“Sport hunters, those who kill animals for recreation rather than out of necessity, imported more than 1.26 million trophies to the U.S. in the decade from 2005 through 2014, according to a new analysis of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service’s import data by Humane Society International and the Humane Society of United States. That’s an average of 126,000 trophy imports a year, or 345 a day.” Although the room depicted above is a little freaky, I have no problem with sport hunting. I consider it key to wildlife preservation. Here’s someone who doesn’t quite see it that way . . .
“What we hope the report accomplishes is that we shed light on the scale of the role we play in killing some of the world’s vulnerable and endangered species,” said Masha Kalinina, an international trade policy specialist at Humane Society International . . .
Conservationists, animal welfare advocates and many scientists say sport hunting puts pressure on vulnerable populations, disrupts social networks, and doesn’t pump up local economies as much as hunters argue. Many also argue that destroying wildlife for pleasure is unethical.
The NatGeo article — funded by the mysterious BAND Foundation (link not found) and the Woodtiger Fund (part of Communist sympathizer Henry A Wallace’s legacy) — has a lot of new statistical info on trophy hunting. Like this:
And this:
The text of the article conflates issues of poaching with trophy hunting. Because hunting. Still, it presents excellent insight into the health of the trophy hunting industry, which, if managed properly, could do even more to protect our wildlife heritage than all the anti-hunting activism opponents can muster.