This is where all the confiscated wildlife items go in the US, the importers of which are rarely prosecuted. It should be an item of shame in any civilised country.
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2017/jul/20/house-of...
The world is totally crazy and as Asian countries develop middle classes with money to spare they are purchasing the extinction of animals worldwide. Roll on bird flu, let's see the snake oil in Chinese traditional medicine sort that.
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2017/jul/20/scale-of...
It gets worse. Trophy hunting is the triumph of money over decency - disgusting.
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2017/jul/20/son-of-c...
Comments
Thank you for these two
Were they only in the on-line Guardian? I have not yet even opened today's printed Guardian -- maybe I will find something there, but even if it is, I'm sure there will not be as many photos of confiscated stuffed heads on stuffed shelves!
Thanks
Dave
Sickening
I feel nauseated looking at that, knowing that there is little real chance of stopping it. Like the various illicit drugs, there is a market for this kind of item. And where there is a market there are people willing to sell to it. Demand = supply. And as much as the smugglers lose to the various enforcement agencies, they actually benefit from enforcement. The seizures help drive up the price of what does get into the country. Scarcity drives up the price.
We can no more win this war than we can the war on drugs. We need another way to combat this. Some thinking outside the box, some different methods are needed. My first thought is to dump all those seized items on the market at insanely cheap prices. This would destroy the smuggler's profit. They are not going to continue in business once the profit is gone.
I can already hear people screaming about this. Its just an idea, and probably not the best. But this is what I mean - thinking outside the box. Admit that what we are currently doing is not working and never will.
"Life is not measured by the breaths you take, but by the moments that take your breath away.”
George Carlin
45's
... children are among the murderers.
Portia
Don't Worry
Just as soon as we Make America Great Again we'll certainly give these importers a good talking to.
Jill
Angela Rasch (Jill M I)
It's not pretty sick.
It's very sick!
I admit that as a child I had an air rifle and shot birds and what we called watter rats (that's how we pronounced it!) which were probably water voles. We also did a lot of bird nesting for eggs to save. In fact a friend once stole a Jay chick and raised it as a pet. It flew free and sat on his shoulder. But all that was in the early 1950s when I was a young teen times and mores were different and I was young.
I saw the error of my ways before I left school. Eventually I decided I didn't want to support factory farming either and we haven't eaten any meat for well over 30 years.
Robi
Poaching and exploitation vs conservation.
Really two different stories here, one about the regulated trophy hunting that helps pay for conservation efforts all over Africa (and America), and the illegal poaching and exploitation that is decimating at risk species. There are species living in America now, that would probably be extinct if not for the the excise tax on sporting goods, and the efforts of state and federal conservation agencies to bring back species like elk, wild turkey, Wolves, river otters and white tailed deer. While I don't like Trophy hunting, especially of species like Elephant, wolves and the big cats, I recognize that properly managed hunting programs are all that brings in money to help preserve these species in Africa and around the world. There certainly isn't enough money from the UN or local governments to do it otherwise. I wish it could be otherwise, there is no point to killing a lion for a damned trophy.
When I was younger, I was a hunter, it's how I was raised. I still occasionally will hunt and fish for the table. I don't hunt for "Trophies" and haven't for a very long time. even when I did, we ate what we killed. We also raised cattle, pigs, and chickens. If I kill something nowadays, it goes on the table.
Someone that would pay to have a stuffed leopard kitten imported just to have it sitting on a shelf, as is implied by some of the pictures in the Guardian, I don't think much of a person that would do that. And there is awfully large number of ignorant people in the world that think eating powdered rhino horn or cobra venom is going to have some amazing medicinal effect.
Hunting
There is very little point in killing a lion at all ... Lionesses might be a justifiable threat to livestock, we don't see them much here in Canada so I can't really say, but lions themselves are pretty much only of use to the lionesses.
As I understand it, eating rhino horn should be about as effective a medicine as eating your own fingernail clippings. Cobra venom ... again, I'm in no manner of speaking an expert on snakes, but it's supposed to be pretty potent stuff, honestly wouldn't be a surprise if there was some medical benefit it could be turned to. Doubt simply eating it would end any way but badly, but it's obviously got some highly reactive substances in it ... likely people working on it.
Thing is, neither animal has to die for that ... that's just an example of poor husbandry.