Category: Animal Rights

Whackos Against Hunters/Conservationists

The following Op-Ed come from Safari Club International.

Hunters conserve and save wildlife when no one else will or can.

Want to save wildlife in wild places? Convince misguided would-be “saviors” that they need to throttle back, cease making death threats and doing other terrorist things.

In just the past few days there has been a spate of Internet and social media attacks on hunters for their choices to participate in legal hunting at various places around the globe.

The attacks come in two basic forms: Ridicule and death threats. Differences of opinion are healthy. Death threats are both sick and illegal.

Late last week, SCI Member Brittany Longoria was attacked over a photo of her holding a leopard she hunted legally in Africa. Those who attacked her made no note that through her hunting and conservation-related activities, she has been personally responsible for saving more wildlife than any of the anti-hunters we know. Antis never let the truth get in the way of the lies they like to spew out to an unassuming public.

“This is not about me hunting an individual leopard,” Brittany said. “This is about hunting and the methods of international wildlife conservation. If they come for me as a hunter, they’re going to come for you as a hunter, so we all need to stand together and united and speak from our place of truth and heart on why we hunt.”

Then over the weekend, Fox News reported that former professional hockey player Tim Brent was ridiculed and received death threats after he posted pictures of himself posing with a bear he hunted in the Yukon, Canada. Read more

Animal Rights, Hunting

Wyoming: grizzly bear hunting season suspended at this time

Cheyenne – In response to a federal judge’s ruling, the Wyoming Game and Fish Department has suspended the grizzly bear hunting season pending further direction.

“This is unfortunate. Game and Fish has a robust grizzly bear management program with strong regulations, protections and population monitoring for grizzly bears. We believe in state-led management of wildlife and involving the public in decisions like the creation and implementation of a conservative hunting opportunity for those who want that experience,” said Scott Talbott, director of the Wyoming Game and Fish Department. “We will now await further information about whether the bears will remain under state management or if they go back to federal management.”

At this time, Game and Fish will continue to lead grizzly bear management, research, monitoring, conflict mitigation and education, but this judge’s ruling shuts down the planned 2018 grizzly bear hunting season scheduled to begin September 1. Read more

Animal Rights, Hunting

New Jersey Gov. Ends Public Land Bear Hunting

Fulfilling a campaign promise to the best of his ability, newly elected Gov. Philip Murphy has ended black bear hunting by executive order on all state-controlled public lands in New Jersey.

The order stops short of an outright ban on bear hunting in the Garden State only because, as stated in the order, the governor doesn’t possess the power to do so. That power resides with the New Jersey Fish and Game Council, which has authorized black bear hunting for the last eight years and through 2021.

“This is pure political pandering at its finest. Gov. Murphy knows that the wildlife experts in his own agencies use the best available science and practices when evaluating wildlife populations and setting hunting regulations,” said Evan Heusinkveld, president and CEO of the Sportsmen’s Alliance. “This backdoor attempt to undermine scientific wildlife management is a slap in the face to those biologists, presents a clear and present danger to New Jersey’s citizens and, ultimately, hurts the entire population of bears.”

Dense is the best way to describe New Jersey. It is the most densely populated state in the country with approximately 9 million citizens, and is estimated to have the densest population of black bears with surveys topping 3,500 bears in just the northern portion of the state.

With a robust population of black bears and such a large population of people, sightings, conflicts and attacks have taken place regularly in New Jersey – including the death of a student in 2014.

In his executive order, Gov. Murphy admits that neither his office nor the Commissioner of Environmental Protection have the power to unilaterally alter or cancel a hunt, something that has been upheld several times in court.

Instead, Gov. Murphy invokes safety on public lands as the motivation to end the hunt, even though all research affirms that hunting remains one of the safest activities millions of people engage in every year. Read more

Animal Rights, Hunting

Revising the Endangered Species Act

By Glen Wunderlich

The intent of the Endangered Species Act (ESA) of 1973 was to protect critically imperiled species from extinction. Administered by two federal agencies – the United States Fish and Wildlife Service (FWS) and the Commerce Department’s National Marine Fisheries Service – it’s been manipulated and perverted to the point that some officials in Congress are pushing for change. That very notion has ruffled some feathers.

Sen. John Barrasso (R-Wyoming) has proposed draft legislation that would amend the ESA potentially providing states greater authority to address struggling wildlife issues within their borders. However, taking any controls out of the hands of D.C. bureaucrats is a tall order. However, but who is prepared better to analyze, restructure, and implement change than the people on the front lines – those whose very living depends on such successes? Rather than drastic measures foisted upon citizens that, in effect, are never-ending, a more sensible approach would be more proactive measures to avoid the perils of listing in the first place.

“We must do more than just keep listed species on life support,” Barrasso said in a recent statement on the bill. “We need to see them recovered.” Amen. But, we also need to be able to define the term “recovered” and to allow states to manage wildlife in a way that is sustainable. Of course, funding mechanisms must be returned to the states or else any mandates would be worth only the paper upon which they are written.

The ESA has often led to a heavily burdened U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and a host of species that end up in the courts with activist judges pushing agendas that have no basis in science-based outcomes.

