Hunting

Information and Discussions on Hunting
User avatar
Lisbeth
Site Admin
Posts: 67237
Joined: Sat May 19, 2012 12:31 pm
Country: Switzerland
Location: Lugano
Contact:

Re: Hunting

Post by Lisbeth »

^Q^ ^Q^ ^Q^ =O: =O:


"Education is the most powerful weapon which you can use to change the world." Nelson Mandela
The desire for equality must never exceed the demands of knowledge
User avatar
Lisbeth
Site Admin
Posts: 67237
Joined: Sat May 19, 2012 12:31 pm
Country: Switzerland
Location: Lugano
Contact:

Re: Hunting

Post by Lisbeth »

Trump to consider elephant trophy imports on ‘case-by-case’ basis

Image

The Fish and Wildlife Service (FWS) announced last week that it will now consider all permits for importing elephant trophies from African nations on a “case-by-case basis,” breaking from President Trump’s earlier promises to maintain an Obama-era ban on the practice.

In a formal memorandum issued on Thursday, FWS said it will withdraw its 2017 Endangered Species Act (ESA) findings for trophies of African elephants from Zimbabwe and Zambia, “effective immediately.”

The memo said “the findings are no longer effective for making individual permit determinations for imports of sport-hunted African elephant trophies.”

In its place, FWS will instead “grant or deny permits to import a sport-hunted trophy on a case-by-case basis.”

FWS said it will still consider the information included in the ESA findings, as well as science-based risk assessments of the species’ vulnerability, when evaluating each permit request.

The service also announced it is withdrawing a number of previous ESA findings, which date back to 1995, related to trophies of African elephants, bontebok and lions from multiple African countries.

The decision to withdraw the FWS findings followed a D.C. Circuit Court decision in December that found fault with the initial Obama-era rule, which banned importing elephant hunting trophies from Zimbabwe.

“In response to a recent D.C. Circuit Court’s opinion, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service is revising its procedure for assessing applications to import certain hunted species. We are withdrawing our countrywide enhancement findings for a range of species across several countries,” a spokesperson for FWS said in a statement. “In their place, the Service intends to make findings for trophy imports on an application-by-application basis.”

A federal appeals court ruled at the end of last year that the Obama administration did not follow the right procedures when it drafted its ban on the imports.

The court also said the FWS should have gone through the extensive process of proposing a regulation, inviting public comment and making the regulation final when it made determinations in 2014 and 2015 that elephant trophies cannot be brought into the country.
The agency used the same procedures as the Obama administration for its ESA determination in 2017 that led to reopening African elephant imports to the U.S. in November.

At the time, a FWS spokesperson said the reversal “will enhance the survival of the species in the wild.”

Following the fall announcement to overturn the ban, the Trump administration faced immense backlash, which played a role in leading the president to denounce elephant hunting and promise to re-establish the ban.

Trump in February called the administration’s initial decision to overturn the Obama-era ban “terrible.”

In an interview with British journalist Piers Morgan, Trump said he had decided to officially turn the order around.

“I didn’t want elephants killed and stuffed and have the tusks brought back into this [country]and people can talk all they want about preservation and all of the things that they’re saying where money goes towards ― well, money was going ― in that case, going to a government which was probably taking the money, OK?” Trump said.

Despite the president’s tweets and interviews, however, FWS and the Interior Department remained tight-lipped as to the status of the ban. Numerous requests for information to FWS from The Hill over several months were referred to Interior and left unanswered.

“The president has been very clear in the direction that his administration will go,” the FWS spokesperson said of the new memorandum. “Unfortunately, since aspects of the import permitting program for trophies are the focus of ongoing litigation, the Department is unable to comment about specific next steps at this time.”

Nine days before FWS added the reversal to the Federal Register, the Interior Department announced that it was establishing an International Wildlife Conservation Council to “advise the Secretary of the Interior on the benefits that international recreational hunting has on foreign wildlife and habitat conservation.”

