Credit: Facebook
As regulars on this blog know, I am no fan of such trophy hunts. British hunters came to South Africa with more of a massacre in mind. South Africans helped the hunters mow down 500 baboons and monkeys over a 30-year period. While the fun of shooting monkeys for pure blood lust ended two years ago, new photos show how hunters brought their children to wantonly kill the animals.
The charge was just $20 (£16.45) to get to shoot the animals. Another company, Africa Hunt Lodge, charged $100 (£81) to get to kill a vervet monkey. What is weird is that these hunters were proud of shooting these animals with high-powered rifles and posed with the dead animals, including baby monkeys and baboons.
We have previously followed the controversy over the shooting of “Cecil the Lion” by an American dentist Walter Palmer from Minnesota as well as subsequent controversies of an Idaho hunter taunting animal advocates and killing giant elephants or giraffes or rare goats or famed wolves for trophies. Recently, we also discussed how the highly corrupt Zambian government allowed trophy hunters to kill thousands of hippos, including rare and threatened species for windfall payments. Then there was the trophy hunter who killed a famous iconic elephant.
Credit: Facebook
Umlilo customer Micky Jordan, a Londoner, has faced a backlash after images showing him pose with dead monkeys. He responded by declaring “Didn’t realize everyone was vegetarian.”
If these pictures disgusted, be aware that Americans shot even more monkeys. From 2007 to 2016, the US has imported almost 890 primate trophies every year, according to the Humane Society. Almost 9,000 such trophies have been imported to this country. There have been some 11,205 primate hunting trophies traded internationally.
I often hike in remote spots to see bears and other animals in their natural habitat. I cannot imagine the appeal of these thrill kills. These dead animals are tragic lifeless trophies of magnificent animals in the wild. Rather than watch or photographs these animals, these people relish possessing them by killing them and them posing with their dead bodies as if it is truly impressive to shoot an unsuspecting animal from a long distance with a scoped high-powered rifle.
Usually you write knowledgeably about subjects. Your ignorance of wildlife and hunting is amazing, especially considering that you enjoy hiking and observing nature. I wonder where this comes from, lack of exposure? Urbanisation? Ask Elena Kagan what she got out of hunting, or Scalia. Are they both sociopaths? Get informed or stay quiet.
There is hunting and killing for sport both of which can help an ecosystem out of balance.Killing other primates doesn’t strike me as sport to be admired.
Not enough leopards.
Off topic, but somehow related:
Why Renewables Can’t Save the Climate
Michael Shellenberger
2019 Sep 04
Forbes
https://www.forbes.com/sites/michaelshellenberger/2019/09/04/why-renewables-cant-save-the-climate/#5c0360633526
Insufficient energy density.
This shocking, ban these sucondrels
Always two sides to every story.
A little knowledge, coupled with deep emotion, is a dangerous thing. It leads almost invariably to mischaracterization and poor decision making. The South African Baboon Forum, among many other organizations, publishes information on baboons and the primates. http://www.baboons.org.za/index.php/about-us Not only are the hunts strictly controlled by regulation but the baboon population is growing. Moreover, the baboons can be extremely aggressive and are dangerous because of their intelligence. They break into cars and houses while people are inside and routinely drive people off. Like it or not, they conflict with people. This video takes the side of people: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cph0D7Vdjp4
Unfortunately, Professor Turley is so obviously emotionally invested in his position against hunting that he can’t see any other side of a hunting related/wild animal situation. I don’t hunt but I understand the need to control a dangerous wild animal population. One way of doing that is to organize trophy hunts that both control the population and improves economic conditions. I don’t approve of the hunts really but it is hardly the completely unethical and corrupt activity that Professor Turley makes it out to be.
Any of this could have been uncovered in 15 minutes of search or less.
Yup.
Killing of threatening or nuisance animals is one of the more universally acceptable goals of hunting.
However, do we know that all baboon hunts were of particular, nuisance animals? From what I have read, there were hunts that offered them on the menu of available game. This is opposed to a particular village having a terrible time with over population and threatening animals.
A friend of mine lives in Tanzania, where wild primates seek out human accomodations, forcing human families to remain inside until driven away or shot.
Overpopulation pressure is the proximate cause of this. If Umlilo Safaris abides by South African law, it’s doubtless because their operations can help financially stressed game wardens and other conservationists keep primate numbers within sustainable limits – just as Ducks Unlimited’s efforts have, in the United States kept hunting of game birds sustainable by reserving wild bird habitats throughout the Americas to the point that geese and many duck species are not just abundant but becoming a nuisance. Here in the US, our problem is not enough hunters to keep game bird populations sustainably low.
Then Cooper’s Hawks will do it for you.
I”d pay to to watch a hawk deal with one of the fat, fearless Canada geese who crowded around us in the outdoor dining area of the cafeteria where I worked, back a few years..
