In order to save the animal we had to kill it.

[rick-day.livejournal.com]

Save a critically endangered species by hunting it?

The Dallas Safari Club says it is preparing to auction off an opportunity to hunt an endangered black rhino in Namibia -- to benefit the Namibian government's Game Products Trust Fund.

"This fundraiser is the first of its kind for an endangered species," Ben Carter, DSC executive director, said earlier this month in a statement announcing the auction.

The auction, to be held in early January, is expected to fetch between $250,000 to $1 million, Carter told NBC 5 by phone Friday.

The black rhino is "critically endangered," according to the International Rhino Foundation. An estimated 5,000 live in the wild.

When asked about offering a chance to hunt a member of an endangered species, Carter said, "This is about saving a species, not one animal."

The permit that will be auctioned is the first of its kind ever to be issued on behalf of the government of the Republic of Namibia outside of the country, Carter said.

In its press release, the DSC said that the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service has promised full cooperation with a qualified buyer.

But the hunt has drawn widespread criticism on social media and was the focus of a segment on "The Colbert Report" on Comedy Central on Thursday night.

The Colbert Report
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"It seems counterintuitive to sell the ability to shoot an animal as a means to save a species," said Rita Beving Griggs, a Dallas-based representative of the Sierra Club.

Carter said he was concerned about how the auction is being perceived. The rhino that will be hunted will be an older, non-breeding male, he said.

The DSC has a stated mission of conservation, education and protecting hunters' rights.

The auction will occur during the group's annual convention, which will be held Jan. 9-12 at the Kay Bailey-Hutchison Dallas Convention Center.

Although this article previously stated that the DSC auction would benefit the Save the Rhino Trust, that nongovernmental organization is not involved with hunting or the auction.

"We are not responsible for hunting and we are not associated with hunting," the group said in a statement on its website. "Our job at Save the Rhino Trust is to save rhino, and that is exactly what we do every waking hour of our lives."

The group suggests that people concerned about the auction contact the permanent secretary of the Ministry of Environment and Tourism and its the Department of Parks and Wildlife.

Plagarized from this Texas Chili with Rhino sauce: http://www.nbcdfw.com/news/weird/Group-Auctions-Off-Chance-to-Hunt-Endangered-Rhino-229341391.html

ETA: you know..some days posts just write themselves...

Comments

[fizzyland.livejournal.com]

If we ever invent time travel, you know the first thing these people will do is go back and shoot all the dinosaurs.

[rimpala.livejournal.com]

And possibly shooting all of whatever we evolved from/inherited our genes from.

[rick-day.livejournal.com]

Unless they 'looked' like them

[sophia-sadek.livejournal.com]

Right. Then when we return to the present, we find that there are no carnivorous reptiles around keeping the rodent population in check. For some reason I am reminded of an Escape episode (http://ia700304.us.archive.org/14/items/ThreeSkeletonKey/ThreeSkeletonKey_64kb.m3u).

[notmrgarrison.livejournal.com]

If enough people were concerned about one non-breeding male rhino, they could raise a million or so, win the auction, and not hunt it.

[rick-day.livejournal.com]

which is....probably the tactic all along, ya think?

[notmrgarrison.livejournal.com]

Not really. From reading the statement, it appears getting rid of certain males can increase the population. And this seemingly outrageous auction has generated their cause a lot of free publicity. But even without that, they're getting money and if anything the hunt will likely help.

[sophia-sadek.livejournal.com]

I am reminded of the real estate speculators who turn a hefty profit by threatening to sell off pieces of wilderness but wind up turning the land over to the Nature Conservancy.

[notmrgarrison.livejournal.com]

The Namibian government's Game Products Trust Fund remind you of real estate speculators? (They're the one's getting the money here).

[hardblue.livejournal.com]

Ah, Texas, this is similar to the way they are pro-women's health, too.

[rick-day.livejournal.com]

corn pone continuity, they gots!

[brother-dour.livejournal.com]

Except this actually has a purpose. Read up on the scimitar-horned oryx.

[sophia-sadek.livejournal.com]

Texans love women so much they want them to be in a natural state of bare-footed pregnancy.

[novapsyche.livejournal.com]

Just for the record, Colbert aired that segment more than a week ago. He was one of the media outlets responsible for elevating awareness of the plan in the first place.