The council will hold its first meeting next week on March 16.

Image

Read original article: http://thehill.com/policy/energy-enviro ... se-by-case


"Education is the most powerful weapon which you can use to change the world." Nelson Mandela
The desire for equality must never exceed the demands of knowledge
User avatar
Lisbeth
Site Admin
Posts: 67237
Joined: Sat May 19, 2012 12:31 pm
Country: Switzerland
Location: Lugano
Contact:

Re: Hunting

Post by Lisbeth »

Outrage as Russian trophy hunter shoots dead a huge elephant near Zimbabwe national park despite it being tagged[/b]]

Image
Russian trophy hunter killed a large male elephant just outside the Gonarezhou National Park in Zimbabwe earlier this month despite it wearing a research tag. Pictured is the dead elephant alongside hunt leader Martin Pieters. The Russian has not been identified

Martin Pieters, ex-chairman of the Zimbabwe Professional Hunters and Guides Association, was leading a legal 14-day excursion near Gonarezhou when the killing happened, Africa Geographic reports.

Pieters and his Russian client, who has not been named, were with his unarmed friend, two trackers, a park ranger and a local council representative when they picked up the elephant’s tracks on day six of the expedition.

The group began tracking the animal before finding it standing in thick bush, meaning they were not able to see the male in its entirety.

However, Pieters was able to see the elephant’s large tusks and ordered his client to shoot, the Zimbabwe Professional Hunter and Guides Association says.

‘It was only after approaching the elephant on the ground that the tag was noticed,’ the statement says.

The male had been tagged inside the national park but had wandered outside the unfenced boundary into an area known as the Naivasha Community Conservancy, which has been set aside for hunting by locals.

The bull had been in the area since around February 20. Pieters had not been made aware of this fact, the statement says, but adds that he had not checked either.

‘This was a genuine mistake due to a lack of communication,’ the statement says.

Asked by Netwerk 24 about the loss of the elephant, Mr Pieters said: ‘It does not matter, the hunt was completely legal.’

The tag belongs to the Frankfurt Zoological Society which collared elephants in the park in 2009 and again in 2016. It is not clear precisely when this male was collared.

A statement from the society says: ‘A collared bull was shot on a legal hunt in Naivasha in the first week of March.

Image
Cecil the lion was also wearing a research collar from Oxford University when he was shot and killed near Hwange National Park, also in Zimbabwe

Image

Dentist Walter Palmer was investigated over the death of Cecil but was never charged after the hunt was found to be legal

‘There is no law that protects a collared animal from being hunted in Zimbabwe, but there is general acceptance that the ethical position is that a hunter will avoid shooting an animal with a collar.

‘The data from this bull has been captured and will help us with our ongoing efforts to find solutions, together with our local and international partners, to conservation questions in a world where the challenges to find space for wildlife and their habitats are becoming ever more complicated.’

In 2015 there was an international outcry when Palmer shot Cecil, a famous collared lion in one of Zimbabwe’s other national parks, Hwange.

The 13-year-old, who had an unusual black mane, was wearing a tracker fitted by a researchers linked to Oxford University.

Last year, one of Cecil’s cubs, Xanda, was also killed by a hunter, very close to the spot where his father died.

Palmer was forced into hiding for weeks following his shooting of Cecil which prompted an international outcry.

Charges against Dr Palmer and his professional hunter were withdrawn after the hunt of Cecil was ruled to have been legal.

‘Tusker’ is a term used to refer to particularly large male elephants carrying a lot of ivory, with many of their tusks reaching down to the ground.

Because they carry so much ivory they are a prime target for poachers and have become extremely rare, with as few as 25 left in the whole of Africa, according to National Geographic.

Female elephants tend to prefer mating with older, larger males, meaning that tuskers are seen as vital to conservation efforts.

