Love the 'ol "people are dying everywhere and we only care about dead lions" argument I am seeing today.... Yes, because we definitely need to choose between the two... To try and pretend or imply that the amount of resources, time, and money put towards wildlife conversation comes anywhere close to matching the same put toward human conservation, in any region of the world, is just silly. There is enough energy and compassion in people to concern themselves with both.
If we did want to think about the children and the people though- trophy hunting in Africa is a million dollar industry while wildlife tourism is a billion dollar industry. I wonder which of the two is more important to maintain with the welfare of people in Africa in mind.
And I don't think this argument, criticizing our concern for a lion in apparent ignorance of "real world problems" is just being made by proponents of hunting that genuinely have no problem with what this man did- it is probably coming from your typical group of counter-cultures who just can't stand the thought of jumping on any mainstream bandwagon. They will go back to not caring about either human life, or wildlife, in days I'm sure.
|