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Head to Head: Conservation Hunting

Long-Term Conservation Efforts Outweigh One Rhino’s Life

Jonathon Park

In May of this year, Corey Knowlton, a Texas man born into oil money, paid $350,000 to hunt and kill an endangered black rhino in Namibia. Knowlton’s exotic and wildly expensive endeavor elicited a torrent of resentment and condemnation on social media from animal welfare groups, so-called conservationists and short-sighted reactionaries across the country.

I am an unabashed animal lover and an enthusiastic wildlife conservation advocate. I also consider myself a pragmatist, however, and as such I don’t believe the vehement outrage aimed at Knowlton is warranted.

Our modern Western society has become obsessed with political correctness, or at least the appearance thereof. As a result, a substantial segment of our population has allowed their altruistically inspired ideals to manifest in perversely self-righteous attacks on anyone or anything that doesn’t immediately appear to conform to PC culture. So when they hear about a character like Knowlton spending a small fortune to hunt an endangered animal in Africa, their instinctive, socially-conditioned response is one of indignation. The perceived injustice ignites a curious, insatiable fury in these people, robbing them of reason while compelling them to voice their ill-considered concerns in 140 characters or less.

If you find hypocrisy as entertaining as I do, you might get a kick out of the horde of hostile tweets lobbed at Knowlton. They include a plethora of profane personal attacks (consisting primarily of unimaginative name-calling), graphically detailed death threats and impassioned lambastes of the entire state of Texas. It’s ironic to me that this country’s burgeoning swarm of self-declared custodians of justice can chastise Knowlton on social media for being a bloodthirsty sadist while simultaneously advocating for his decapitation. As I said before, reason often eludes the easily disgruntled, self-appointed enforcers of political correctness. Let it not elude us now, as we consider how Knowlton’s controversial hunting excursion actually aided conservation efforts in Namibia.

The first fact to hold in mind is that the idea to auction off a hunting permit for one of Namibia’s approximately 2,000 black rhinos came from the country’s Ministry of the Environment and Tourism — not Knowlton. The ministry, responsible for conserving Namibia’s rapidly eroding treasure trove of biodiversity, identified 18 black rhinos as being threats to the rest of the population. Like lions, older male rhinos have a tendency to kill the offspring of other males, presumably to give their own babies a better chance at survival. So the decision to hunt old bulls, who are no longer capable of reproducing, but who display infanticidal tendencies, is a sensible and utilitarian one. By killing one grumpy old rhino, you can preserve the lives of a few young calves and promote the proliferation of the population as a whole.

It is absurd to claim that the Namibian government doesn’t have a right to develop profitable, innovative solutions to the practical problem of murderous, elderly black rhinos. Had an official of Namibia’s Ministry of the Environment and Tourism hunted down the bull that was ultimately killed by Knowlton, free of charge and without fanfare, we probably would have never heard about it. But because the ministry found a way to make some money off of the situation, it’s suddenly seen as an act of senseless bloodlust. 100 percent of that money, by the way, is being used to protect against the most imminent threat to wildlife conservation in the country: illegal poaching. Knowlton’s $350,000 will facilitate black rhino conservation efforts, and help to swell the ranks of Namibia’s much needed but underfunded anti-poaching patrols. Unfortunately, however, Knowlton and other hunting experts claim that the permit for this particular black rhino was sold for far less than its actual value.

According to Knowlton, a black rhino tag is worth close to a million dollars. Due to intense public scrutiny of the auction by anti-hunting and animal rights organizations, most of the really deep-pocketed bidders withdrew their offers. Concerned that the auction would be a total dud, a non-profit wildlife conservation group invited Knowlton to submit a seriously low bid on the black rhino tag. When you think about it, it’s actually pretty sad that the wildlife conservation community of Namibia was robbed of roughly $700,000 by the protestation of a presumably well-meaning but totally misinformed American public.

A shockingly substantial percentage of the mainstream conservationist community in the U.S. has been quick to condemn Knowlton, making me wonder if they’ve forgotten the historical roots of their modern movement. Teddy Roosevelt, a prolific and unapologetic hunter of exotic game, is hailed as “The Father of Conservation.” He, along with most of our nation’s early “conservationists,” were compelled to protect nature, and its non-human inhabitants, not because they viewed them as innately valuable, but because tromping around in the wilderness and hunting beasts was a fun, masculine pastime that offset the effeminizing effects of city living. It just so happened that proactively preserving certain animal populations and their habitats was as beneficial for those animals as it was for the people who hunted them, but the idea of conservation wasn’t founded on protecting wildlife for its own sake. Had that been the case, the conservation movement would have died a swift, miserable death at the turn of the 20th century.

The notion that animals should be protected under all circumstances, simply for the sake of being rare, majestic, magnificent or what-have-you, is beautiful — and hopelessly naive. Sure, Knowlton could have donated that money to a conservation group and left the poor, baby-killing black rhino alone, but what would he get out of that? If you want to make the argument that we should all be totally altruistic and that we should make decisions on the basis of what’s best for the world, ignoring our own interests and desires, go right ahead — advocate for a benevolent society full of secretly miserable individuals. The simple, fundamental fact of human nature is that people need incentives to do things, and that extends to conservation. So if the thrill of shooting a living, breathing, 3,000 pound tank can compel a person to give $350,000 to a poverty-stricken community halfway across the world while simultaneously facilitating the protection of an endangered species, I’m all for it.

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Loss of Life Not Worth Blood Money Paid to Kill Rhino

Evan Teng

As a species that is critically endangered, the black rhinoceros should be protected at all costs in order to ensure that it does not disappear off of the face of the earth. This protection was not afforded to a black rhino that was unnecessarily killed by Corey Knowlton in a government-sanctioned hunt. The hunt was allowed because the rhino was too old to reproduce and represented “a threat to the younger, healthier rhinos” due to rhinos’ fierce territorial nature.

Often rhinos will clash and even kill each other when one intrudes on territory that another rhino has claimed. The money Knowlton paid, a grand total of $350,000, was also used to fund conservation efforts for the black rhino.

Although Knowlton increased the survival chances of younger rhinos by decreasing the probability of lethal clashes, he took an approach that resulted in the needless death of a majestic animal. Instead of shooting the rhino, Knowlton could have simply made the necessary arrangements to ensure that it was brought to an appropriate habitat, such as a zoo or animal conservation enclosure, once it was captured using nonlethal measures. It may seem unlikely that there was a suitable living arrangement available for a captured rhino, but it is even more unlikely that there wasn’t a single qualified organization that was willing to take in an endangered black rhino.

Some people say it is better for an animal to die in the wild than to spend the rest of its life trapped in a cage, but that is simply not true. All creatures that are alive would rather remain alive and enclosed within a cage than die. This is why animals do everything in their power to avoid death, whether that means burrowing, hiding or employing camouflage. There are some pitfalls that come from keeping animals in captivity, such as depression or neurological diseases, but those dangers can be avoided if a qualified and accredited institution cares for the animal. It is unacceptable to use the argument that animals are better off dead than being held in captivity as a shield to justify the killing of a member of an endangered species that should have been captured instead of killed. Using nonlethal means to capture the rhino would have released the same adrenaline rush, since Knowlton would still have had to track and find the animal, but the result would be dramatically different, with an animal’s life being preserved instead of destroyed.

By destroying an animal’s life, Knowlton has robbed the world of something that can never be replaced. That loss of life cannot be mitigated by any amount of money, words or effort offered in an attempt to repair the damage that was done.

In an ongoing battle where every life saved counts, the preventable loss of one rhino’s life is unacceptable.

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