Their age and experience are also vital to teaching younger elephants and preserving herd balance, since elephants are a highly social species.

Read original article: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article ... z5AyxHQnAD


"Education is the most powerful weapon which you can use to change the world." Nelson Mandela
The desire for equality must never exceed the demands of knowledge
User avatar
Lisbeth
Site Admin
Posts: 67237
Joined: Sat May 19, 2012 12:31 pm
Country: Switzerland
Location: Lugano
Contact:

Re: Hunting

Post by Lisbeth »

@#$ They all have a conscience as white as snow.........if they have one :evil:

No hunting like in Botswane, and that's it!!!!!!!!


"Education is the most powerful weapon which you can use to change the world." Nelson Mandela
The desire for equality must never exceed the demands of knowledge
User avatar
nan
Posts: 26304
Joined: Thu May 31, 2012 9:41 pm
Country: Switzerland
Location: Central Europe
Contact:

Re: Hunting

Post by nan »

:-( :-( :-(


Kgalagadi lover… for ever
https://safrounet.piwigo.com/
User avatar
Flutterby
Posts: 44150
Joined: Sat May 19, 2012 12:28 pm
Country: South Africa
Location: Gauteng, South Africa
Contact:

Re: Hunting

Post by Flutterby »

Disgusting! :evil: :evil:


User avatar
Richprins
Committee Member
Posts: 75834
Joined: Sat May 19, 2012 3:52 pm
Location: NELSPRUIT
Contact:

Re: Hunting

Post by Richprins »

Image


Opinion Piece from Daily Maverick:

Ian Michler • 10 May 2018
Like the fossil fuel industry, trophy hunting is unsustainable


Trophy hunting is like the fossil fuel industry. They’re both messy, unsustainable, in need of an alternative approach and, ultimately, fail to deliver on their promises.

Trophy hunting is a colonial construct with an anachronistic view on the environment. While it has served certain interests, its failures to effectively deliver on wider conservation promises and its negative impacts outweigh any benefits it accrues. It’s time to search for more effective and sustainable alternatives.

Despite being entrenched in conservation programmes, doubts around trophy hunting started a long time back. Some argue that distaste for sport killing began when Theodore Roosevelt returned from East Africa in 1909 with his hunting bag of over 500 trophies, including 17 lions, 11 elephants and 20 rhino.


Back then, indiscriminate hunting had already placed many of the continent’s charismatic species under threat. Today, and with many of these same species still facing the same plight, the question now is whether trophy hunting has any role to play in securing their future in protected areas across the continent.

And the challenge comes against the backdrop of an industry that is increasingly defined by poor regulation, perverse practices, corruption and a lack of transparency, and has its participants, the wealthy collectors of animal heads and horns, going after a dwindling gene pool that everyone else is trying to secure. And this is not to mention what may in the end be one of the most telling factors; data in the USA and other countries showing a decrease in the number of young hunters, along with increasing opposition to hunting from the general populace.

Few have been as forthright in their questioning as Dan Ashe, a former Director of the US Fish & Wildlife Service. “The argument that we need to hunt endangered animals, to conserve them, is old and tired,” he said earlier this year. Ashe went on to highlight a fundamental issue of concern: if hunting of endangered species is not permitted as a conservation option in the USA, why should it be promoted as such across Africa? “If elephants were native to the US they would not be hunted. And neither would lions, rhinos, or leopards,” he pointed out.

His sentiments are shared by a growing number involved in conservation. Among them is Dereck Joubert, a renowned wildlife film-maker and CEO of the Big Cat Initiative who says that “the case for hunting gets thinner every time it’s tested”.

Typically, the wildlife research community have tended to avoid the arguments that swirl around trophy hunting, sticking instead to their specific scientific endeavours. However, whatever support they give, mostly comes with strongly worded caveats that hunting must be ‘well-regulated’, ‘transparent’ and make definitive ‘contributions’ to protection.

