Why That Lion Hunt Matters To All Hunters

[Mr VJP]

This is an excerpt from a recent article on the Outdoor Wire.

 

"Now, an entirely new petition is circulating on change.org - and it's designed to put pressure on U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service Director Dan Ashe. If you're wondering if there's a goal to the petition, the title tells the story: "Justice for Cecil the iconic collared lion slaughtered by a trophy hunter in Zimbabwe!" 

Yes, that's an exclamation point at the end. No, we don't support the use of them, but we do support accurate quotations, so there it is. 

This petition, begun by Cheryl Semcer of Hoboken, New Jersey on July 31 -just four days ago, has already collected more than one million of the 1.5 million signatures that are the stated goal. 

Semcer's not an unfamiliar name to New York or New Jersey residents - especially if they're hunters. She's been called the "the Lion Lady of Hoboken, NJ" and website "EyeHelpAnimals.com" trumpets that she is "at it again" with the Cecil petition. 

According to that site, Semcer began a petition in 2012 that "resulted in the end of the sale and preparation of lion meat at a restaurant in Wichita, Kansas." 

There's no doubting Semcer's sincerity, although she might be a bit lacking on the facts of what hunting means to the economies of many African nations. But her love of animals resulted in her traveling to Zimbabwe and South Africa in 2009 where she "volunteered with lions, elephants and at a shelter with abused cats and dogs." 

In other words, she's not afraid to take a stand. And she has some clearly stated goals -and the active support of more than a million people who are outraged at the killing of a lion half-way around the world. Personally, I think it's unfortunate that the daily killing of human beings - globally- doesn't stir people's souls, but that's probably just my "desperate clinging nature". 

But I'm not afraid to make this prediction: if hunters- internationally- don't act quickly and with equal passion in support of legal hunting, this vocal minority (a million people signing an electronic petition still represents a small minority of the overall population), those same millions of hunters will have taken a big step toward the elimination of all hunting. 

As it is, international trophy hunters may soon find themselves, as the old expression says, all dressed up with no place to go."

--Jim Shepherd

Edited August 4, 2015 by Mr VJP

[mike rossi]

 

This petition, begun by Cheryl Semcer of Hoboken, New Jersey on July 31 -just four days ago, has already collected more than one million of the 1.5 million signatures that are the stated goal. 

 this vocal minority (a million people signing an electronic petition still represents a small minority of the overall population), 

 

So how many is Mr. Shepard going to get on his petition or does he have a different strategy?

 

I don't know if he is cheer-leading or he actually believes his statement or has no sense of proportion, but I def. do not see him outlining a plan. Do what join the NRA? Complain about the so-called liberal or democrats? What is his plan?

 

I don't know if this is apples to oranges, but the recent NY wild turkey regulation proposal only generated 120 public comments from NY hunters. I think turkeys are the number two game in NY after deer? Think he will get 120 to engage about a controversy about  African Lions? I would say if he does, it represents a problem, not a success, considering only 120 bothered to engage in NY state turkey conservation policy....

[Fletch]

Send her this.....

 

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.

Photo

 

 

Protesters have called for the death of the hunter who killed Cecil the lion. Credit Eric Miller/Reuters

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.

Continue reading the main story  Write A Comment

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.

Goodwell Nzou is a doctoral student in molecular and cellular biosciences at Wake Forest University.

 

[d-bone20917]

This is the best response I've seen.

 

http://themeateater.com/2015/thoughts-on-african-lions-big-game-trophies-and-hunting-in-america/

[NFA-ADK]

Thanks Fletch!

[Skillet]

.