bwanamich:
Paragraph 1: Daphne Sheldrick may indeed may now be avid anti-hunting but with good reason. Both her husbands, Bill Woodley and David Sheldrick, were at one time hunters as was her brother. It was after they got sick of hunting and realized that the animals needed help that they changed their ways and got into the conservation field instead. She has also personally seen the HUGE decline in wildlife in general from her desnaring teams and realizes that if wildlife continues to be taken by the bushmeat trade, hunting, snaring, poaching or any other reason the wildlife will cease to exist! It has already in some western African countries.
I may be naive but people subject to bribes will always be suspect along with the information they spew because the bribes are affecting the numbers they give. I just watched an interview of Oprah's program with Barack Obama. He refuses to take corporate jets (and refused Oprah's corporate jet to South Africa) because he doesn't want to be beholden to anyone. Quite a young man. I hope he can keep this up. I admire him for it.
Paragraph 2: CITES using game departments for determing numbers is not always the most accurate way to go. You know as well as I do that many game department people sit in offices and just write down figures given to them (right or wrong) and never or seldom get out in the field to really see what is going on. The people I think she is referring to that should be consulted are like Iain Douglas-Hamilton who regularly does aerial surveys and uses tracking collars to prove movement of animals and body counts, Cynthia Moss's group who daily censuses elephants in Amboseli and knows all the elephants and their families and their numbers, knows who has been speared, who shot, etc. and lastly Daphne herself who by the number of snares and dead animals retrieved knows what is going on within a given area. These would be far more accurate on what is going on within a species or within a given area than estimates given by game departments or scientists who aren't even living in the field. Lion people must have people of this same calibre who could be counted on to honestly give accurate information and not be subjet to bribes and misinformation.
Canned hunting in South Africa may be "legally" banned with a wink wink, nod, nod knowing full well that it is still happening and shame on them for it.
There is nothing wrong about touching stories of Bambi. It is what gets many young children to start their love of wildlife.
The sentence about depersonalizing living creatures, reducing them to mere numbers is, I suspect, very true. After seeing many bodies, whether human from natural deaths, accidents, and war or from bodies of many animals killed, after a while the mind of man becomes numb to it and becomes uncaring (in order to protect himself). I've seen this with doctors, nurses and funeral directors and I suspect it effects hunters in the same way. If humans become uncaring, then they shouldn't be in a position of "protecting" the wildlife they profess to try to save.
Very unfortunate for all of us, bwanamich.
