Stick Your Neck Out
The giraffe smells bad, or so say those who have actually seen one in the wild. The animal which was once the symbol of the now-defunct magazine, Qwest, may soon follow that periodical's path and become little more than a symbol. Hunters and poachers want them...well, not the entire ton+ of the animal's body but just the tail (and occasionally a head or two). The rest can be left to rot because after all, the helicopter they've chartered can't haul those three rare animals out anyway. And they are indeed getting quite rare, in some places just a few hundred or so remain...to a trophy hunter, this makes them all the more of a prize, the effort to get the last one, about as tough as shooting a grazing cow.* My neighboring state's Fish & Game Commissioner recently resigned after proudly displaying his set of kills, not only of a giraffe but of an entire family of baboons, including the infants, along with other animals. And that $2500-3000 fee for downing a giraffe is sorely sought after, so much so that just typing in a search for "hunting giraffes in Africa" will pull up dozens of ultra-luxury hunting tours that will pick you up, wine & dine you, provide you with both air and ground trackers to find whatever animal you're after, prepare the head if wanted for shipping back, and do so at a very "reasonable" fee (generally about $200-300 per day)...heck, they'll even display you and your downed giraffes on their web pages. It's costly, getting those permits and packing your weapons for the flight over, says Market Watch; but then it's likely peanuts for most of those going out for some fun in the wild or to quench their thirst for their hobby (our President's boys perhaps exemplify this)...and it can be costly (one bid by a female hunter was $350,000 to kill a rare black rhino). Okay, gross enough? Or if you're a hunter you may be finding this all a bit puzzling. What's the big deal? It's legal, it's helping "the natives," it's approved by the governments. Heck, walk into most any commercial outdoor store such as Cabela's or Bass and be ready to be taken aback if you're not into hunting or guns (or for a simpler version, simply go online to Amazon or WalMart).
Whoa say the hunters, a group which includes several of my friends, good responsible people who hunt only occasionally and pack out what they kill (some have admitted to me that they simply couldn't do it anymore, the tracking or the hauling out, their strength and stamina both diminished enough to cause them to stop hunting altogether). And since I don't hunt --and thus know next to nothing of what's involved-- I am far from the person to accurately give judgement or criticism; and I'll be the first to admit that jumping into generalizations is an easy path to follow. Just take this example from the Brexit campaign (whaaat??) as noted in the London Review of Books: One of the strangest Facebook ads declared: ‘The EU blocks our ability to speak out and protect polar bears!’ The claim seems to relate to an episode in 2013 when EU member governments were trying to come up with a common position on an international move to ban the world trade in polar bear skin, paws and teeth. Most EU countries, including Britain, were in favour of the ban. Denmark was against. In the end, the European Commission persuaded those in favour of a ban to abstain, the proposal was defeated, and the trade in bear parts continued... Naturally the Brexiteers wanted to emphasise the wickedness of the EU by portraying the bloc as a bear-murdering police state, and assumed voters wouldn’t look too closely at the details. The reason Denmark was against the ban was to support the Inuit hunters of its autonomous dominion Greenland, who every year kill a maximum of 156 polar bears, feeding their families with the meat and making clothes and ornaments from the skin, paws and teeth...The bear-hunting Inuit of Greenland have more than a few things in common with shire Tories: proud and fond of their land and their traditions, lovers of meat, guns and petrol, they are local conservatives who feel they have a right to be considered part of nature, opposed to global conservationists who feel humankind has irreparably broken its covenant with nature. Without the heft of the EU on their side, there is every chance global sympathy with the polar bears would have crushed the Greenlanders. One reasonable interpretation of the story of the EU and the Greenland polar bears is that the best chance for individual peoples and countries to protect their interests in a world of international agreements is a limited surrender of freedom of action in exchange for security in numbers.