During the 2008 presidential campaign, President Obama described the types of judges that he would nominate to the federal bench as follows: “We need somebody who’s got the heart, the empathy, to recognize what it’s like to be a young teenage mom – the empathy to understand what it’s like to be poor, or African-American, or gay, or disabled, or old. And that’s the criteria by which I’m going to be selecting my judges.” Presto! We get one Beryl A. Howell as the chief judge of the United States District Court for the District of Columbia who not only previously said protecting our border is racist but ordered the Western Great Lakes wolves to be reinstated to ESA listing, despite the fact that they had fully recovered for over 10 years!

Now other animal-rights groups want to manage our Lake Sturgeon by placing them on the ESA in an effort to stop our citizens from fishing for them. Never mind that our Michigan DNR has a viable plan in place and has been working this plan for years in a successful endeavor to bring them back. Oh, and the funding? Just thank a fisherman or woman who buys the licenses. That’s sustainable use, my friends.

U.S. Sen. Lisa Murkowski, (R-Alaska), released a statement on recent proposals by the Department of the Interior to address longstanding issues with the ESA, as follows:
“These proposals are another step toward establishing a regulatory environment that will allow the responsible use of our public lands and produce better outcomes for fish and wildlife,” Murkowski, chairman of the Senate Committee on Energy and Natural Resources, said. “In Alaska, we have seen firsthand how the arbitrary application of these laws can foster uncertainty and hamper economic opportunities without delivering the promised environmental benefits”.

The FWS’s proposal would ensure that all threatened species would receive the level of protection that is appropriate for each species. This approach would free-up limited resources for more targeted and efficient recovery of threatened and endangered species. Meanwhile, the proposed rules for the ESA were published recently in the Federal Register, opening a 60-day public comment period.

Animal Rights, Wildlife

SCI Members on This Morning’s “Today Show “ on NBC

Between 7:40 and 8:00 a.m. this morning, (Safari Club International) SCI members Tess and Andrew Talley will appear on NBC’s “Today Show” along with SCI President Paul Babaz. The Talleys will recount the savage social media attacks they suffered after social media trolls dredged-up a photo when she took an old giraffe on a legal hunt in South Africa.

The appearance is part of SCI’s new communications effort to engage the media in order to get the facts about the good things hunters and hunting do around the world –and countering the lies of anti-hunters with the best science-based research possible. SCI recognizes the danger of direct engagement – misinterpretation- but says it is an “acceptable risk” in order to counter the so-called “facts” used by anti-hunting groups.

Animal Rights, Hunting

PETA Defends Extremist Group’s Illegal Activity

This from HumaneWatch.org…

If you thought PETA had moderated itself since PETA provided money to an Animal Liberation Front member who burned down a university lab—think again. PETA seems to be heading into a full-fledged romance with Direct Action Everywhere (DxE), a zealous group of young activists with the urge to yell and scream at people enjoying meat in restaurants.

DxE, with the goal of “total animal liberation,” was founded by Wayne Hsiung, who is now facing felony charges after allegedly trespassing on a farm and stealing a baby goat. PETA President Ingrid Newkirk swiftly jumped to Hsiung’s defense saying he shouldn’t have to go to jail and saying that actions like his are “necessary” for a successful movement.

And that’s not the only time PETA has defended members of DxE. In May, six DxE operatives (including Hsiung) were charged with felonies for burglary and theft after reportedly breaking into a farm in Utah. Following this incident, the official PETA Twitter account posted a message saying the activists “shouldn’t be punished.”

PETA’s connections to DxE don’t end there. Last October, Newkirk spoke at a DxE event where Hsiung also spoke, showing that PETA is willing to share the stage with someone willing to break the law. And in San Francisco, DxE hosted a rally with city supervisor Katy Tang, who later received an award from PETA. Read more

Animal Rights

SCI Counters Antis’ Lies About Federal Commission

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Contact: Steve Comus
Email:scomus@safariclub.org
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

 

Safari Club International isn’t about to sit by idly as anti-hunters attack a federal conservation council and its members.
Anti-hunters never let facts get in the way of an emotionally-based false argument, as is evidenced in their attacks in the media on tomorrow’s meeting of the International Wildlife Conservation Council in Atlanta, GA.
“The shameful criticisms of the IWCC from the anti-hunting community are not surprising but are characteristically unfounded and disappointing,” said SCI President Paul Babaz. “Secretary of the Interior Ryan Zinke has assembled an advisory group of individuals with scientific expertise and hands-on experience with the conservation strategies that are succeeding in Africa and elsewhere around the world.
“Not only is the hunting carried out by the members of the IWCC and their constituencies sustainable, but it has been recognized by scientific authorities around the world, including by the IUCN and CITES, as having a significant role in the conservation of many species.  It is time for the anti-hunters to grow-up and recognize that hunting has historically played and will continue to play an important part in international wildlife management and conservation,” Babaz stated.

