We recently followed the controversy over the shooting of “Cecil the Lion” by an American dentist Walter Palmer from Minnesota. What was most striking was the complete disconnect in how such kills are seen by hunters versus the public at large, as shown by the subsequent controversy of a Idaho hunter taunting animal advocates. A new such controversy has emerged after a German hunter celebrated the killing of one of the largest elephant ever seen In Zimbabwe at the Gonarezhou National Park. The magnificent animal was estimated to be 40 and 60 years old with tusks that almost touch the ground and weigh 120lb. Again, the difference in how this killing is viewed is fascinating. Hunters celebrated the kill while many in the public were appalled that this hunter would pay tens of thousands of dollars to travel to Africa and shot such a beautiful and inspiring animal.
The elephant was shot on October 8th in a hunter who paid $60,000 (£39,000) for a permit to conduct a 21-day game hunt including the Big Five of elephants, leopards, lions, buffalo and rhinoceros. He then proudly posed next to the dead elephant. Many are appalled by the fact that this is considered a triumph to possess an animal by killing it. Some believe that this is the largest elephant killed in decades.
Anthony Kaschula, who operates a photographic safari firm in Gonarezhou, posted pictures of the hunt on Facebook, and objected that “individual elephants such as these should be accorded their true value as a National Heritage and should be off limits to hunting.”
Louis Muller, chairman of the Zimbabwe Professional Hunters & Guides Association, said the hunter had only realised how large the “tusker” was once he had been shot.
These legal hunts are adding to the decline in elephant populations that have been decimated by poaching and, as discussed recently, cyanide poisoning.
From the Los Angeles Times, October 17, 2015
For those of you who believe that what transpires halfway around the world is not your concern, as it doesn’t appear to impact you or your loved ones, personally, some interesting information:
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What elephants can teach scientists about fighting cancer in humans
African elephants at Utah’s Hogle Zoo. Scientists say they believe they now know how elephants resist cancer.
By Deborah Netburn
October 8, 2015, 8:13 p.m.
You’ve heard that elephants never forget, but did you know they almost never get cancer either?
It turns out just 4.8% of known elephant deaths are related to cancer. For humans, cancer-related deaths are between 11% and 25%, scientists say.
The low cancer rate among elephants is particularly intriguing because, all things being equal, elephants should get more cancer than we do.
Elephants have about 100 times more cells than humans, and they live for about 70 years. That gives a lot of cells a lot of chances to mutate and become malignant over the course of a pachyderm’s lifetime.
Scientists have spent decades wondering why elephants and other large mammals don’t get cancer more often than smaller mammals. This conundrum even has a name — Peto’s paradox.
Now, new research has uncovered the secret to elephants’ cancer-fighting prowess.
In a study published this week in the Journal of the American Medical Assn., scientists reveal that African elephants have 20 copies of a gene called TP53. This gene is prized by cancer researchers because of its ability to create a protein that suppresses tumors; in fact, scientists often refer to it as the “guardian of the genome.”
Humans, on the other hand, have just one copy of TP53.
The crucial gene keeps cells safe from cancer in two ways, according to Dr. Joshua Schiffman, a pediatric oncologist at the University of Utah’s Huntsman Cancer Institute in Salt Lake City and a senior author of the study.
“When there is DNA damage, it rushes onto the scene and stops your cells from dividing so the DNA can be repaired,” Schiffman said. “It also coordinates cell death or suicide.”
Humans inherit one allele of TP53 from each of their parents, and both of them must be functional to fight off cancer. Studies show that if one of the alleles is defective, cancer is certain to develop sooner or later.
At an evolutionary biology conference, Schiffman happened to listen to a talk by Carlo Maley of Arizona State University. Maley said elephants had multiple copies of TP53, and Schiffman wondered whether they helped elephants fend off cancer.
“A light bulb went off in my head,” Schiffman said.
To find out, Schiffman and Maley teamed up with an elephant keeper at Utah’s Hogle Zoo in Salt Lake City and the chief veterinarian for the Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey Circus. (The circus also contributed $250,000 to fund the research.)
One of the team’s first steps was to see just how rare cancer is in elephants. To do that, they turned to the Elephant Encyclopedia, a repository of information about elephants living in captivity all over the world. The database had details on 644 elephant deaths, and the researchers calculated that just 3.11% of those elephants had cancer when they died. Even when they assumed that all of the elephant deaths attributed to unknown causes were related to cancer, the lifetime cancer incidence came to just 4.81%.