Polar bears, grizzly bears, whales, elephants, I just know that that desire or justification to shoot something as a "sport" (vs. for sustenance) isn't in my own book of ethics. But let's try to view some of the reasons given, and this from a non-hunter's perspective wondering how in the world I could be convinced that hunting an animal such a lion or a giraffe would be justified: 1) NECESSARY FOR FOOD: maybe for some but probably for 95% of those who hunt, and especially trophy hunt, this is not the case since the downed deer or elk is more of an acquired urge to have and store a different meat and perhaps also know that you were responsible (and likely proudly so) for bringing that meat "to the table." 2) IT'S A FAMILY OUTING/TRADITION: again this may be so in some parts of the world such as the Inuit mentioned above, and might probably be the case in other areas but for the most part I just don't get it (and here I'm talking mostly about the U.S. sportsmen industry), this going to the outdoors in camouflage gear and with high-end equipment, spotting an animal and having the desire to take the animal's life and remove it from the possible view of others (I can probably count on both hands the number of times in my hundreds or perhaps thousands of hikes I had had the gift of spotting a wild animal, even if just for a few seconds). 3) THE ANIMALS NEED TO BE HUNTED TO KEEP THE POPULATIONS IN CHECK: this is a big reasoning with the lobbyists but dig deeper and discover that wildlife control tax dollars are primarily aimed at removing the natural predators so that other more popular species (cattle, deer, elk, etc.) can be more available, a situation echoed in other countries as well, such as South Africa and Namibia...do you see many game hunters going after wildebeest? 4) THE KILL BENEFITS THE POOR AS FOOD/PROVIDES NEEDED MONIES FOR THEIR VILLAGE: this is actually true in many cases, not counting the poachers, and farmers who purposely poison the water holes and such if their crops are being threatened or destroyed. But now we're entering a different field, that of trophy hunters, there to just make the kill and take home a small token, perhaps a tail or a head, something that would show that the animal was actually killed and not just darted or tranquilized which would have still shown the hunter as victorious in the chase and take-down. 5) IT MAKES ME FEEL MANLY/POWERFUL/KING OF THE JUNGLE: to me this is the actual underlying rationale of it all. And I guess this is where my understanding and empathy drifts off.
To hear those hunting arguments "for" just rings hollow in my book, no judgement meant (it is a big business after all so there must be something to it). But just to reiterate my emphasis, it wouldn't be me. Yes, that world exists and if you're wondering why bring it up again when I've already ranted and raved about this similar topic in an earlier post, it was likely due to this recent update from the NRDC (Natural Resources Defense Council) titled "Let's Stop the Silent Extinction of Giraffes." In part the article read: Many people don’t know the sad reality that giraffe populations have declined more than 40 percent in just the past 30 years, with fewer than 100,000 remaining in isolated, fragmented populations across Africa...All giraffes are in serious trouble, but the situation has grown critical for the West African giraffe, the Nubian giraffe in Ethiopia and South Sudan and the Thornicroft's giraffe in eastern Zambia: only a few hundred of each remain. The United States is a big part of the problem, importing almost 40,000 giraffe products over the past decade, including more than 21,400 bone carvings, 3,855 skins and skin pieces and 3,700 hunting trophies. Rugs, pillows, knife handles, and myriad other products made from giraffe skins and bones can be found for sale all over the internet, not to mention gruesome photos of giraffes killed for sport by American hunters. A giraffe rug? Really?
Giraffes are smart in their own way, perhaps as smart as the acacia trees they feed on. When giraffes are eating the leaves, the acacias will send out a warning "scent" to other acacia trees, a scent which causes the other trees to fill their leaves with a bitter chemical to discourage the taste buds of the giraffes, said a piece in Smithsonian: When a giraffe starts chewing acacia leaves, the tree notices the injury and emits a distress signal in the form of ethylene gas. Upon detecting this gas, neighboring acacias start pumping tannins into their leaves. In large enough quantities these compounds can sicken or even kill large herbivores. Giraffes are aware of this, however, having evolved with acacias, and this is why they browse into the wind, so the warning gas doesn’t reach the trees ahead of them. If there’s no wind, a giraffe will typically walk 100 yards --farther than ethylene gas can travel in still air-- before feeding on the next acacia. Giraffes, you might say, know that the trees are talking to one another. It's a quiet time, a peaceful time of no scents, no rustling in the bushes, no threats, a day like any other...until that loud crack from a high-caliber rifle, a bullet coming from so far away (perhaps from the air above or from multiple rapid firings) that it may as well have come from a sniper, an unknown assailant just out to fulfill his or her enjoyment, that that sudden pain in your head or chest, that gasping for air or warmth as the blood drains, had little to do with your life or what you had done, that you were just in the wrong place at the wrong time and that someone had the money and the time to go out and shoot something alive...you. No need to run, just keep doing what you're doing and go about your day. No, you didn't do anything wrong; he or she just wanted to shoot something today...maybe even if it was just out of a hotel window in Las Vegas.
