BIODIVERSITY

German Hunter Pays $60,000 to Kill One of Africa’s Biggest Elephants

Cole Mellino

Just months after the killing of Cecil the Lion sparked intense Internet outrage, a German hunter has killed what is believed to be the largest elephant ever killed in Africa “for sport” in almost 30 years, according to The Telegraph. While Walter Palmer, the hunter who killed Cecil paid $50,000 for his trophy hunt, this man, who has not been identified by name, paid $60,000 (nearly £40,000) as part of a “21-day game hunt including the Big Five of elephants, leopards, lions, buffalo and rhinoceros,” reports The Telegraph.

German Hunter pays 40K to kill Africa's biggest elephant

http://t.co/jxkkLrUubV/
Can I pay 40K to knock Germany's biggest twat's teeth out?
— Ricky Gervais (@rickygervais) October 15, 2015

News of the hunt comes on the heels of the announcement that Zimbabwean authorities have decided not to prosecute Palmer for the killing of Cecil, saying his “papers were in order” and that he did not know he was committing an offense. The elephant, which was estimated to have been 50 years old, was shot and killed on Oct. 8 in “a private hunting concession” of Zimbabwe’s Gonarezhou National Park, according to The Telegraph. It’s unclear where the animal came from as it had never been spotted before in Gonarezhou. Johnny Rodrigues, chairman of The Zimbabwean Conservation Task Force, suspects it might have wandered over from Kruger National Park in neighboring South Africa.

The animal was shot and killed on Oct. 8 by an unnamed German hunter on a 21-day big game hunt.

“The kill was celebrated in hunting forums around the world,” says The Telegraph. The elephant was “so huge its tusks were almost hitting the ground while it was standing. We have never seen any animal that big.” Emmanuel Fundira, chairman of the Safari Operators Association of Zimbabwe (SOAZ), told AFP.

“The last time one was seen (of such size) was more than 40 years ago,” said Fundira. “The hunter should not have shot it.” Elephants such as this one need to be treated as a “national treasure” rather than killed. “We need to discipline ourselves and hold such iconic things sacred,” he said.

The elephant is thought to be the largest killed in Zimbabwe in more than 30 years.

Its tusks weighed a combined 122 pounds, said Rodrigues, who expressed his outraged over the killing. “We are disgusted. It’s wrong to kill an iconic animal like that,” Rodrigues told AFP. Rodrigues confirmed to The Guardian that the German national “had the correct license and permit to shoot an elephant.”

The massive tusks weighed 122 pounds.

Still, Rodrigues thinks the hunter should face the same public scrutiny as Walter Palmer. “We don’t know who this hunter is but we will find out. The authorities and the hunters’ association are trying to protect him, but … we’ve got his photograph,” said Rodrigues. “We will identify him and when we do we’ll leave the public to do what they did to Walter Palmer. People like that deserve it.”

“Let’s have some ethics,” he added. “Just because they have money, they don’t need to do it. It’s only so they can mount them on a bloody wall. What is that?”
Elephants are being killed—mostly by poachers—at an alarming rate. Exact numbers are hard to come by, but William deBuys at TomDispatch puts the number at 100 elephants killed a day. The critically acclaimed series Earth Focus estimates an elephant is killed every 20 minutes for its tusks.

Cyanide poisoning of elephants has become a major problem in the last two years. In 2013, up to 100 elephants were killed with cyanide (original estimates put the number at 300). Zimbabwe National Parks has called for “stiffer penalties for poachers” after a slew of elephant killings from cyanide poisonings.
26 elephants found dead this week- 14 found the last week, according to 'The Telegraph'

Photos on link

http://ecowatch.com/2015/10/16/german-hunter-kills-elephant/

First, you make a roux....a BIG one.

You are all heart

Nah...theres some stomach there too....

It should be allowed. Humans should be allowed to kill animals in the wild as long as they do it with their bare hands and sign a waiver against any insurance policies.