These are hardly ringing endorsements, but they defer to the thinking that in a vacuum of alternative solutions to replace trophy hunting as a land-use option for conservation, they have little choice but to accept or tolerate it.

Some however are beginning to speak out. Dr Andrew Loveridge is well-known for his long-standing research of lions in Hwange National Park, Zimbabwe, which included Cecil who was killed by the infamous Minnesotan dentist, Walter Palmer. In his recently released book, Lion Hearted, Dr Loveridge, while not dissing hunting entirely, puts it rather bluntly. “In reality, hunting greatly undervalues African wildlife. That is not to say that people do not become rich through hunting. They do. But little of the financial gain filters down to covering costs of conserving wildlife.”

And research in Zambia, Zimbabwe and Tanzania by leading carnivore experts have fingered unsustainable trophy hunting as a primary reason for declining predator populations.

There are also questions being asked of researchers funded by the likes of organizations such as Safari Club International (SCI) who more than any other outcome, want the hunting arenas kept open. In a report published in the USA by the US Congress Committee on Natural Resources (June 13th, 2016), the authors warn about the pitfalls of soliciting information and data from hunting organizations. “Indeed, a recent assessment of lion population status across Africa found no scientific merit in any of the SCI-funded “surveys” that had been conducted in various range states.” In the Summary, the report concludes that while in some areas hunting is managed well, “Even in countries with better execution of wildlife conservation plans, significant questions remain about whether or not trophy hunting is sustainable.”

And the position of governments is also beginning to shift. We still see institutional backing in certain quarters, the European Union and some African countries for example, but the fact that countries such as the USA, France, Netherlands and Australia have begun to scrutinize the efficacy of legislation and procedures for specific African countries, and the impacts of hunting on certain species is a significant change.

There has also been a shift in Africa. Botswana stopped all trophy hunting in 2013, and more recently the Tanzanian government has begun to question the role and impacts of its trophy hunting industry. And in South Africa, tourism coalition groups from around the world have mobilised against trophy hunting in some of the private reserves bordering the Kruger National Park.

In essence, the nub of the debate boils down to hunters needing to justify their sport. And they do this by proffering that the best way to protect species in Africa is to kill them. In the process, they claim hunting deals with poaching in protected areas, and that money trickles down to protect species and habitat as well as uplifting rural communities.

Photographic tourism is a far more effective and sustainable way of achieving all these objectives, and it happens without the collateral damage that comes with killing the gene pool. This stance by no means suggests that every component of the so-called non-consumptive tourism sector is in good order. Far from it, as we only need to look at the madness during the Great Migration crossings in the Masai Mara, the over-crowding at predator sightings in other parks and reserves, and the cruelty of the cub-petting sectors as examples to see that.

However, in the longer term, trophy hunting may well be inconsistent with what conservationists are trying to achieve. Driven by the passionate demands of those involved in the killing, the activity is defined through the constant search for the best trophies. Because of this, the hunting lobby will always promote their own interests over and above the long-term interests of the species and its habitat.

Part of the problem is that conservation of protected areas gets defined through a two-option lens promoting the notion that if certain regions don’t have trophy hunting, they are then doomed to be lost forever. We should no longer be obstructed by this narrow logic; as sure as wind and solar have proved to be viable and sustainable alternatives to fossil fuels, there are other options to protecting habitat and species. We have just not put our minds to it yet.

In the end, using trophy hunting as an indicator of conservation success is a mismeasurement of what we are trying to achieve. It’s much like using growth domestic product (GDP) as an indicator of human well-being across the planet. Both are crude and short-sighted tools that tell a fraction of the story while concealing the damage.

We all agree that Africa is in urgent need of greater funding at various levels, and in the face of declining populations and biodiversity, better ways of caring for the environment. As was eventually the case with fossil fuels, if undertaken as a collaborative process by the wider conservation, scientific, ecotourism, governmental and donor communities, alternatives to trophy hunting can be found.