My wife's mother's cat is in its final hours or days before passing, its 19 years now down to its last few moments. My wife and I are alternating our time by his side, rubbing his head or his paws and letting him know that he is not alone, that even in his not understanding what is happening that this is life and that this is death. It is the natural order of sorts. And somehow his shallow purring kept entering my mind as I swam outdoors at my local recreation center, the water warm and the sun shining on the hills in the background. Life was good, another day at the office so to speak. The last thing I would be expecting would be a bullet striking me mid-stroke and a hunter coming up later to claim my big toe for a collector in some distant part of the world, leaving the rest of me to sink in the pool, wondering what on earth had happened and for what reason? A tail, a toe, it would all be the same. In my final moments I would have no idea why the natural order had been so disrupted...
Anthropomorphic? Probably, but even the editor of The Week mused that his dog seemed depressed or seemed to show signs of it (and what pet owner hasn't experienced something of that feeling in their pet?): In a new book, Are We Smart Enough to Know How Smart Animals Are?, primatologist Frans de Waal argues that it's egocentric for Homo sapiens to presume we sit at the pinnacle of evolution, separate and apart from all other creatures. Evolution, he says, is a continuum. The human mind did not spring into being overnight when we began farming or writing or putting on pants. "How could our species arrive at planning, empathy, consciousness, and so on," de Waal asks, "if we are part of a natural world devoid of any and all stepping-stones to such capacities?" Elephants and sea lions mourn their dead. Dogs and dolphins communicate their feelings, and empathize with their own kind and with humans. Chimps outperform people in instantly memorizing a series of numbers.
Is there another way, perhaps hunters using tranquilizer darts instead of bullets? Okay, one would have to get much closer and if they missed, well, that's supposed to be the thrill of the hunt isn't it? Predator and prey? Or we could convince collectors (friends??) that giraffe rugs and heads are not cool but are actually rather disgusting. Or we could encourage the growth of spending that money on places such as those of The Safari Collection and their Giraffe Manor where giraffes roam the grounds and even pop their heads in for breakfast. When author Imbolo Mbue was asked to recommend a book that should be "required reading for everyone of Earth" his choice was Don Miguel Ruiz's The Four Agreements. Said Mbue: Imagine a world where we all live by this covenant: Be impeccable with your word; don't take anything personally; don't make assumptions; always do your best. But it was another suggestion, that of Maya Angelou's poem that perhaps summed up this entire discussion of hunt or hunted, observer or shooter, animal or human (meaning we're possibly something other than animal?). Said Angelou in her poem Human Family: We are more alike, my friends/than unalike.
*Okay, it's a bit tougher, whether from the air or from the ground. Here's how one hunting site described the process: These gentle giants are docile by nature, but will defend themselves if attacked using their front feet...The giraffe has thick, tough skin and will require the same bullet selection as the elephant. While the faster 7mm’s are legal, the 9.3mm and .375 H&H with good quality solids are the best medicine for any body shot. The 40 calibers will be even more effective, with good quality soft-points being more effective for the brain or spinal shot. Shot placement can be tricky when hunting giraffe; the heart lies in the center of the chest, far forward and above the shoulder joints.
