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My solution to hunting (initial posting complete now)

Tokis-Phoenix

先輩
23 Sep 2005
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This is something i have been musing over the last few days and i came about these thoughts when doing my pro-fox hunting thread ( Why i am pro fox hunting -BTW if anyone wants to comment on the issues i raised i the thread they are more than welcome to :) )- one of the main purpose's of the pro-fox hunting thread was that i wanted to make people more aware to the issues of the ban on fox hunting and how if affected the people who benefited from fox hunting etc. One of these main issues i raised in the thread was the wide ranging economical losses the ban caused on small rural communities.

Anyways, I would estimate that the large majority of majority of hunting takes places in rural/isolated communities where their economies are not very strong/wealthy and where job and education opportunities are not varied or that good in general. So hunts end up becoming a big income earner for many people living in such communities- many hunts require a lot of organization/planning and employ many people and businesses throughout the community, and this is why when hunts are banned, many people lose their jobs and businesses and the community suffers overall for it.

It is easy for those who live in cities where job and education prospects are very plentiful, where lack of employment and reality of getting a well payed job are not a problem. So its easy for such people that when they go about trying to impose hunting bans on small rural communities, they don't personally suffer for such bans in anyway personally.
But its not easy for those who live in such small rural communities where bans on hunting are bad because for them, its another load of employment and money making opportunities going down the drain, and life becomes ever bit more that harder to find a job and bring in money to put food on the table to feed their families etc.

So for many people living in such communities, a large part of them supporting hunts are not primarily for moral reasons, but simply because they are protecting their job or business or employment prospects where they live in general.

For example, its very easy for many of us to look down on people who kill endangered animals like gorilla's or orangutans- of course its not morally correct to kill an endangered animal.
But this is not the whole story.
I'll give you an imaginary scenario: say you were living in Africa living in absolute poverty in a rural area. Say you work the fields doing back breaking labor and long hours every daylight hour of the day to try and bring in money and food to help feed and support your hungry family- but no matter how hard you work, you are only able to make $2's a day. Say your young son falls critically ill though and you cannot afford medicine to cure him- say one day though this guy comes up to you though and he offers you a one-off job opportunity. He tells you that if you go into the forest and kill a gorilla for him, he'll pay you $500's for the gorilla's body.
Now, you may fully realize that its wrong to kill gorilla's- but you're in a desperate situation for money, and this dead gorilla could make you the equivalent of almost two years worth of work salary. All you have to do is kill one gorilla- the money could save you ages of back breaking work, you could get your son the medicine he needs, this money could even be your ticket out of poverty from the opportunities such money could give you.
How many of us living in this guys situation would kill a gorilla given these circumstances?

Poverty or lack of money in general fuels animal hunting. IMHO, if places in Africa weren't stricken which such dire poverty then i'm positive that there wouldn't be half as many people killing rare or simply wild animals- pretty much the only reason why people are hunting these animals is because the hunting offers these people jobs and money.

This sort of thing applies to so many places in the world though where people hunt animals for money or for a living in general.

(continued in a moment)
 
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(meh for some weird reason the second post has disappeared, so i'm going to have to re-write it...)
"sigh".
(continued)


Basically, my solution is, is that if you are to enforce hunting bans in an effective, willing and progressive way, then you need to place importance on both the needs of animals AND people.

No help in particular was given to the people whose jobs and businesses were taken away/destroyed by the fox hunting ban. People quite understandably felt like they had been negatively targeted and then abandoned for the worse when the fox hunting ban came- no help has been given to anyone living in these communities since the people, people have simply been expected to struggle on as normal except with less job/employment/money making prospects than ever.

Some people view the ban on fox hunting as progress, but IMHO when you look upon these things in these sorts of light, its only really taking one step forward only to take another step backwards. The ban causes widespread losses of jobs and closing of businesses, it did nothing to help improve the views of rural people living in such communities towards the outsiders who came in and imposed the bans on their communities, it has done nothing to improve rural people's lives, it has done nothing to help reduce the gaps between poor and rich or help improve relations between people from different classes and backgrounds etc.

So, my solution to hunting is to help both people and animals and not put the needs of one above the other. If the government enforces hunting bans on small rural community economies, then it needs to help such communities make up for their losses from the bans that the government imposed. Animal rights activist groups also need to be more considerate and compassionate to the people whose lives are very negatively effected by their actions.

I am sure if the people in the small rural fox hunting ban communities were actually helped more, then people would have not fought so vigorously to defend their hunting rights. But as it stood though, people were basically told "We don't care if you loose your job or business, sorry but the welfare of foxes is more important than what happens to you when we take away your hunting rights".

I mean, how would you feel if you ran a small butchers and all of a sudden one day these vegan-activists came protesting at your door trying to close your business done, saying stuff like "meat is murder" and "you run a trade of death" etc- you would fight to save your business wouldn't you, especially if you heavily depended on it as a means of supporting your family? Surely you can understand the plight of people in such situations and not simply tar everyone with the same animal cruelty brush you use etc?
For real progress you've gotta help people just as much as animals, and understand that quite often, helping one is helping the other, or that helping one will help the success of helping of the other etc 👍 . I believe that for animal hunting to be abolished in a wholly progressive manner (which i do not think the fox hunting ban was done in which is why i disagreed with it), you need to help the people whose livelihoods depend on hunting etc, and not just impose really strict laws for anyone who breaks the ban etc.

What do you think on all of this? Do you agree with my stance that more needs to be done to help the losses of communities that depend on hunting a lot, so that both sides can benefit from a ban on hunting (and also so thus people left behind in such communities will actually want to properly enforce such a ban etc) so that progress is made both on the peoples welfare/rights front and the animals welfare/rights front etc? Or do you disagree in general with my stance on this (if you do please explain thoroughly) or see some other better solution to things etc?
 
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