Read more

Animal Rights, Hunting, Wildlife

Report: HSUS Pays Twice What it Receives in Fundraising

HumaneWatch recently wrote about the bizarre tale of HSUS fundraiser Loop NYC, which appears to raise money by soliciting random strangers on the New York subway system. For anyone who’s ever been on the system, this has to be one of the dumbest strategies: People want to avoid other people on the New York subway, not give them their credit card info.

One thing that caught our eye was the claim from the marketing firm that for every dollar a solicitor raised for HSUS, he received two. This is what one might call “fuzzy math.” Here’s how it works—and why it’s terrible for charities to do.

A charity, in this case HSUS, pays a solicitor money to attempt to raise funds. In some cases, the payment may be more than a solicitor actually raises (if the solicitor charges by the hour or by the call, for instance). Some veterans charities have been called out for operating in this way, whereby they raise millions but the solicitor keeps close to 100% of what’s raised and the veterans see next to nothing. (Or, in HSUS’s case, homeless animals see next to nothing.)

The charities defend this practice by saying they are essentially prospecting—they’re paying for a fund raiser to build a mailing list of donors that the charity can then reach out to, on its own, years down the line. But this fact is not made clear to donors, who think their money is being used now for charity—not put into the pockets of a fundraiser.

If solicitors were honest about it, people wouldn’t donate. That’s how you know it is a deceptive fundraising practice. And blame should be shared equally between both the solicitor and the charity, since they have an agreed-upon, detailed contract about the solicitation activity.

Animal Rights

They Cull Lions, Don’t They?

By Steve Scott

Editor’s Note: This feature first appeared in The Outfitters Wire (www.outfitterswire.com)

Remember Cecil the lion; the “iconic” lion shot by an American client of a professional hunter who didn’t have the requisite permit? The fallout was memorable:  from internet trolls to the Ricky Gervais’ and Jimmy Kimmel’s of the world condemned the hunter in particular and lion hunting in general as a barbaric act with no place in our modern society. And with the outcry of the masses, the Obama administration leapt into action, barring any further import of lions into the United States. It was a victory for the lions, right? Well, not exactly.

In what has come to be known as the “Cecil effect,” big-game hunting in Zimbabwe, especially for lions, has seen hunter’s numbers diminish to historic lows. And though a few lions from certain countries under certain conditions can be imported under new Trump administration rules, lion hunters are not exactly coming back in droves. The fear of capricious prosecution from a third-world government, or more likely, the fear of the social media equivalent of a tar and feathering has led to reluctant hunters and a dangerous lion overpopulation in one of Zimbabwe’s few quality wildlife areas, the Bubye Valley Conservancy. Because the lion’s numbers are skyrocketing due to lack of a sustainable hunting harvest, Bubye Valley Conservancy will likely have to cull at least 200 of the 500-plus apex predator’s roaming within its borders.

In a dramatic case of lions behaving…as lions, the big cats are taking a bite out of the populations of numerous species of antelope as well, including sable, kudu, and giraffe just to name a few. But it’s not only the antelope who suffer. Lesser predators such as leopard, cheetah, and the endangered wild dogs are finding it harder to make a living in the dwindling game fields.

Fortunately, there is a solution, but it is a harsh one; Nature’s solution. Lions will devour the ever decreasing herds of antelope to a point where there are so few game animals left, the hungry predators start killing domestic cattle, goats, dogs, indigenous people, you know, a sequel of The Ghost and the Darkness until eventually, mass die-offs of most species and then voila! No more lions. Oh a few will survive, but in such small numbers there will be time for the other species to rebound. It is Nature’s way. For in a world with 7.3 billion people and growing, wildlife has to pay its way. And since lions are no longer pulling their metaphoric conservation weight, 200 of their number are going to have to die anyway. Only this way, it is without the approximate $1,000,000 sustainable use hunting would have generated for the benefit of conservation. So congratulations to the anti-hunting lynch mob. You win and lions lose.

 

Animal Rights, Hunting, Wildlife ,

CharityWatch Downgrades Humane Society of the U.S. to “D” Rating

On the heels of the Humane Society of the United States being downgraded by Charity Navigator and losing its accreditation from the BBB Wise Giving Alliance, a third charity watchdog has some bad news for America’s supposed “most effective” animal charity. The respected CharityWatch has downgraded HSUS to a “D” grade in its most recent rankings due to HSUS’s highly inefficient spending practices.

CharityWatch takes a broad look at the consolidated finances of several HSUS entities and finds that 48% of HSUS’s budget is spent on overhead costs. (By our math, if you just count HSUS’s spending, over half of its budget goes to overhead.)

Even worse, HSUS cloaks millions of dollars in overhead as program costs. Essentially, HSUS counts fundraising material as “educational” costs. Imagine a direct-mail letter in which 75% of the letter is written off as an “educational” program expense, but only the last paragraphs asking for money are counted as “fundraising” overhead–even though the entire mailing is designed to raise money. HSUS counts millions of dollars as “program” expenses in this way.

This appears to be legal under accounting rules, but it’s a misleading and deceptive practice. HSUS tells people that 70 or 80 percent of its budget is spent on programs, when in reality it’s closer to just 50 percent.

If you want to effectively help animals, don’t give to the Humane Society of the United States. Instead, give to your local shelter.

Animal Rights
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