speculawyer
Member
This bans the import of the trophy body. With no trophy body to bring home they suspect people will be less likely to pay big bucks for the hunt.
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Megaton: US senator introduces 'CECIL' Act to curb trophy hunting
- Thread starter orochi91
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maquiladora
Member
All trophy hunting should be illegal. But good luck trying to get those laws approved...
GoldenEye 007
Member
I see. Makes sense and I'd be in favor of that. Too bad this reeks of opportunism by a scumbag politician.
Gotta cull the population of college kids somehow. Can't have them running all over the country you know.
Random Painted HIghway
Member
Right, the megaton if any is bob Menendez is still at work in the senate authoring bills.
Polioliolio
Member
Bold statement.
Of course this was proposed by a democrat.
Not that democrats give that much of a shit about anything, but republicans care about money before quality of life.
Anyway, I'm excited by the bill. Anything that supports the protection of animals is a plus.
Of course it should be.
You want to shoot something, play a fucking video game.
Get a gentleman's hobby where you create rather than destroy.
davepoobond
you can't put a price on sparks
republicans - "its a stealth regulation on guns!"
double jump
you haven't lived until a random little kid ask you "how do you make love".
Big game "hunters" can gargle butthole hair. They give real hunters who actually care about conservation a bad name.
radioactivez0r
Member
Surely the people who would go do this shit in the first place are fully prepared to pay the right people to get around such laws? I dunno, I guess it seems like empty rhetoric but there's certainly nothing inherently bad about the idea.
freenudemacusers
Member
a notably corrupt member of congress, no less!
Baraka in the White House
2-Terms of Kombat
WHY AIN'T Y'ALL MAD ABOUT DEAD BABIES, HUH?!
Gordon Shumway
Banned
This'll go nowhere..
onadesertedisland
Member
This would make it a crime in the US, and the illegal hunters would be subject to punishment at home.
It's how Australia banned it's guns, there doing pretty well now.
| Praxis |
Banned
This.
Get your kicks some other way that doesn't involve getting a stiffy over killing something infinitely more beautiful than you or anything you will produce in your sad existence.
I'm all for this as I oppose any hunting that isn't for food or necessary population management. There's just no justification for trophy hunting.
But trophy hunting probably doesn't have much impact on the reason lions are threatened. It's just more people living there with houses and farms and livestock that they want to protect. As much as I regard the lion as a magnificent creature, I don't want them sleeping in my driveway.
But trophy hunting probably doesn't have much impact on the reason lions are threatened. It's just more people living there with houses and farms and livestock that they want to protect. As much as I regard the lion as a magnificent creature, I don't want them sleeping in my driveway.
Australia has also banned lion trophies. Hopefully the US follows suit. Many people complain about Asia's fixation on elephant, rhino and tiger parts yet the US has the biggest importation of lion parts.
So many petition's have popped up in honour of Cecil aimed towards the USFWS to get a move on and list lions under the Endangered Species act. If they were already there Cecil would not have died by the hands on Walter Palmer (as he would have been unable to take his parts back to the US).
Here's a few of the petitions circulating if anyone wishes to lend a hand, and hopefully show that Cecil's death wasn't in vain.
https://secure.humanesociety.org/site/Advocacy?cmd=display&page=UserAction&id=6653
https://action.hsi.org/ea-action/action?ea.client.id=104&ea.campaign.id=32852&ea.tracking.id=sharetw
https://www.rainforest-rescue.org/p...he-lion-murdered-end-trophy-hunting-now?t=361
http://www.peta.org/action/action-alerts/take-action-cecil-lion-trophy-hunting/
https://takeaction.takepart.com/act...ws-don-t-allow-exceptions-for-wealthy-hunters
Stumpokapow
listen to the mad man
This doesn't seem like a very good premise for a bill. The act of importing protected species body parts is already illegal. The mechanism for getting something protected is that it is added to the Endangered Species list by the US Fish and Wildlife service (i.e. not elected politicians, actual scientists and experts). Sometimes there's a slight time lag between when those officials start considering like an animal should be added to the list and when their research is done and they're ready to actually add it. The point of the bill is to protect animals that aren't protected but that might be protected in the future, which purportedly includes African Lions.
You know when you're in an office and someone emails you to see if they can call you to try to discuss a possible time for a future meeting? You know when a company tweets that people should pay attention because they're about the announce something big and then the announcement ends up being that they're planning to eventually start a countdown that will end with an announcement? This is going to have adverse consequences. Because people from US Fish and Wildlife service will be gun-shy about proposing animals to be added to the list, because now even proposing changes the way animals are treated. So you'll hear the people responsible create new categories like "Informal consideration of investigating whether it is suitable to propose Animal X be protected". With more animals in those categories, the protections will be ineffective.