Who cares

Sick SOB!

Lots of women are animal lovers, even a few are activists on this site.. & this sh@t stays out here forever.

But who cares

My brother in law is a hunter, but not quite in that scale.. He is mostly North American animals, with some Australian sheep & goats..
It is however, to me, rather disgusting, to enter into his downstairs family/play room to see all the animals(bears, cougars, lynx, elk, etc) mounted on limbs of trees or whatever all over this room, and this HUGE KODIAK bear standing in a corner.
but that's what money does, as it costs huge denero for taxidermy..
Wish they would shoot with a camera instead of a gun..

I grew up with generations of hunters. And I eat the meat.

I just don't see this elephant case or the lion case(s) as 'sport '. And it is not like they are going to eat it or need to eat it. This is just paying to kill for ego. It p@issed me off.

"" SANKUYO, Botswana — Lions have
been coming out of the surrounding
bush, prowling around homes and a
small health clinic, to snatch goats
and donkeys from the heart of this
village on the edge of one of
Africa’s great inland deltas.
Elephants, too, are becoming
frequent, unwelcome visitors,
gobbling up the beans, maize and
watermelons that took farmers
months to grow.
Since Botswana banned trophy
hunting two years ago, remote
communities like Sankuyo have
been at the mercy of growing
numbers of wild animals that are
hurting livelihoods and driving
terrified villagers into their homes
at dusk.
The hunting ban has also meant a
precipitous drop in income. Over
the years, villagers had used money
from trophy hunters, mostly
Americans, to install toilets and
water pipes, build houses for the
poorest, and give scholarships to the
young and pensions to the old.
Calls to curb trophy hunting across
Africa have risen since a lion in
Zimbabwe, named Cecil by
researchers tracking it, was killed in
July by an American dentist. Several
airlines have stopped transporting
trophies from hunts, and lawmakers
in New Jersey have introduced
legislation that would further
restrict their import into the United
States.
But in Sankuyo and other rural
communities living near the wild
animals, many are calling for a
return to hunting. African
governments have also condemned,
some with increasing anger,
Western moves to ban trophy
hunting.
“Before, when there was hunting,
we wanted to protect those animals
because we knew we earned
something out of them,” said Jimmy
Baitsholedi Ntema, a villager in his
60s. “Now we don’t benefit at all
from the animals. The elephants
and buffaloes leave after destroying
our plowing fields during the day.
Then, at night, the lions come into
our kraals.”
In early 2014, this sparsely
populated nation became one of a
few African countries with abundant
wildlife to put an end to trophy
hunting, the practice at the core of
conservation efforts in southern
Africa. President Seretse Khama Ian
Khama of Botswana, a staunch
defender of animal rights, stated
that hunting was no longer
compatible with wildlife
conservation and urged
communities like Sankuyo to switch
to photographic tourism. The
decision was cheered by animal
welfare groups in the West.
But Botswana is an outlier.
Government officials and
conservationists in most African
countries staunchly support trophy
hunting, including Zambia, which is
going back to hunting after a short-
lived suspension.
“Zambia has always hunted from
time immemorial,” Jean Kapata,
Zambia’s minister of tourism, said
in a phone interview. “Zambia is a
sovereign nation, and therefore
people should respect the rules we
have in our country.”
Zambia recently lifted a two-year-
old ban on hunting leopards, and
lion hunting is likely to resume
next year. In 2013, Zambia curbed
trophy hunting and imposed a
blanket ban on hunting the big cats,
also in an effort to replace trophy
hunting with photographic tourism.
But that brought little income
compared to hunting, Ms. Kapata
said, while lions increasingly stalked
villages for livestock. During the
hunting ban, a local councilor was
killed by a lion, she said.
“We had a lot of complaints from
local communities,” Ms. Kapata said.
“In Africa, a human being is more
important than an animal. I don’t
know about the Western world,” she
added, echoing a complaint in
affected parts of Africa that the
West seemed more concerned with
the welfare of a lion in Zimbabwe
than of Africans themselves.
Zambia’s quick reversal points to
the central role that trophy hunting
has played in managing wildlife in
southern Africa , where the
industry’s emergence in the 1960s
helped restore degraded habitats
and revive certain species.
In South Africa, the biggest market,
hunting occurs on private game
ranches. But in the rest of the
region, it takes place mostly on
communal lands where villages like
Sankuyo are supposed to receive a
cut of the fees paid by trophy
hunters.
Sankuyo, a village of around 700
people, sits just east of the
Okavango Delta in northern
Botswana, which has one of the
richest concentrations of wildlife in
Africa. In 1996, Sankuyo signed on
to a community-based natural
resources program that focused on
hunting and was supported by the
United States government.
In 2010, Sankuyo earned nearly
$600,000 from the 120 animals —
including 22 elephants, 55 impalas
and nine buffaloes — that it was
allowed to offer to trophy hunters
that year, said Brian Child, an
associate professor at the University