I opine that the Canada geese are too big for an accipiter.
and that’s why we need bird hunters
The long noses of the left have done exactly what to improve life on earth? Deforestation of the Amazon area still goes on and we still burn dirty bituminous coal instead of the cleaner anthracite variety and rail against getting power from fractured coal for the liquid kind. Gore really blinded some people. But the worst is the water used to raise the corn etc needed to make ethanol which serves no earthly purposes at all save destroying engines and using up just how much aquifer water? Short sided and the pollution goes on. But then of course they have carbon free passes bought from greedy politicians to excuse these failures.
Small wonder cognizant people don’t really care when all they hear is hmmm let me put it this way.
This is a definition of the people that keep pimping for their ruling class of their classless society. and describes them perfectly.
When everything is gone only empty space is left. When space is gone as well you are left with the perfect definition of the political left. Absolutely nothing.
It’s called the Universal Empty Field Theory or was up to this year. Ocasio proved it true. Absolutely Nothing.
Anthracite is metallurgical coal and in short supply.
Whereof one has insufficient knowledge it is better to remain silent.
I just don’t understand this. The video of the baby monkey taken from his wild-caught mother in a breeding facility, to go to a research lab, was heartbreaking. Those are the really tough ones. A great deal of neurological research, such as for Alzheimers, involves primates, as their brains are more like ours.
People would be surprised how many medications developed from the use of primates, who have a grim existence in labs.
The use of laboratory animals is an area of bioethics. In that case, the goal is to save human life. If you’ve taken a prescription, you have likely benefited from animal suffering. The Lethal Dose 50 (LD50), critical for poison control information, is determined for various medications, toxins, radiation, and pathogens by determining the dose at which 50 percent of test subjects (i.e. lab rats) die. It’s a measure of short term acute toxicity. LC50 measures the lethal concentration of an airborne or aqueous dilution. If the toxicity of any substance is known, it was arrived at by animal testing.
I just cannot understand shooting an animal for no other reason than fun, especially a primate, who are our distant cousins. Their branching off our family tree millions of years ago was still recent enough that a primate baby looks very childlike, and pulls on our heartstrings.
What purpose does it serve? What desire does it fill?
I can understand killing an animal for food, or that was a threat, or to cull a population where mankind has removed its natural predators that would keep them in check. Life should be respected, and its sacrifice should be for a worthy cause.
There have been arguments that some game farms raise animals as livestock. Harvesting them is a business, and they are not impacting wild populations. So there are different discussions about what is legal, what impacts the environment and population sustainability, and what is legally right but morally sad.
It should also be pointed out that it is a luxury to be able to refuse to be involved in an act we find horrifying. In many parts of the world, starvation is a real and present danger. People are just happy to have a paying job, and if leading pampered, soft Westerners who have never been hungry through the bush to play warrior pays, then so be it.
i shot crows for fun once when i was a kid on cousin farmer’s cornfields. i guess i’m a bad guy too eh
tried to shoot squirrels in the forest for fun a few times and the little buggers would not cooperate and come out of their hidey holes stand still on those two days– unlike the ones in the yard which apparently know you can’t shoot inside city limits
Kids aren’t born knowing how to be good people as adults. That’s part of what childhood is, learning how to be an adult. I have a lot of hunters in my family, and most teach their kids to be grateful, as the animals’ loss feeds the family. But that is not instinctive, and takes years to learn. Many kids learn marksmanship shooting non endangered vermin or pests that are a threat to the ranch or farm. Personally, I love crows and ravens. They are incredibly smart, and I observed their use of tools as a kid. They can be murder, pardon the avian pun, on cornfields. I’m not surprised you were allowed to shoot them.
Out here, in CA, ground squirrels are an invasive species. They are destroying the native flora and fauna, increasing water runoff and loss to aquifers, destabilizing the ground, and even getting humans sick. There is a rule now that homeowners are not allowed to use live traps to relocate nuisance squirrels off their property. They are required to either let them go back on their property, or humanely kill them.
Much as I love animals, this invasive alien species is destructive, and can carry plague. Poison is catastrophic to predator wildlife, and now over 85% of predators, including raptors, test positive for rodent poison. We move in, coyotes change their habits from diurnal to crepuscular and nocturnal, which means the squirrels are sleeping in the burrows while they hunt. That’s why so many people resort to using poison.
Without poison, there’s drowning them in live traps, or shooting. Shooting seems quicker. There are pellet guns that probably work well. I’ve delegated that to my husband, because they are fluffy and I’m a hypocrite.
Disgusting as it is, these trophy hunts pay for the privately owned so-called nature reserves. Without these payments the lands would be put to other uses which pay, such as beef cattle grasing. Academic ecologists conclude that the current practice is better.
Is it legal? Yes! Are you offended? Yes. How about a topic where it is both illegal and we can all be offended, like underage sex trade for Mr. Epstein? Let’s do a deep dive there.
go hunt something that shoots back, punks
So disgusting! SMH.