Next, they took a closer look at the African elephant genome and tallied 20 copies of TP53. One of them was the original, and the other 19 were retrogenes that found their way into the genome over time. Their spread suggests they were preferentially selected over the course of elephant evolution, probably because they helped elephants in some way.
Perhaps they helped by fighting cancer. To see if this could be the case, the researchers collected white blood cells from elephants and humans and exposed the cells to radiation that caused their DNA to break.
The researchers expected that the elephant cells with all those extra TP53 genes would repair themselves faster than the human cells. But that’s not what they observed.
Instead, they saw that the elephant cells were dying at a much higher rate than the human cells.
While this may sound like a bad thing, it isn’t. Part of TP53’s tumor-suppression strategy is to cause a damaged cell to destroy itself so it won’t pass on potentially harmful mutations.
“It’s like the elephant said, ‘It is so important that we don’t get cancer that we can’t risk trying to repair our broken DNA and accidentally let a mutation slip by,’” Schiffman said. “It makes tremendous sense — the best way to prevent cancer in a cell is to eliminate it entirely.”
In another experiment, the researchers found that elephant cells exposed to radiation destroyed themselves at twice the rate of human cells with fully functional TP53 genes and more than five times the rate of human cells with defective TP53 genes.
“All this leads us to conclude that these extra copies of TP53 may have evolved to protect elephants from cancer,” Schiffman said. “And I say ‘may’ because the only way to know for sure is to build an elephant that has no copies of TP53” and see if it’s more vulnerable to cancer. Although researchers often breed mice that lack working copies of certain genes, “that’s not going to happen” with elephants, he said.
Trevor Graham, who studies tumor biology at the Barts Cancer Institute at Queen Mary University of London, said the findings are exciting.
“The important suggestion of this study is that additional copies of TP53 are enough to prevent elephants from getting cancer,” said Graham, who was not involved in the JAMA study. “The implication for humans is that reinforcing the protection offered by TP53 would be enough to prevent our own cells from becoming cancerous.”
Schiffman said his team would like to take what it learned from elephants and use it to help people with cancer. One possibility is to create a drug that mimics the actions of TP53. Another thought is to insert more TP53 genes into precancerous cells.
“Evolution has had 55 million years to figure this out,” he said. “We want to learn how to take advantage of that.”
From the Los Angeles Times, October 17, 2015
Anyone still want to argue that this is managing the herd? ____________________________________________________________________________________
Who is killing Zimbabwe’s elephants?
Tsvangirayi Mukwazhi / Associated Press
Elephants cross a road in Zimbabwe’s Hwange National Park, where 26 pachyderms had been found poisoned in recent days at two sites.
By Robyn Dixon
October 16, 2015, 5:47 a.m.
The elephant died in agony. When they found his body, his eyes were closed, and a stream of blood trickled from his trunk.
He was a middle-aged male, one of 40 elephants poisoned in Zimbabwe in recent weeks.
“I get choked up, even as I speak,” said Debbie Ottman of the Kariba Animal Welfare Fund Trust in Zimbabwe. She was one of the animal welfare activists who found the carcasses of three elephants near the town of Kariba in northern Zimbabwe late last month; the pachyderms later tested positive for cyanide poisoning. “It makes me very angry and very emotional.”
The killer baited oranges with cyanide, which is used in illegal gold mining and which was found in the gut of the male elephant.
Rampant poaching, coupled with legal hunting, has decimated populations in many areas, with 100,000 elephants killed in Africa from 2011 to 2013, according to the International Union for Conservation of Nature.
Tanzania’s elephant population plummeted by 60% to 43,330 in the five years ending in 2014, according to the Great Elephant Census, carried out by a coalition of wildlife groups. Mozambique lost half its elephants in the same period, falling to 10,300.
The statistics underscore the toxic mix of determined criminal gangs, corrupt government officials and a strong market for smuggled ivory in Asia — particularly in China, which has deepened its economic ties to Africa in recent years.
News of the spate of Zimbabwe cyanide poisonings, blamed on poachers, comes as conservationists report that a well-known elephant from South Africa’s Kruger National Park, one of the park’s biggest tuskers, is feared to have been killed by hunters in recent days after wandering across the border into Zimbabwe.
