Cecil the lion: Twisted logic behind hunting (Opinion) - CNN.com
I'm thinking, to kill a lion is a shameful thing. There is no game here. No old-school hunting need here. Just trophy hunting. Just ego-hunting. Just the desire to kill something beautiful, and grand. I'm thinking the hunter is a very small man. I'm thinking mankind is barely able to get out of the need to kill each other, and innocent animals (and let's be honest: this lion did nothing to the hunter, and they surely had shotguns if his little bow charade did not work out and Cecil charged).
Cecil was grand. He became the leader of a tribe at an older age. He should have been allowed to live out his life, as we all should.
I've signed petitions to Zimbabwe hoping to make such 'contracts' with hunters illegal. Tourism for the more well-adjusted of us is big money for African nations: we want to go and look, gawk, snap photos, see their habitat, see how they live. And if they are killed off (see below), there is nothing left to see.
Killing them just isn't on my radar.
Hunters need to find some robot targets, or worse maybe hunt themselves.
I hope the other Cecil's out there are allowed to live out a decent life.
"Sadly, lions aren't the only imperiled species hunted for sport.
Americans continue to kill rhinos, leopards, elephants, polar bears,
giraffes, leopards and a variety of other animals for gruesome mementos,
collecting heads as if they were merit badges. Perhaps the most
perverse part about this is that the rarer and more endangered these
species become, the more valuable they are to trophy hunters, as
evidenced by the $50,000 price tag of this hunt and the even more
egregious $350,000 permit auctioned off earlier this year by a member of the Dallas Safari Club to kill a critically endangered Namibian black rhino."
I'm in a good mood, but honestly the endangered species killing makes me furious. I'll save the foul language, but needless to say hunters interested in killing an endangered species is a most short-sighted, awful and soulless sort. Small-minded, greedy, and internally desperate and completely void of the connectedness and beauty of life.
I'm thinking, to kill a lion is a shameful thing. There is no game here. No old-school hunting need here. Just trophy hunting. Just ego-hunting. Just the desire to kill something beautiful, and grand. I'm thinking the hunter is a very small man. I'm thinking mankind is barely able to get out of the need to kill each other, and innocent animals (and let's be honest: this lion did nothing to the hunter, and they surely had shotguns if his little bow charade did not work out and Cecil charged).
Cecil was grand. He became the leader of a tribe at an older age. He should have been allowed to live out his life, as we all should.
I've signed petitions to Zimbabwe hoping to make such 'contracts' with hunters illegal. Tourism for the more well-adjusted of us is big money for African nations: we want to go and look, gawk, snap photos, see their habitat, see how they live. And if they are killed off (see below), there is nothing left to see.
Killing them just isn't on my radar.
Hunters need to find some robot targets, or worse maybe hunt themselves.
I hope the other Cecil's out there are allowed to live out a decent life.
"Sadly, lions aren't the only imperiled species hunted for sport.
Americans continue to kill rhinos, leopards, elephants, polar bears,
giraffes, leopards and a variety of other animals for gruesome mementos,
collecting heads as if they were merit badges. Perhaps the most
perverse part about this is that the rarer and more endangered these
species become, the more valuable they are to trophy hunters, as
evidenced by the $50,000 price tag of this hunt and the even more
egregious $350,000 permit auctioned off earlier this year by a member of the Dallas Safari Club to kill a critically endangered Namibian black rhino."
I'm in a good mood, but honestly the endangered species killing makes me furious. I'll save the foul language, but needless to say hunters interested in killing an endangered species is a most short-sighted, awful and soulless sort. Small-minded, greedy, and internally desperate and completely void of the connectedness and beauty of life.
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