Whoa say the hunters, a group which includes several of my friends, good responsible people who hunt only occasionally and pack out what they kill (some have admitted to me that they simply couldn't do it anymore, the tracking or the hauling out, their strength and stamina both diminished enough to cause them to stop hunting altogether). And since I don't hunt --and thus know next to nothing of what's involved-- I am far from the person to accurately give judgement or criticism; and I'll be the first to admit that jumping into generalizations is an easy path to follow. Just take this example from the Brexit campaign (whaaat??) as noted in the London Review of Books: One of the strangest Facebook ads declared: ‘The EU blocks our ability to speak out and protect polar bears!’ The claim seems to relate to an episode in 2013 when EU member governments were trying to come up with a common position on an international move to ban the world trade in polar bear skin, paws and teeth. Most EU countries, including Britain, were in favour of the ban. Denmark was against. In the end, the European Commission persuaded those in favour of a ban to abstain, the proposal was defeated, and the trade in bear parts continued... Naturally the Brexiteers wanted to emphasise the wickedness of the EU by portraying the bloc as a bear-murdering police state, and assumed voters wouldn’t look too closely at the details. The reason Denmark was against the ban was to support the Inuit hunters of its autonomous dominion Greenland, who every year kill a maximum of 156 polar bears, feeding their families with the meat and making clothes and ornaments from the skin, paws and teeth...The bear-hunting Inuit of Greenland have more than a few things in common with shire Tories: proud and fond of their land and their traditions, lovers of meat, guns and petrol, they are local conservatives who feel they have a right to be considered part of nature, opposed to global conservationists who feel humankind has irreparably broken its covenant with nature. Without the heft of the EU on their side, there is every chance global sympathy with the polar bears would have crushed the Greenlanders. One reasonable interpretation of the story of the EU and the Greenland polar bears is that the best chance for individual peoples and countries to protect their interests in a world of international agreements is a limited surrender of freedom of action in exchange for security in numbers.
Polar bears, grizzly bears, whales, elephants, I just know that that desire or justification to shoot something as a "sport" (vs. for sustenance) isn't in my own book of ethics. But let's try to view some of the reasons given, and this from a non-hunter's perspective wondering how in the world I could be convinced that hunting an animal such a lion or a giraffe would be justified: 1) NECESSARY FOR FOOD: maybe for some but probably for 95% of those who hunt, and especially trophy hunt, this is not the case since the downed deer or elk is more of an acquired urge to have and store a different meat and perhaps also know that you were responsible (and likely proudly so) for bringing that meat "to the table." 2) IT'S A FAMILY OUTING/TRADITION: again this may be so in some parts of the world such as the Inuit mentioned above, and might probably be the case in other areas but for the most part I just don't get it (and here I'm talking mostly about the U.S. sportsmen industry), this going to the outdoors in camouflage gear and with high-end equipment, spotting an animal and having the desire to take the animal's life and remove it from the possible view of others (I can probably count on both hands the number of times in my hundreds or perhaps thousands of hikes I had had the gift of spotting a wild animal, even if just for a few seconds). 3) THE ANIMALS NEED TO BE HUNTED TO KEEP THE POPULATIONS IN CHECK: this is a big reasoning with the lobbyists but dig deeper and discover that wildlife control tax dollars are primarily aimed at removing the natural predators so that other more popular species (cattle, deer, elk, etc.) can be more available, a situation echoed in other countries as well, such as South Africa and Namibia...do you see many game hunters going after wildebeest? 4) THE KILL BENEFITS THE POOR AS FOOD/PROVIDES NEEDED MONIES FOR THEIR VILLAGE: this is actually true in many cases, not counting the poachers, and farmers who purposely poison the water holes and such if their crops are being threatened or destroyed. But now we're entering a different field, that of trophy hunters, there to just make the kill and take home a small token, perhaps a tail or a head, something that would show that the animal was actually killed and not just darted or tranquilized which would have still shown the hunter as victorious in the chase and take-down. 5) IT MAKES ME FEEL MANLY/POWERFUL/KING OF THE JUNGLE: to me this is the actual underlying rationale of it all. And I guess this is where my understanding and empathy drifts off.
To hear those hunting arguments "for" just rings hollow in my book, no judgement meant (it is a big business after all so there must be something to it). But just to reiterate my emphasis, it wouldn't be me. Yes, that world exists and if you're wondering why bring it up again when I've already ranted and raved about this similar topic in an earlier post, it was likely due to this recent update from the NRDC (Natural Resources Defense Council) titled "Let's Stop the Silent Extinction of Giraffes." In part the article read: Many people don’t know the sad reality that giraffe populations have declined more than 40 percent in just the past 30 years, with fewer than 100,000 remaining in isolated, fragmented populations across Africa...All giraffes are in serious trouble, but the situation has grown critical for the West African giraffe, the Nubian giraffe in Ethiopia and South Sudan and the Thornicroft's giraffe in eastern Zambia: only a few hundred of each remain. The United States is a big part of the problem, importing almost 40,000 giraffe products over the past decade, including more than 21,400 bone carvings, 3,855 skins and skin pieces and 3,700 hunting trophies. Rugs, pillows, knife handles, and myriad other products made from giraffe skins and bones can be found for sale all over the internet, not to mention gruesome photos of giraffes killed for sport by American hunters. A giraffe rug? Really?