of Florida, who is leading a study on
the impact of the ban. Botswana’s
wildlife officials, who set the annual
quotas, last allowed a lion to be
hunted in Sankuyo in 2006.
Among the benefits to the
community, 20 households chosen
by lottery received outdoor toilets,
all painted in pastel colors that
stand out in a village turned brown
in the dry season. Standpipes were
installed in courtyards, connecting
40 families to running water.
“That’s what made people appreciate
conservation,” said Gokgathang
Timex Moalosi, 55, Sankuyo’s chief.
“We told them, ‘That lion or
elephant has paid for your toilet or
your standpipe.’ ”
Where trophy hunting benefits
communities, locals are more
motivated to protect wild animals as
a source of revenue, experts say.
But in most places without trophy
hunting, they are simply considered
a nuisance or danger, and locals are
more likely to hunt them for food
or to kill them to defend their
homes and crops.
Dr. Child, an expert on wildlife
management in Africa, said trophy
hunting had failed to benefit many
communities because of
mismanagement and corruption.
But in the countries where trophy
hunting had worked well —
Botswana, until the ban; Namibia;
and Zimbabwe, until its economy
collapsed in the past decade — it
had accomplished the twin goals of
generating income and protecting
wild animals.
“When hunting was introduced, we
actually ended up killing less
animals,” Dr. Child said. “That’s the
irony.”
With hunting now banned, there
are growing signs that more wild
animals could be killed, experts say.
Lions, which used to feast on the
meat of elephants left behind by
hunters, are increasingly entering
villages looking for livestock. In the
past two years here in Sankuyo,
villagers have killed two lions that
wandered into residential areas.
Botswana’s swelling population of
elephants, accounting for a third of
the total in Africa, is clashing
increasingly with a growing human
population. Poaching rings
trafficking in ivory to East Asia
have targeted elephants elsewhere
on the continent. According to the
International Union for
Conservation of Nature’s Red List of
Threatened Species, African
elephants are classified as
“vulnerable,” below “endangered”
and “critically endangered,” and
their population is increasing.
“We’re experiencing an exponential
increase in conflicts between
animals and human beings,” said
Israel Khura Nato, the head of the
Botswana Department of Wildlife’s
problem animal control unit in
Maun, a town two hours from here.
According to the department, such
conflicts recorded nationwide rose
to 6,770 in 2014 from 4,361 in 2012.
Poaching incidents increased to 323
in 2014 from 309 in 2012.
More poisoned vultures have been
found in this area, possibly killed by
poachers seeking to conceal their
hunts, said Lucas Rutina, an
ecologist at the University of
Botswana’s Okavango Research
Institute near Maun. Residents of
communities that used to derive an
income from trophy hunting no
longer attend conservation
workshops at the institute, he said.
“Now they are going back to hating
animals,” Dr. Rutina said.
Galeyo Kobamelo, 37, said he had
lost all 30 goats in the kraal just
outside his family compound to
lions and hyenas since the hunting
ban. Elephants had destroyed his
fields of sorghum and maize.
With the hunting ban, his family no
longer receives the free meat that
hunters left behind. His mother,
Gomolemo Semalomba, 58, no
longer receives a pension, about
$100 twice a year.
“Now we don’t eat meat anymore,”
she said, pointing to a table with
plates of cabbage, beans and maize
meal.
Mr. Moalosi, Sankuyo’s chief, said
he hoped to bring back some of the
benefits after his village made a
successful transition to
photographic tourism.
But experts say that sightseeing
tourists gravitate to prime areas
with dense concentrations of
wildlife, like the Okavango Delta’s
Moremi Game Reserve west of here.
They rarely venture to peripheral
areas like Sankuyo, or even more
remote corners, which do, however,
draw hunters.
“Photographic tourism is not that
viable in those areas,” said Joseph
Mbaiwa, the Okavango Research
Institute’s acting director.
In Sankuyo, William Moalosi is one
of dozens of people that the hunting
ban has left jobless. Many have left
Sankuyo to seek work in Maun.
Mr. Moalosi, 40, worked for eight
years as a tracker and driver,
earning about $100 a month. He
used some of the money to replace
his old house, made of branches and
the mud from a termite mound,
with a modern structure. He lost his
crops of maize and watermelons to
marauding elephants a few months
ago.
Villagers, including the chief,
identified Mr. Moalosi as the man
who had shot and killed a lioness
last month. The animal had climbed
a tree to jump down into a kraal
with goats; unable to get out of the
enclosure, the lioness posed a
danger to the village, which gave
the community the right to kill the
animal.
But sitting outside his house,
flanked by neighbors, Mr. Moalosi
denied he was the shooter. He said
he knew nothing about the
circumstances of the animal’s death,
a statement that drew knowing
smiles from his neighbors.
“We are living in fear since lions
and leopards now come into our
village,” he said. “Elephants cross
the village to go to the other side of
the bush. The dogs bark at them.
We just run into our houses and
hide.”"
http://mobile.nytimes.com/2015/09/13/world/a-hunting-ban-saps-a-villages-livelihood.html?referer=&_r=0