And we should not expect immediate changes or results. Transitions are a process requiring significant adaptive challenges by all stakeholders and at various levels. DM


https://www.dailymaverick.co.za/opinion ... vaVVZq-nIU


Please check Needs Attention pre-booking: https://africawild-forum.com/viewtopic.php?f=322&t=596
User avatar
Flutterby
Posts: 44150
Joined: Sat May 19, 2012 12:28 pm
Country: South Africa
Location: Gauteng, South Africa
Contact:

Re: Hunting

Post by Flutterby »

Good article. \O


User avatar
Lisbeth
Site Admin
Posts: 67237
Joined: Sat May 19, 2012 12:31 pm
Country: Switzerland
Location: Lugano
Contact:

Re: Hunting

Post by Lisbeth »

It is more or less a repetition of many other articles, but it can never be repeated often enough and there is always something new.
The balance of sensitivity towards hunting is slowly leaning towards no trophy hunting by the majority.


"Education is the most powerful weapon which you can use to change the world." Nelson Mandela
The desire for equality must never exceed the demands of knowledge
User avatar
Richprins
Committee Member
Posts: 75834
Joined: Sat May 19, 2012 3:52 pm
Location: NELSPRUIT
Contact:

Re: Hunting

Post by Richprins »

Ruling urges some 300 000 gun owners to turn in their guns
According to a statement by SA Hunters, the Constitutional Court judgement on June 7, 2018 overturned the ruling that declared Sections 24 and 28 of the Firearms Control Act unconstitutional.
1 day ago

If you are a gun owner who failed to renew your firearm licence on time, your possession of that weapon is illegal. This is in terms of a unanimous Constitutional Court decision articulated by Justice Johan Froneman yesterday.

The judgement brought an end to uncertainty regarding sections 24 and 28 of the Firearms Control Act.

It has been reported that amnesty may be offered to affected gun owners. This has, however, not been confirmed.

Section 24 of the Act requires that any person who seeks to renew a licence must do so 90 days before its expiry date. Section 28 stipulates that if a firearm licence has been cancelled‚ the firearm must be disposed of or forfeited to the state. A 60-day time frame was placed on its disposal, which was to be done through a dealer.



In 2017, North Gauteng High Court judge Ronel Tolmay ruled that these two sections were unconstitutional. She stated that firearms due for renewal in terms of section 24 of the act “will be deemed to be valid, until the Constitutional Court has made its determination on the Constitutionality of the aforesaid sections.”

Both the North Gauteng High Court and the Constitutional Court acknowledged the police’s failure to implement the act and the chaos and maladministration experienced in the police’s firearm offices. However, the court did not offer a remedy to address these issues.

The effects of yesterday’s ruling are far reaching. It is estimated that there are at least 300 000 firearm owners who – either negligently or intently – failed to renew their firearm licences. These people will have to hand their firearms in at their nearest police stations, from where it will be destroyed.



In his judgement, Froneman stated that the prosecution of those who failed to renew licences timeously was unlikely. It is, however, not excluded from the realm of possibility.

According to the South African Hunters Association, the existing law makes no provision for the late renewal of firearm licences.

According to the association, section 137 of the Act makes provision for compensation to be paid to those who are compelled to hand in their firearms. The registrar has the authority to decide whether this will be done, so compensation is therefore not a given. Legislation provides for maximum compensation of R500 for a handgun and R1000 for a rifle. According to the association’s CEO Fred Camphor, these amounts are far below the value of firearms.


Although the letter of the law, as entrenched by the Constitutional Court, is very clear, Camphor pointed out that it remains to be seen whether the South African Police Service will succeed in administering it.

https://lowvelder.co.za/435605/ruling-u ... turn-guns/


Please check Needs Attention pre-booking: https://africawild-forum.com/viewtopic.php?f=322&t=596
Post Reply

Return to “Hunting”