much success with the various land protection tools available creating vast areas of 'sustainable use' that greatly supplement the major parks and reserves.

And yes, seeing those figures from the Mara they need a lot more money for conservation! The Mara gets 290,000 visitors a year, multiply by $60 pppd and you get USD$17.4 million. If they could somehow manage the entire park for USD$5M which would be bare bones and not realalistic and then spend the entire remaining $12.4M on buying new land they would only be able to acquire 25,000 new acres a year (at $500/acre) and this has not even passed on any funds to the local people as stakeholders. The revenues from existing parks are no where near what the government needs to create more conservation habitat areas, they need a lot more money for conservation.

Msg to: imi

From who did you hear that the Mara entrance fee was going up to $60US next year?

Thanks!

I know what you're trying to say, But shooting an animal so that you can stick it on your wall ….sorry to me that’s all wrong.
About the park entrance it should be gazette soon