Toexist, let me back up and start over. I will refrain from personal attacks, and I ask you to try to do likewise. Please hear me out...
Whether or not an individual decides whether he is comfortable with hunting is an individual choice. You aren't, I respect that. That is entirely your choice.
You completely mischaracterized what I said earlier. I was talking about "allowing" vs "banning" sport hunting (of which "trophy hunting" is the primary form). It had nothing to do with a personal choice of whether I was comfortable with hunting elephants. In fact, I decided a long time ago that the only one of the "Big 5" (elephant, rhino, cape buffalo, lion and leopard) I would feel comfortable hunting was the cape buffalo. I don't think I could bring myself to shoot an elephant unless I absolutely had to.
However, there is no fine distinction between "meat hunting", "sport hunting", "culling", and "trophy hunting." The lines are very blurred, but in many cases the same hunt can fall into all of the above categories.
In Africa, "sport hunting" and "trophy hunting" are pretty much one in the same. A warthog can be a "trophy" as well as an elephant. Meat hunting is something usually done by poachers and therefore falls outside the restraints of the law. Meat hunting by poachers is destructive, follows no conservational guidelines, and can competely wipe out a population of animals.
Full Disclosure: I have been on safari in Africa...I shot lion, elephant, rhino, cape buffalo, giraffe, waterbuck, gazelle, and impala...
WITH A CAMERA.
I have personal experience with wildlife conservation. On our farm in the Mississippi Delta, we have been actively managing the wildlife habitat on that land for decades. My father and uncle started that in the late 1960s because unrestrained
MEAT HUNTING had decimated the wildlife population. We had to actively protect the place from poachers for many years. At that time we were one of the only places that still had wildlife habitat (everything around us had been leveled for cotton and soybean production). We have undertaken a number of conservation programs with the state and federal government, and surrounding landowners over the years, and now there is ten times more wildlife habitat in the vicinity than there was in 1970. This year, we will be taking another 55 acres out of cultivation to plant trees for wildlife management in a federal government conservation program. Last year we put in two levees and flood structures to create permanent wetlands (in places that used to be natural wetlands until the Corps of Engineers built a levee on the river)
Now, I can talk on this subject until I'm blue in the face, but you are likely to dismiss whatever I say as biased.
That's fair...
Here is what the LIBERAL PRESS has to say about the importance of trophy hunting in conservation in Africa:
New York Times:
A Hunting Ban Saps a Village's Livelihood
LA Times:
Why Trophy Hunting is Good for Endangered Species
Hoover Institution at Stanford University:
How Hunting Saves Animals
Deutsche Welle: WWF defends elephant hunting
The Telegraph: Trophy hunting can be a lifeline for Africa's Wildlife
The Percolator (Property and Environment Research Center):
Shoot an Elephant, Save a Community?
