
Should We Kill Animals to Save Them? - mcone
http://www.nationalgeographic.com/magazine/2017/10/trophy-hunting-killing-saving-animals/
======
sova
Really quite a contentious issue. Nobody seems to be ethically or morally
bothered by murder, instead it looks like a purely pragmatic approach. Oh,
what folly, millions of years of evolution bring majesty into our
surroundings, and we as humans feel that we have the final say in who stays
and who gets eaten. I pray our human family grows more compassionate and kind
toward fellow humans and toward all life on the planet. We should be
conserving the majesty, and we should not be funding it via means that
undermine that basic tenet. Perhaps I speak nothing new, but it is important
for people to know that if we truly looked at the situation, killing is
unnecessary. If you really want to go big game hunting, why not use a
tranquilizer gun? To say you are helping conserve nature while actively
destroying it is nothing short of hypocrisy and deceptive wording. To me it's
not really a gray area. It's the difference between evolving nobly and
devolving.

~~~
d0lph
> For some, the hunting-antihunting debate boils down to Western
> environmentalists trying to dictate their agenda to Africa—a form of
> neocolonialism, as Marnewecke puts it. “Who gives anybody the right, sitting
> in another continent, to preach to us how we should manage our wildlife?”

Just because from your view point killing an animal is murder, does not mean
everyone agrees. No one is ethically or morally bothered, because, one animal
killing another is a foundational part of our ecosystem.

~~~
jimmies
>one animal killing another is a foundational part of our ecosystem.

At the same time though, our """ecosystem""" wasn't designed in billions of
years to take our guns into the equation. Human has the ability to conquer
pretty much every (big) animal there is on earth. Give me an AK-47, some
generous supply of bullets, and let me hunt whatever whenever I want, I'd sure
be able to clean out a very significant part of a jungle. It would not have
happened if I had to wrestle with the bears for their meat.

~~~
d0lph
Are you saying that since humans are more efficient killers we should no
longer be able to hunt animals? These hunters are not destroying entire
populations of animals, they're paying an exorbitant amount of money to hunt
one animal, and probably an older one at that.

~~~
jimmies
What I was trying to say was the original argument of the stronger eating the
weaker ones is part of nature/the ecosystem, therefore, it is natural, thus it
can't be easily labelled as unethical, is not a totally sound one.

The argument based on the premise that it is natural to do so. There is
nothing natural about dominating another living with a gun that you can shoot
at a ridiculous range. It doesn't matter how much money you bring to it, maybe
that bear is destined to die of old age if it wasn't for the human shooting
him down.

We don't know for sure what's the impact of hunting an old bear or a rhino
down (I'm aware that there are some arguments about it being a good thing),
but sure that wasn't what nature did for billions of years.

Does the good triumph over the bad aspect when you pay for a kill? Maybe,
possibly. Is it ethical? Debatable. Is it part of nature? No.

------
newsmania
After watching enough shows about lions on Netflix, I can't see how anyone
wants to preserve these creatures in the wild. They are mind glowingly brutal
animals, whose very existence is predicated in mauling other animals. If you
care about animal suffering, don't let lions out to terrorize livestock.

