Anthropocene Apocalypse – Cecil the lion and trophy hunting.

Posted on by Opher

Anthropocene Apocalypse cover

Back in 1900, when Theodore Roosevelt was out hunting bears, things were different.

Back in 1902 the human world population was 1.7 billion. Nature was secure. The Jungles and rainforests were intact. The effects of hunting (apart from if you were a Dodo, Passenger pigeon or Bison) were not going to drastically affect animal populations.

Guns were quite rudimentary. You had to get close.

Now we have high-power, accurate guns. You can kill from distance.

We have a population of 7.3 billion. The forests are being decimated. All around the world – the Amazon, Vietnam, Madagascar. Some of the major rainforests are now 10% of what they were in 1900. The hunters, with their high-power weapons, go in to the remaining jungles via the logging roads, and shoot anything that moves. Trucks are heaped with dead chimps, monkeys and anything else you can think of.

I have a head full of questions.

By 2100 the world population could be 16 billion. Will there be a single wild animal left? Will there be a single square mile of rainforest?

What world are we creating?

What should we do with the politicians that are selling the forests for a quick buck?

What should happen to the logging companies who are clearing pristine rainforest to make a killing?

What should happen to the authorities who sell licences to the sad hunters, like Walter Palmer, who murder animals for trophies?

What should happen to the hunters who are decimating wild-life to feed their families?

What can be done to protect our dwindling wild-life and conserve our wildernesses?

Trophy Hunting – Cecil the Lion and Theodore Roosevelt’s tied up bear.

Posted on by Opher

Cecil the lion was quite an attraction at the Hwange National Park. He’d become quite habituated to humans and thousands delighted at watching him with his pride of females and cubs. He was a magnificent specimen.

Walter Palmer is a dentist who likes killing things. He particularly likes killings predators that are rare and endangered. He has pictures of himself with a murdered leopard and has been fined for illegally killing a Black Bear.

Walter Palmer likes to shoot large animals, skin them and cut their heads off so that he can hang them on the wall as a trophies. That’s what he did with Cecil. That’s a strange thing to do. It says a lot about his psychology. He wants to be a big-game hunter; a tough guy, macho-man. He looks like a nerd. He obviously thinks he is Ernest Hemingway. That’s a big psychological weakness.

Walter Palmer paid £32,000 for the privilege of killing Cecil. He went with a group of African hunters and you can be sure that at no time was his life at risk.

They enticed Cecil out of the reserve. Walter shot him with a cross-bow. Cecil, severely injured, escaped and it took 40 hours for him to be found and shot.

Cecil, used to humans as he was, could hardly have been a difficult proposition. I cannot imagine the difficulty in hunting Cecil; the daring involved, the hardship and danger.

Back in 1902 Theodore Roosevelt went on a hunting trip to kill black bears. After days he still had not found one. The other hunters, eager that Theodore should not have a wasted trip, found an old bear who became wounded in the process, tied him to a tree and went to get Roosevelt. Theodore Roosevelt refused to shoot the shackled bear because he thought it would be unsportsman-like. The story gave rise to the ‘Teddy bear’.

Obviously Theodore Roosevelt was more of a man that Walter Palmer.

The question that remains is – What should we do with these poachers and hunters who are decimating the remaining wild-life?