South African wildlife group, the Conservation Action Trust, said a huge bull elephant killed by hunters in Zimbabwe was probably Nkombo, who was collared some years ago in Kruger National Park but lost his collar last year. The trust said hunting websites were abuzz with excitement about the killing of the animal with 122-pound tusks, adding it was probably the biggest bull killed since 1986.
After 14 elephants were killed by cyanide in the last week and in late September, Zimbabwean authorities Wednesday announced that 26 more had been found poisoned in recent days at two sites in Hwange National Park, famous for its elephants.
In Zimbabwe’s current desperately dry and harsh conditions, the poachers placed salt laced with cyanide near wildlife watering holes, killing not only the elephants but other animals too, including predators feeding off the pachyderms’ carcasses.
Zimbabwe’s economic crisis has exacerbated the poaching spree, as criminal gangs move in, luring the rangers who are supposed to protect the animals into either offering information or even killing the animals. Authorities recently arrested several wildlife officials for involvement in poaching of elephants. Five men questioned over the cyanide poisoning in Hwange National Park were all living in staff quarters at the park base camp.
Dave Dell of Friends of Hwange, which raises donations to run pumps for about 80 watering holes in Hwange National Park, said cyanide poisoning was again increasing, after an incident two years ago in which up to 300 elephants were poisoned.
“The authorities are doing their best. We are doing our best to clamp down on it. But the situation in this country is so desperate that people will go and do something stupid for $100,” he said.
“These animals have got feelings and emotions. It’s not really about numbers,” he added.
The elephants traveling in family groups are attracted to the water and salt, he said.
“Usually they don’t get more than 100 meters” after taking the poison, he added. “The suffering is horrible. They get weak very quickly and collapse. You might not die quickly, but you don’t walk very far.”
The elephants poisoned near Kariba all had their tusks, so authorities believe a poaching attempt was botched or interrupted.
The older bull elephants are most prized by poachers, and hunters, because of their enormous tusks. But they play an important social role, socializing young bulls in acceptable herd behavior.
“They’re like old gentlemen,” said Dell. “They’re iconic. They’re very well known and very well mannered. Some of them have nicknames. Sometimes I’ll be fishing and one will walk right by me, just a meter away. They’re just old guys who have become habituated to people.
However, the cyanide poisoning is indiscriminate and often kills mothers and calves with no tusks.
Tom Milliken, director of Traffic for Southern Africa based in Harare, Zimbabwe, said criminals seem to be using cyanide because it is readily available and stealthier than high-powered rifles.
“Most ivory from Africa makes its way to Asia, and within Asia, China’s middle class seems to have an insatiable appetite for ivory right now and we are paying the consequences here in Africa.”
The killers, he said, are usually poor villagers. They pass tusks to African middlemen, who sell to Asian criminals based in Africa. Recently, numerous Chinese nationals had been arrested in Hong Kong after flying out of Harare with ivory strapped to their bodies, he said.
“Since the millennium, the presence of China in Africa had just grown exponentially every year. Today there are millions of Chinese nationals living in Africa. Almost a day doesn’t go by when there’s not a headline about a Chinese national involved in the illegal wildlife trade. It’s become a huge embarrassment to China.”
President Obama and Chinese President Xi Jinping last month announced plans to almost completely ban the ivory trade.
Tanzania last week arrested a Chinese businesswoman, Yang Fenglan, 66, also known as the “Queen of Ivory,” accused of involvement in millions of dollars in ivory deals. Yang has been in Tanzania since the 1970s, when she arrived as an interpreter on a Chinese rail project.
In May, Mozambican authorities seized 340 tusks, or 2,650 pounds of ivory, and 65 rhino horns. Two Chinese nationals were arrested, one of whom is also accused of offering police a $34,000 bribe to drop the charges.
Milliken said Chinese authorities were beginning to take tougher action against their citizens caught smuggling elephant tusks or rhino horn, but more needed to be done.
“The real gap in their law enforcement is they need a focus here in Africa,” he said.
Milliken said Chinese authorities could help African police interrogate Chinese nationals accused of involvement in wildlife trafficking and analyze Chinese language data on their phones and computers, to enable accomplices to be arrested.
In Zimbabwe, some of those who have spoken out against corrupt government officials involved in poaching, ivory smuggling and illegal hunting have received death threats.
