The Wilderness association focuses on the transversal benefits of hunting to the protection of animal species by protecting them from poaching; in South Africa, rhinos are no longer at risk of extinction thanks to hunters.
Hunting is always seen by animal rights activists, at least in our country, as negative and absolutely to be condemned more for ethical reasons and / or personal convictions than for real environmental reasons: almost always lacking in biological knowledge, animal rights activists always end up clashing against this knowledge. Here is a last one that comes to us from South Africa, where rhinos are increasingly threatened by poaching due to the illegal trade of their horn after they were removed from the risk of extinction only a few years ago and where hunting has done and is doing his best to protect them.
As many as 448 rhinos killed by poachers in 2011 alone, leading to 984 in the last five years alone. Yet even in that country there are those who are thinking of solving the problem by closing the hunt for rhinos to reduce losses. Writes, in the major South African environmental magazine ("Environmente: People and Conservation in Africa"), a head of the Wildlands Conservation Trust: "I am not a hunter but I am firmly in favor of hunting when it is conducted in a fair, ethical and conservation support.
At least 50% of the currently protected territories in South Africa owe their existence to hunting, and the same success story of rhino protection in South Africa has been endorsed by white hunters. This is a reality, although an unpleasant reality in light of the campaign to stop poaching. It seems contradictory to promote rhino hunting to promote the effort to stop the (illegal) killing of rhinos. Certainly a dead rhino is a dead rhino, you ask.
Yes, it is, but we have successfully harvested the white rhino sustainably for decades. This has meant a significant contribution of money that has allowed the authorities and also the farmers of the private reserves to extend the territories inhabited by the white rhino and to invest in its protection. Simply banning white rhino hunting means stealing resources from farmers and this prevents them from supporting their defense in Game Reserves. They just want to have funds to support this protection, while banning hunting will soon mean the extinction of this magnificent species. "
A speech that does not make a wrinkle, and that also in our country could bring large amounts of money to be used for the conservation of environments, fauna and flora if it were not for the obtuseness of the anti-hunt animalists who consider the conservation of Nature only one way to close the hunt, instead of aiming at an effective collaboration with a sector of society which, like nature lovers, has every interest in defending it.
Murialdo, 8 June 2012
The Secretary General
Signed by Franco Zunino