Moreover, as the article notes, African Lions were just proposed to be protected last year. So is this saying that there was a material difference between Cecil being killed last summer and this summer? I don't believe that for a second. The poaching and/or population situation hasn't materially changed. From what I can tell, Cecil was part of a subspecies that isn't protected or endangered by international classification. The fact that the African Lion, more broadly, was proposed to be protected wasn't based on Cecil's subspecies, but rather rarer subspecies in North Africa that are endangered. Someone else can check the US Fish and Wildlife service list, but here's the IUCN classification justification for listing African Lions as Vulnerable:
It's threatened not because people are killing Cecil, but because (among other reasons) people in totally other parts of African are killing totally other subspecies of Lions. In fact, the population in Cecil's area is masking the real extent of Lion decline among subspecies in other areas. So it's not clear to me there's a rational connection between the species protection element of the US Fish and Wildlife service proposing African Lions being protected and the bill's objective of stopping another Cecil from being killed. People would be bothered that Cecil was killed regardless of the technical classification of his subspecies of lion. If the US Fish and Wildlife Service had proposed protecting certain subspecies of African Lion and not others (rather than proposing it at the species-wide level), then the CECIL Act wouldn't even make it illegal to kill Cecil.
I think if you want legislation to fight this, it requires figuring out what, specifically, was wrong about this. Is it the barbarity of trophy hunting writ large, the idea of someone smiling as they hold a cut off head? I think this is some of what's causing the reaction, but it's hard to believe this is the primary MO. If you banned trophy hunting, bars wouldn't have stag heads. No one is taking really any steps to curb American trophy hunting, let alone industrial meat production. Maybe I'm misreading this and the people who are most angry also disagree with that. Maybe this is a coastal versus heartland thing where all the hunting states don't care about this issue and all the non-hunting states are angry, but are just as angry about the kind of hunting going on in their own country. But I don't think so.
Is it the ecological threat caused by poaching? I think the perception of poaching and ecological threat is driving this, but as per above it's less clear that this is an effective way to solve the problem.
Is it the wealth and travel aspect, the exploitation of poor African countries by rich Americans? I think this is a pretty big part of it. It comes up in a lot of the anger about this situation. Is it just that Lions are an exceptionally cool species and so no one would have cared if it was an Impala or a Hippo (the latter of which is at least as vulnerable or more than a Lion)? Yeah, this is clearly an element. Lions are seen as majestic and beautiful and regal and special as a species. Is it the aspect that he had a name? Maybe that's some of it, but you pretty plainly can't write a law that says "don't kill things that have names".
I think it's sort of a mix of all of these. The problem is that when the anger is sort of broad-based, felt in the gut, and hard to explain clearly, it makes for a pretty bad platform from which to write legislation. I don't think you'll solve the problem if that's the starting off point. I don't really have an answer. "Ban trophy hunting period" seems like the most obviously ethical approach to reducing animal suffering (still allowing scientifically-driven population culls for biodiversity and hunting for food and indigenous hunting), but it's hard to imagine that kind of thing getting buy-in because of the cultural attachment large swaths of America has to trophy hunting.
You know when you're in an office and someone emails you to see if they can call you to try to discuss a possible time for a future meeting? You know when a company tweets that people should pay attention because they're about the announce something big and then the announcement ends up being that they're planning to eventually start a countdown that will end with an announcement? This is going to have adverse consequences. Because people from US Fish and Wildlife service will be gun-shy about proposing animals to be added to the list, because now even proposing changes the way animals are treated. So you'll hear the people responsible create new categories like "Informal consideration of investigating whether it is suitable to propose Animal X be protected". With more animals in those categories, the protections will be ineffective.
Moreover, as the article notes, African Lions were just proposed to be protected last year. So is this saying that there was a material difference between Cecil being killed last summer and this summer? I don't believe that for a second. The poaching and/or population situation hasn't materially changed. From what I can tell, Cecil was part of a subspecies that isn't protected or endangered by international classification. The fact that the African Lion, more broadly, was proposed to be protected wasn't based on Cecil's subspecies, but rather rarer subspecies in North Africa that are endangered. Someone else can check the US Fish and Wildlife service list, but here's the IUCN classification justification for listing African Lions as Vulnerable:
It's threatened not because people are killing Cecil, but because (among other reasons) people in totally other parts of African are killing totally other subspecies of Lions. In fact, the population in Cecil's area is masking the real extent of Lion decline among subspecies in other areas. So it's not clear to me there's a rational connection between the species protection element of the US Fish and Wildlife service proposing African Lions being protected and the bill's objective of stopping another Cecil from being killed. People would be bothered that Cecil was killed regardless of the technical classification of his subspecies of lion. If the US Fish and Wildlife Service had proposed protecting certain subspecies of African Lion and not others (rather than proposing it at the species-wide level), then the CECIL Act wouldn't even make it illegal to kill Cecil.
