From "I f*cking love science"

[logicatwork]

26. Sorry it's long...

Put yourselves in these situations. Bear with my stupidity please.

Say your the hunter. You spend quite a sum of money to go to Kenya, fill out the government forms, pay to hunt, etc. You find an elephant which you would like to hunt. The officials in the conservation department determine whether the elephant will be okay to hunt. Usually they base this off of the age, health, and importance of the elephant. With the okay to hunt you kill the elephant. Note that this is all legal. Then you take the ivory and leave the meat for the villagers. What's the deal here? This isn't an immoral hunter. He followed all the rules and helped the native people. Not only that but because of his/her hunting there is a net increase of income in Kenya. Now the native people have an incentive to not poach elephants as otherwise there would be no elephants legal hunting and thus no income from potential legal hunters.

Okay now say you get rid of legal hunting. First of all I can assure you nobody in their right mind would go to Kenya to illegally poach an elephant. Would you spend all that money just to hunt an elephant? So no poachers are not rich trophy hunters they are regular people who actually live there. These people would rather make some money than to let elephants live. So they poach elephants. Don't give me a lame excuse that there are better animals to hunt. If there were then people would be hunting them. This, to the Kenyans, is the best option. However due to the lack of organization the elephants will eventually die out.

Let me say that the death of these elephants does not make me happy. It doesn't. But I sympathize with the Kenyans in the decision that they are making and understand their point of view.

Also do you really think that I'm just a pawn of the rich 1%? Look mom I'm giving excuses for filthy rich greedy hunters! Aren't you proud. No I've given a lot of thought to this and I've come to the realization that hunting is not bad to a certain extent.

Sorry to rant.