“You have to fight it quietly, behind the scenes,” said one, who requested anonymity because of past threats. “Until there’s a change in our economic situation or a change in our government situation, it’s going to be a resource they’re going to plunder until there’s nothing left.”
Not you Karen. LOL!
Liberals w/ white deer privilege. Typical racist behavior.
Hypothetically, if at some point in the future they find out that CWD can be transmitted to humans, then that is exactly what they will do. Cull all the deer in the area and start anew. It already could be an environmental catastrophe to the wildlife alone.
Considering the incubation period for infectious prions in humans can be 30 to 40 years, I would not want to eat deer caught in a CWD area. The deer might not have the mangy symptoms of CWD, but it could be developing the disease. And avoiding infectious tissue like brain and spinal chord would not put my mind at ease.
The very reason why we do not have data on transmission may be that the incubation period is decades long in humans, and the disease has been spreading recently in deer herds.
This does put hunting white deer in CWD areas in a different light.
Personally, I think we need to determine how long prions persist in soil and grass. If it’s just a number of years then perhaps we need to wipe out the deer, let the land recover, and then start again. The white deer in CWD areas could be moved to fenced areas and enjoyed.
That would be a grim prospect, though, as the disease has now moved to 23 states. I believe that’s what we do when a cow tests positive for BSE. We cull the herd. But that would be a lot of deer.
Speaking of stupid laws against saving injured fawns:
http://www.newarkadvocate.com/story/news/politics/2015/10/16/save-injured-deer-ohio-lawmaker-says/73989084/
“A proposal from Rep. Margaret Ruhl, R-Mount Vernon, would allow veterinarians to rehabilitate injured deer to release into the wild and create deer sanctuaries for those that cannot return. It’s called Trooper’s Law.”
From “White Deer: Ghosts of the Forest” by Jeff Richter:
“As with most hunting issues, there are pros and cons to hunting white deer. There’s no biological value in protecting albinos, but by not hunting albinos, we increase the chance that the genetic roll of the dice will favor an albino fawn occurring. Many argue for the aesthetic benefits of seeing such rare and startling beauty as the deciding factor in the hunting debate. (Like me.) A few simply say it’s unsporting to hunt an animal so easily seen in the wild.
Others, however, argue that recessive genetic traits, whether for albinism or any other trait, become recessive because they typically don’t increase the survival potential of an animal. By encouraging more albinos in the genetic pool, some argue we are encouraging a trait that makes deer less fir for their world.”
I suppose “less fit” is subjective. If only white deer are protected, and natural predators are removed, then white deer are “more fit” to survive in the world.
Further complicating the matter is that not all white deer are albinos, with light eyes and possibly weakened eyesight. Some are leuciistic, which are white deer with normal colored eyes.
http://dnr.wi.gov/topic/wildlifehabitat/handling.html
There is no strong evidence that chronic wasting disease (CWD) can be passed to humans. However the World Health Organization (WHO) [exit DNR] and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) [exit DNR] recommend that people avoid eating venison from CWD positive deer or elk. Information from the Wisconsin Division of Public Health is available through Venison and CWD: What Hunters Should Know [PDF].
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Despite this info, I surely wouldn’t want to eat a deer that test positive for CWD.
There is no way to remove ALL deer from CWD areas.
Do you support or oppose removing deer from contaminated areas of Chronic Wasting Disease, a form of encephalepathy similar to Mad Cow Disease?
I can also introduce the topic of the remarkable difficulty in obtaining snake shot for a .38.
Karen S.
I discovered that you can buy the empty snake load capsules and reload them in .38. From there you can choose which size birdshot you like.
http://www.midwayusa.com/product/313962/speer-empty-shot-capsules-38-special-box-of-50
Here is a primer on recommendations for how this may be accomplished.
http://www.theboxotruth.com/the-box-o-truth-30-snakeloads-o-truth/
Finally, it looks like we can get some of these.
The thread is about hunting, the pros and cons of hunting, the difficulties of hunting, poaching, corruption in host countries, and now Ghost Deer.
And Karen,
This thread has to do with the killing of animals that are protected, it’s not exclusively about how to hunt, kill and dress out the dead animal was was protected.
Now, some say that all deer should be removed from areas with Chronic Wasting Disease in order to stop its spread.
