(08-05-2015, 02:08 PM)mallorian69 Wrote: As long as you only charge what it costs you to harvest and transport them it should be legal

(08-05-2015, 03:49 PM)StLucieBengal Wrote: http://abcnews.go.com/US/wireStory/vandals-attack-vacation-home-dentist-killed-cecil-32893630

Now the disgusting vandals are going after the guys home here in Florida.     This poor dentist.   I hope we find the vandals and hit them hard.

(08-05-2015, 04:43 PM)jason Wrote: Lucie's organizing a posse .

Quote:Winston-Salem, N.C. — MY mind was absorbed by the biochemistry of gene editing when the text messages and Facebook posts distracted me.

So sorry about Cecil.

Did Cecil live near your place in Zimbabwe?

Cecil who? I wondered. When I turned on the news and discovered that the messages were about a lion killed by an American dentist, the village boy inside me instinctively cheered: One lion fewer to menace families like mine.

My excitement was doused when I realized that the lion killer was being painted as the villain. I faced the starkest cultural contradiction I’d experienced during my five years studying in the United States.

Did all those Americans signing petitions understand that lions actually kill people? That all the talk about Cecil being “beloved” or a “local favorite” was media hype? Did Jimmy Kimmel choke up because Cecil was murdered or because he confused him with Simba from “The Lion King”?

In my village in Zimbabwe, surrounded by wildlife conservation areas, no lion has ever been beloved, or granted an affectionate nickname. They are objects of terror.

When I was 9 years old, a solitary lion prowled villages near my home. After it killed a few chickens, some goats and finally a cow, we were warned to walk to school in groups and stop playing outside. My sisters no longer went alone to the river to collect water or wash dishes; my mother waited for my father and older brothers, armed with machetes, axes and spears, to escort her into the bush to collect firewood.

A week later, my mother gathered me with nine of my siblings to explain that her uncle had been attacked but escaped with nothing more than an injured leg. The lion sucked the life out of the village: No one socialized by fires at night; no one dared stroll over to a neighbor’s homestead.

When the lion was finally killed, no one cared whether its murderer was a local person or a white trophy hunter, whether it was poached or killed legally. We danced and sang about the vanquishing of the fearsome beast and our escape from serious harm.

Recently, a 14-year-old boy in a village not far from mine wasn’t so lucky. Sleeping in his family’s fields, as villagers do to protect crops from the hippos, buffalo and elephants that trample them, he was mauled by a lion and died.

The killing of Cecil hasn’t garnered much more sympathy from urban Zimbabweans, although they live with no such danger. Few have ever seen a lion, since game drives are a luxury residents of a country with an average monthly income below $150 cannot afford.

Don’t misunderstand me: For Zimbabweans, wild animals have near-mystical significance. We belong to clans, and each clan claims an animal totem as its mythological ancestor. Mine is Nzou, elephant, and by tradition, I can’t eat elephant meat; it would be akin to eating a relative’s flesh. But our respect for these animals has never kept us from hunting them or allowing them to be hunted. (I’m familiar with dangerous animals; I lost my right leg to a snakebite when I was 11.)

The American tendency to romanticize animals that have been given actual names and to jump onto a hashtag train has turned an ordinary situation — there were 800 lions legally killed over a decade by well-heeled foreigners who shelled out serious money to prove their prowess — into what seems to my Zimbabwean eyes an absurdist circus.

PETA is calling for the hunter to be hanged. Zimbabwean politicians are accusing the United States of staging Cecil’s killing as a “ploy” to make our country look bad. And Americans who can’t find Zimbabwe on a map are applauding the nation’s demand for the extradition of the dentist, unaware that a baby elephant was reportedly slaughtered for our president’s most recent birthday banquet.

We Zimbabweans are left shaking our heads, wondering why Americans care more about African animals than about African people.

Don’t tell us what to do with our animals when you allowed your own mountain lions to be hunted to near extinction in the eastern United States. Don’t bemoan the clear-cutting of our forests when you turned yours into concrete jungles.

And please, don’t offer me condolences about Cecil unless you’re also willing to offer me condolences for villagers killed or left hungry by his brethren, by political violence, or by hunger.

(08-05-2015, 04:43 PM)jason Wrote: Lucie's organizing a posse .

(08-05-2015, 05:36 PM)StLucieBengal Wrote: http://mobile.nytimes.com/2015/08/05/opinion/in-zimbabwe-we-dont-cry-for-lions.html?_r=0&referrer=

Op Ed written by someone from Zimbabwe and this puts some things into perspective.  

(08-05-2015, 05:36 PM)StLucieBengal Wrote: http://mobile.nytimes.com/2015/08/05/opinion/in-zimbabwe-we-dont-cry-for-lions.html?_r=0&referrer=

Op Ed written by someone from Zimbabwe and this puts some things into perspective.  

(08-06-2015, 03:30 PM)michaelsean Wrote: What does he know?  When it comes to Zimbabwe, East Coast liberals are the experts. 

"Did Cecil live by your village?" 

(08-05-2015, 05:36 PM)StLucieBengal Wrote: http://mobile.nytimes.com/2015/08/05/opinion/in-zimbabwe-we-dont-cry-for-lions.html?_r=0&referrer=

Op Ed written by someone from Zimbabwe and this puts some things into perspective.  

(08-07-2015, 12:34 AM)Benton Wrote: Ignore illegal hunting which gives regular hunters (myself included) a bad name. Ignore that there's only 15,000-30,000 of them in a continuously shrinking habitat. Ignore that the guy broke multiple laws.

Let us instead focus on one guy who left Zimbabwe who claims to be speaking for the entire country he no  longer resides in. That would be like Ted Cruz saying he speaks for all Canadians. 

(08-07-2015, 03:19 AM)StLucieBengal Wrote: There are people who get upset when they kill pythons here in Florida. But if you ask most down here we are all in favor of killing as many pythons as you can kill. Why? Because they Attack children and pets.

(08-07-2015, 03:19 AM)StLucieBengal Wrote:  

There are people who get upset when they kill pythons here in Florida.   But if you ask most down here we are all in favor of killing as many pythons as you can kill.      Why?  Because they Attack children and pets.

(08-07-2015, 03:19 AM)StLucieBengal Wrote: Wouldn't have a better idea of local impact?   Not saying the guides shouldn't be fined and punished.   Or saying the dentist shouldnt be fined or possibly not allowed to travel to zimbabwe any longer.    

There are people who get upset when they kill pythons here in Florida.   But if you ask most down here we are all in favor of killing as many pythons as you can kill.      Why?  Because they Attack children and pets.

(08-07-2015, 10:34 AM)Benton Wrote: To the bold, you have a species necessary to the ecosystem that has low enough populations and habitat to be on the endangered species list, illegally killed; versus (as has already been said) a non-native invasive species that can endanger the rest of the ecosystem. Completely a bad example.

It's like the Asian carp we have here. Horrible time getting rid of the things. Nobody gets upset when they have a tournament and pull out a few tons of carp and throw it away, because it's destroying the rest of the habitat. But they're an invasive species that wouldn't be here in the first place if it wasn't for fish farms trying to breed them for profit and then dumping them when that failed.

(08-07-2015, 09:05 AM)bengal_fan_in_toronto Wrote: So it has nothing to do with them being an invasive species and they are wreaking havoc on the native wildlife.  

Lord knows there are no other animals in the everglades that could possibly attack a child or pet.