Giraffes are smart in their own way, perhaps as smart as the acacia trees they feed on. When giraffes are eating the leaves, the acacias will send out a warning "scent" to other acacia trees, a scent which causes the other trees to fill their leaves with a bitter chemical to discourage the taste buds of the giraffes, said a piece in Smithsonian: When a giraffe starts chewing acacia leaves, the tree notices the injury and emits a distress signal in the form of ethylene gas. Upon detecting this gas, neighboring acacias start pumping tannins into their leaves. In large enough quantities these compounds can sicken or even kill large herbivores. Giraffes are aware of this, however, having evolved with acacias, and this is why they browse into the wind, so the warning gas doesn’t reach the trees ahead of them. If there’s no wind, a giraffe will typically walk 100 yards --farther than ethylene gas can travel in still air-- before feeding on the next acacia. Giraffes, you might say, know that the trees are talking to one another. It's a quiet time, a peaceful time of no scents, no rustling in the bushes, no threats, a day like any other...until that loud crack from a high-caliber rifle, a bullet coming from so far away (perhaps from the air above or from multiple rapid firings) that it may as well have come from a sniper, an unknown assailant just out to fulfill his or her enjoyment, that that sudden pain in your head or chest, that gasping for air or warmth as the blood drains, had little to do with your life or what you had done, that you were just in the wrong place at the wrong time and that someone had the money and the time to go out and shoot something alive...you. No need to run, just keep doing what you're doing and go about your day. No, you didn't do anything wrong; he or she just wanted to shoot something today...maybe even if it was just out of a hotel window in Las Vegas.
My wife's mother's cat is in its final hours or days before passing, its 19 years now down to its last few moments. My wife and I are alternating our time by his side, rubbing his head or his paws and letting him know that he is not alone, that even in his not understanding what is happening that this is life and that this is death. It is the natural order of sorts. And somehow his shallow purring kept entering my mind as I swam outdoors at my local recreation center, the water warm and the sun shining on the hills in the background. Life was good, another day at the office so to speak. The last thing I would be expecting would be a bullet striking me mid-stroke and a hunter coming up later to claim my big toe for a collector in some distant part of the world, leaving the rest of me to sink in the pool, wondering what on earth had happened and for what reason? A tail, a toe, it would all be the same. In my final moments I would have no idea why the natural order had been so disrupted...
Anthropomorphic? Probably, but even the editor of The Week mused that his dog seemed depressed or seemed to show signs of it (and what pet owner hasn't experienced something of that feeling in their pet?): In a new book, Are We Smart Enough to Know How Smart Animals Are?, primatologist Frans de Waal argues that it's egocentric for Homo sapiens to presume we sit at the pinnacle of evolution, separate and apart from all other creatures. Evolution, he says, is a continuum. The human mind did not spring into being overnight when we began farming or writing or putting on pants. "How could our species arrive at planning, empathy, consciousness, and so on," de Waal asks, "if we are part of a natural world devoid of any and all stepping-stones to such capacities?" Elephants and sea lions mourn their dead. Dogs and dolphins communicate their feelings, and empathize with their own kind and with humans. Chimps outperform people in instantly memorizing a series of numbers.
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| Breakfast with the giraffes at Giraffe Manor |
*Okay, it's a bit tougher, whether from the air or from the ground. Here's how one hunting site described the process: These gentle giants are docile by nature, but will defend themselves if attacked using their front feet...The giraffe has thick, tough skin and will require the same bullet selection as the elephant. While the faster 7mm’s are legal, the 9.3mm and .375 H&H with good quality solids are the best medicine for any body shot. The 40 calibers will be even more effective, with good quality soft-points being more effective for the brain or spinal shot. Shot placement can be tricky when hunting giraffe; the heart lies in the center of the chest, far forward and above the shoulder joints.
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