But Westerners, in their cities and suburbs, will continue to think emotionally...with visions of Disney movies dancing in their heads.

But Westerners, in their cities and suburbs, will continue to think emotionally...with visions of Disney movies dancing in their heads.

Oh I agree with this ^^^ I have seen crazy try to get up close to wild animals... Like they want to hug them or something

The same women who reject a man who doesn't wear a shirt while in a public forum.

Well, you asked.

they should be made to leave the wild animals alone... there's no reason to kill any of them...

So what. I hope it tasted like $60k.

There are hunting ranches in Texas where they'll set up a gun, take a caged boar, set it in a run, and bait it to walk in front of the rifle, where squeamish hunters can just pull the trigger as it walks by.

The Chinese poach the hell out of their own country for alternative medicine ingredients.

Countries still get whaling quotas.

Hunting bears by baiting is legal in many areas.

Japan has giant monsters running amok they continually kill with their giant monster baiting lizard.

Millions of cows, pigs, and sheep are slaughtered every year.

Millions of dogs and cats are euthanized every year.

It's estimated TRILLIONS of fish are caught each year for sport, consumption, oil, etc.

Do you consider the Orkin man, animal shelter facilitator, or grocery store an arbiter of genocide that should be brought up on criminal charges?

Oh, but it's the "majestic" ones that should make people feel guilty.
"Don't kill those! They're the good ones and cool because Disney made them talk like children and fly and anthropomorphized them all cute like, all the rest are stupid and I don't care if they die!"

Is this a case of "elephant lives matter! Not all animals matter! Saying all animals matter diminishes elephant lives matter!"