Trophy Hunting is Not Sport
The Shame that Goes with Killing for Fun
By Geoffrey Holland
For humans, there was a time when hunting and killing animals was about survival. It was about feeding family and wearing skins from animals was about staying warm and alive. As a species, we grew up around a mythology that assumed that humans were superior to other lifeforms. The roots of much of the cultural dogma that defines us are embedded in a sense of superiority over the plant life and wild animals with whom we share the landscapes and waterways of our home planet.
Humans have been a distinct species for about 200,000 years. For all of that time, we have assumed we have the right to take, take, take whatever we wanted from our Earth’s living biosphere. Our sense of entitlement is wired into each of us. For the longest time, our cold-hearted attitude toward the natural world didn’t matter, because there weren’t enough humans on Earth to have any lasting consequence. That was then, this is now.
So Much Has Changed Over the Past Hundred Years
It took from our beginnings till the year, 1927 A.D. for our planet’s human population to reach 2 billion. In just the past century, the number of humans on Earth needing food, water, and shelter to survive has quadrupled to more than 8 billion, with at least another 2 billion expected in the decades ahead.
As a species, humans continue to assume we are entitled to take from nature whatever we want whenever we want it. Here is what that translates to in modern terms. These days, half of all the arable land on Earth is dedicated to agriculture; of that, more than 70% is dedicated to raising livestock animals destined to be killed and butchered so humans can eat. Nearly half of all the cropland on our planet now goes to grow grain just to feed livestock animals raised for slaughter.
Our Eating Habits These Days Reflect Indifference and Entitlement
Think for a moment about what it takes to feed a substantial share of 8 billion humans roast chicken or hamburgers. The reality: every passing day, 250 million livestock animals are killed and butchered to feed humans.
Carol J. Adams, author of the widely acclaimed book, The Sexual Politics of Meat, makes the case that eating meat is physiologically linked to masculinity. Moreover, when we go to supermarkets to shop, humans select beef, pork, and chicken mindlessly, ignoring that these foods were once parts of living animals.
It was one thing when small numbers of our human ancestors lived in caves and killed and ate animals to survive, it’s a whole different thing when a large share of 8 billion humans eat meat out of the sense of entitlement that has remained with us since our beginnings.
The eating habits of modern humans are unsustainable in so many ways, and the cruelty and indifference that go with the industrial brand of agriculture that rules early in the 21st century is entirely unjustifiable from a moral perspective.
Only 4% of all warm-blooded animals – mammals – are wild species, from squirrels to elephants. The other 96% of mammals on Earth are either humans or the livestock animals we raise to kill and eat.
The way we humans feed ourselves is putting our Earth’s biodiversity and biospheric health at ever greater risk.
The simple reality: Humans are taking everything our planet has to offer for themselves.
Correcting Course for Humanity Requires a New Attitude Toward Nature
Avoiding the worst consequences of our planetary-scale overreach demands that we shift from being relentless exploiters of our living biosphere to nurturers and protectors of our Earth, the only home we humans have.
The most important immediate step we can take cross-culturally is to shift from being entitled meat-eaters to largely or entirely subsisting on plant-based diets. The evidence is clear; vegetarian diets are not only a lot more healthy, they are substantially less costly than traditional diets, and also much more environmentally friendly and sustainable.
Another big step for humanity involves the emergence of women as equal voices in shaping the direction of life on Earth. Until about a hundred years ago, women had little or no influence in shaping human history. Fortunately, that has begun to change with women taking ever more leadership roles in many parts of the world.
Living in harmony with our planet’s biosphere requires more than just a change in diet. We must get past the attitude of entitlement toward nature that has put life on Earth at very real risk of collapse. That means examining every aspect of our behavior that has brought us to this point of reckoning.
Killing Animals for Sport Should be Condemned Not Celebrated
I recently read a story by the esteemed environmental journalist, Tracy Keeling, and South African journalist, Adam Cruise. The title of their story is Alarm Over Trophy Hunters Taking Aim at Amboseli’s ‘Iconic Giants’
Keeling and Cruise point out that trophy hunters see themselves as sportsmen. Typically, as example, they are very wealthy men, who target male lions with the most impressive manes, or magnificent male elephants with the largest, heaviest tusks. In other words, they choose to kill large male animals because they reflect oversized virility, as if having the head of a large tusker mounted and on display in one’s home implies that the killer prevailed in some facsimile of a ‘cage match’ with the animal. The reality is nothing like that.
It doesn’t take courage to kill a mature male elephant in its prime. There is no hunting involved. The animals targeted are easy to find. Nor is there any risk involved for the shooter. It starts with an expensive, large caliber ‘elephant gun’ probably with a scope. Very likely, it takes some serious money to get a permit to kill an elephant with big tusks. Then, the killer hires a team of ‘professionals’ to take him to the elephant’s territory. They locate the beast they are after. They easily get within a hundred yards of the animal without annoying it. Then, as this magnificent creature continues to calmly graze, the so-called hunter pulls out his very big gun, and takes his time aiming it at the elephant as it chews its cud. Then, the shooter pulls the trigger. Not an ounce of bravery or courage involved. How hard is it to shoot and kill an animal that is half the size of a small house?
Trophy hunting is not sport. It doesn’t take any kind of courage. It doesn’t take any kind of skill. It just takes money, a lot of money, and a really perverse sense of what constitutes an act worthy of celebration.
Granted that in some parts of the world hunting and killing wild animals is still about feeding family and survival. In those cases, there is no claim of sport involved.
Consider the Big Picture.
The human population has doubled from 4 to 8 billion in the past 50 years, In that same time frame, our Earth has seen about a 73% drop in the population of wild vertebrate animals. This reflects the massive human impact on our planet’s indispensable and irreplaceable biodiversity. In so many ways we, as the most consequential species on Earth, can be better than that.
Bottom line: for this writer, people who kill animals for fun, or who pay poachers to do it for them out of a perverse sense of accomplishment, get zero respect…no respect at all. Trophy hunting is not sport; it is shameful in every way.