. . . Oh, wait. You've just lifted an article (or segments of several articles) without any attribution. Nevermind.

[rick-day.livejournal.com]

nonsense!

post scripted

[rick-day.livejournal.com]

also, in order to use up-to-date verification of true authorship when no source is cited:

1. download Google Chrome Browser.
2. Highlight a paragraph with your mouse
3. right click ...'search google for..."
4. ????
5. source
6. PROFITS!

[htpcl.livejournal.com]

LJ cut please?

[rick-day.livejournal.com]

sure thng!

[brother-dour.livejournal.com]

Here's the thing. With animals that breed easily and quickly, at least, this works. It works in a pretty straightforward way, and again we're going to use Tex-ass as an example.

There is a certain species of African antelope called the scimitar-horned oryx (Oryx dammah). They are endangered in Africa- to the point of being almost extinct in the wild. But not all is lost (yet), because guess where the largest population of captive breeding oryxes is. That's right- Texas. Where they have commercial value (key term) with hunters. You see, our climate and forage in the southern half of the state is close enough to Subsahara Africa that they do well down here (about 10,000 in Texas alone as of 2012). And they breed easily in captivity. And they're pretty darn tasty (I have partaken of my share of oryx). The problem is, now they have been added to the Endangered species list, meaning that they can no longer be hunted in the U.S. and they have no more commercial value ( http://www.mysanantonio.com/news/local_news/article/Hunting-ban-could-see-last-of-unicorns-3453819.php (http://www.mysanantonio.com/news/local_news/article/Hunting-ban-could-see-last-of-unicorns-3453819.php)). Commercial popularity is nothing new- that is the preferred way to preserve existing domestic breeds of livestock: if people like and demand those breeds, commercial value rises and thus the breed does not go away. Texas game ranchers have proven that this can work for endangered species, too.

Having said all of that, though, I don't see how an animal that is difficult to raise in captivity and/or has a long life span could benefit from such a program. Seems to me that this is more of an, "We have to cull a rhino anyway due to overpopulation fears, so let's raise operating $ off it at any rate". I'm not sure I see anything wrong with this, so long as the rhinos in question are going to be culled anyway as part of an established and approved wildlife management program.

[yes-justice.livejournal.com]

The fact is that hunters and poachers (thin distinction) have all but destroyed this species and now are trying to put a bandaid on a corpse.

What a legacy left to our children. Bones.


"We have to cull a rhino anyway

No, you don't.

[yes-justice.livejournal.com]

I'm not sure I see anything wrong with this

Our grandchildren wont know a wild rhino. That's not a good thing.

[yes-justice.livejournal.com]

almost extinct in the wild.

Not almost.

"The scimitar oryx or scimitar-horned oryx (Oryx dammah), also known as the Sahara oryx, is a species of Oryx now extinct in the wild."

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scimitar_oryx

Is wiki wrong?

[yes-justice.livejournal.com]

Here is the science that demonstrates that culling is harmful to mammals.

Mass Killings Can Haunt Elephants for Decades (http://news.sciencemag.org/africa/2013/11/mass-killings-can-haunt-elephants-decades):

“It is a groundbreaking study, because it is the first to demonstrate, experimentally, a direct connection between the effects of culling and specific psychosocial harms,” says Lori Marino, a neuroscientist and expert on dolphin behavior at Emory University in Atlanta, who was not involved with the research. “It shows unequivocally that elephants are psychologically damaged by culling.”

Obvious, emotionally too, when you think about it.

[meus-ovatio.livejournal.com]

Fuckin' amateurs. I can get 'em a rhino no problem. By tomorrow. With painted toe nails and everything. Fucking amateurs.

[policraticus.livejournal.com]

One of the best ways to conserve an animal is to hunt it responsibly and use the fees taken to buy and preserve the animal's habitat. Ducks Unlimited spends millions buying and conserving wetlands and lakes in the US to preserve and improve the habitat needed by their prey. It has been very successful. The Lorax should have tried this with the Truffula trees.

Property rights. Tragedy of the Commons. Etc.

Obviously, rhinos aren't waterfowl and I don't know enough about this specific program to form a solid argument, maybe their are too few rhino left to make this work, but the idea is not prima facia nonsense.