I think if you want legislation to fight this, it requires figuring out what, specifically, was wrong about this. Is it the barbarity of trophy hunting writ large, the idea of someone smiling as they hold a cut off head? I think this is some of what's causing the reaction, but it's hard to believe this is the primary MO. If you banned trophy hunting, bars wouldn't have stag heads. No one is taking really any steps to curb American trophy hunting, let alone industrial meat production. Maybe I'm misreading this and the people who are most angry also disagree with that. Maybe this is a coastal versus heartland thing where all the hunting states don't care about this issue and all the non-hunting states are angry, but are just as angry about the kind of hunting going on in their own country. But I don't think so.
Is it the ecological threat caused by poaching? I think the perception of poaching and ecological threat is driving this, but as per above it's less clear that this is an effective way to solve the problem.
Is it the wealth and travel aspect, the exploitation of poor African countries by rich Americans? I think this is a pretty big part of it. It comes up in a lot of the anger about this situation. Is it just that Lions are an exceptionally cool species and so no one would have cared if it was an Impala or a Hippo (the latter of which is at least as vulnerable or more than a Lion)? Yeah, this is clearly an element. Lions are seen as majestic and beautiful and regal and special as a species. Is it the aspect that he had a name? Maybe that's some of it, but you pretty plainly can't write a law that says "don't kill things that have names".
I think it's sort of a mix of all of these. The problem is that when the anger is sort of broad-based, felt in the gut, and hard to explain clearly, it makes for a pretty bad platform from which to write legislation. I don't think you'll solve the problem if that's the starting off point. I don't really have an answer. "Ban trophy hunting period" seems like the most obviously ethical approach to reducing animal suffering (still allowing scientifically-driven population culls for biodiversity and hunting for food and indigenous hunting), but it's hard to imagine that kind of thing getting buy-in because of the cultural attachment large swaths of America has to trophy hunting.
old manatee
Banned
But what if I only get off by killing. I don't want to kill humans, but I will if I can't kill other large mammals and put them on my car.
Stumpokapow
listen to the mad man
I was interested in clicking through to these to see how they were approaching the subject, since I am very interested in what it is people actually want to do.
The US FWS should classify African Lions as vulnerable, as they are currently investigating doing
Humane Society: FWS should get on with it.
HSI: FWS should get on with it.
PETA: Starts with "Ban all trophy hunting, hunting is for cowards, animals are loved by their families" (which I think actually is probably the most clear-headed approach to the issue)... but then they drop that and switch to "FWS should get on with it".
As above, I feel like this is something that's going to happen and is generally a good thing. It's not clear to me that the FWS is stalling or taking a long time, it seems like, as usual, complicated regulatory subjects require time for experts to get their ducks in a row. Obviously nothing wrong with asking them to work quickly or impressing on them the importance of their work, though.
Some other activity:
Rainforest Rescue: It's not really clear what they're asking for. Possibly to make US import bans based on IUCN classifications rather than domestic protection lists, but it's not clear. They don't really specify. They want to make it illegal to import vulnerable or endangered species trophies. But it already is, it just goes off US protection lists rather than the IUCN classifications. So this might be "FWS should get on with it", and it might be "US law should be based on IUCN classifications". I don't disagree with either but it's not super clear to me how this solves much of a problem.
Takeaction.takepart: This one is sort of weird. They seem to recognize that FWS will classify African Lions and that it'll be illegal to import Lion trophies at that point. However, they note that you can get an exception to import bans if the hunt is deemed in accordance with a conservation principle, and they want to end this exception. I'm not, like, against ending this exception, but it's not clear to me how this shakes out on a larger scale. If the exception process is primarily a vehicle for powerful people to get a license to break the law, then that's bad. If, on the other hand, the exception process is driven by policy experts and scientists who view it having a role, then it seems to me like you'd want it there.
To give you an example of how I'm thinking about this, when the Atlantic Cod population collapsed in the 1990s (IUCN vulnerable, same as African Lions), fishing of Atlantic Cod was banned. One exception to the ban was a sentinel fishery; basically, because you can't just count fish, the most effective way to count them is to allow limited fishing and see how many you catch. Given that you do catch them, you can either let them rot or sell them. So we allowed people to sell them. This strikes me as a pretty reasonable exception to an otherwise reasonable ban. Now, African Lions don't need to be hunted to monitor their population levels, so obviously it's a bit apples-and-oranges, but just in general it seems to me like the exceptions might not necessarily be loopholes for rich trophy hunters.
GoldenEye 007
Member
And it's how we got the PATRIOT Act.
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