It’s now in 23 states and is the deer version of Mad Cow. Infectious prions persist in the soil and plants, so grazers keep getting infected. Luckily, this version has not been shown to spread to cows.
Karen, you brought up the white deer of Wisconsin. You got your facts mixed up. I corrected them.
The Walker appointee wanted to allow the killing of white deer STATEWIDE. Why? Greed. He is the owner of a hunting shop.
If hunting talk bothers people, then they should know their limits and not read threads on issues that have to do with hunting.
Here is the actual text of question #35 on the questionnaire sent out to WI citizens:
http://dnr.wi.gov/about/wcc/documents/spring_hearing/2014/2014springquestionnaire.pdf
“Albino, white and piebald deer have a recessive genetic mutation that causes a total absence (in the case of albinos) or lack of (in white and piebald deer) body pigment. Albino deer are completely white with eyes, nose and other soft parts being pink. White deer are deer that are white except for the hooves, tarsal glands, head or parts of the head, and their hooves, eyes and nose are dark. Piebald deer have varying amounts of brown fur beyond what is present in white deer and they too have dark eyes, nose, and hooves.
In the wild, white fur and markings place these animals at a selective disadvantage because they lack the typical protective coloration and are more visible, making them more susceptible to predators. These animals often have other recessive traits and physical maladies such as poor eyesight in albinos, because of their pink eyes. These recessive genetic conditions are quite rare (estimated at less than one percent under natural conditions) and the phenomenon is often localized in a specific area. From a strictly biological perspective, there is no reason to protect white deer. It is currently illegal to harvest albino or white deer in Wisconsin outside of the CWD zones. At the January meeting of the Natural Resources Board, the Board took action to reinstate protection of white deer in the CWD zones. This change will be in effect for the 2014 deer hunting season, so in 2014 it will be illegal to harvest white and albino deer statewide. Piebald deer are not protected.
35. Would you favor legalizing the harvest of white and albino deer statewide?
35. YES____ NO_____”
I hardly see the need for the emotional backlash on including this section in such a lengthy document that gathers input from people in Wisconsin on hunting and fishing, nor the backlash against Walker. Really? For this question? Aren’t we supposed to talk about it? Some people support hunting albino animals because they can have health problems and are maladapted to survive. Others (like me) support protecting them because they are beautiful, and white animals have been considered sacred in many cultures going back throughout human history.
And, in my earlier statements, I was wrong. Albino deer hunting was only allowed in areas of Chronic Wasting Disease. The information I had was outdated.
Here is the Department of Natural Resources Website in Wisconsin on Deer:
http://dnr.wi.gov/topic/wardenwire/FAQs/ww_faq_9-30-11.htm
Here is what I have never understood about deer management. They encourage deer hunting in areas of Chronic Wasting Disease (CWD). For those who don’t know, that is Mad Cow Disease (BSE) but in deer.
Considering the great efforts that we have gone to in order to remove Bovine Spongiform Encephalepathy from the human food chain, why do we encourage eating deer with CWD? The two diseases are different, but the incubation period for the infectious proteins can be 30 to 40 years. What is especially distressing is that unlike BSE, CWD contaminates soil and plants, that spread the disease to other animals.
http://www.cwd-info.org/index.php/fuseaction/about.main
http://www.foodsafetynews.com/2015/06/researchers-make-surprising-discovery-about-spread-of-chronic-wasting-disease/#.ViLWR84jG1w
Look at this. I learn something new every day. From protectthewhitedeer.com:
“The first law protecting white deer in Wisconsin was enacted in 1940, 73 years ago (Otis S. Bersing, A Century of Wisconsin Deer). White and albino deer are currently protected in all of Wisconsin except in CWD (chronic wasting disease) management zones, which are located in southern Wisconsin.
Protection of white deer in the CWD zone was removed in 2008 as a result of the efforts of some hunters in Jefferson County who argued that the deer were in the CWD zone so should be fair game for hunters, too.”
“Piebalds are legal to shoot in Wisconsin. Even though the word piebald conjures up images of “pinto” horses or animals with large splotches of color, current Wisconsin law takes the definition of piebald to an extreme. If there is even a tiny spot of brown on the animal’s body (with a few exceptions–see below), the deer is considered a piebald and is totally legal to hunt anywhere in the state.”
http://protectthewhitedeer.com/whats-legal-what-needs-to-change