Another Elephant Video

 My friend Pete sent me this.  It made my day, maybe it'll do the same for you.

Another Elephant Rant

I know, but it's my blog.  Don't agree with me?  Feel free to edify me in the comments section with reasoned, factual arguments.  Ad hominem attacks will receive no response.

I came across this quote the other day:

Already I was beginning to fall into the African way of thinking: That if
you properly respect what you are after, and shoot it cleanly and on
the animal's terrain, if you imprison in your mind all the wonder of the
day from sky to smell to breeze to flowers—then you have not merely
killed an animal. You have lent immortality to a beast you have killed
because you loved him and wanted him forever so that you could always
recapture the day - Robert Ruark

That last line sounds more than a little bit psychopathic to me.

Killed him because you loved him?

You're not going to "remember him forever" because you're not immortal.  A mortal being can no more grant another being immortality than blood can be had from a stone.  It also seems counter-intuitive that ending a being's existence is the method of granting immortality since immortality, by definition, means to never die.

It's been repeated, ad nauseam, that the "economic value" placed on these creatures is a good thing since that is what will "save" them.  Is not their economic value precisely the reason that poachers kill them?  Based upon most of the corpses left behind by poachers, they're not killing them for meat.  They are killing them for the "economically valuable" ivory.  The very fact that ivory has any economic value in this day and age doesn't speak very highly of the maturity of our species.

Poaching seems to be a hazardous occupation (sadly, not nearly hazardous enough) so one can assume that these people are doing it for monetary gain, not for fun.  It's the trophy hunters that kill them for fun, for the adrenaline rush, to pretend that they're living in a time that's past, whatever the reason.  The days of Ruark and Taylor are long past.  In their day, there were many more elephants than there are now, not that that makes their "adventurous exploits" any less vile.  Elephants are an extremely endangered species with less than three quarters of a million African elephants and forty thousand Asian elephants in the wild.

This begs the question, is it better to kill an intelligent, endangered creature to get money or, pay money to kill that same creature for a fleeting thrill?  Either way the elephant loses.

I understand that there are other factors besides poaching (illegal killing) and trophy hunting (legal killing) contributing to the seemingly inevitable extinction of the elephant, like habitat loss, human encroachment, "revenge" killing, etc.  I fail to understand how "legally" killing these animals is seen as "helping" them.  The elephant population is a zero-sum game, there are a finite number of them.  They are being killed faster than they reproduce, killing ANY of them, legally or not, is still shrinking their numbers, it doesn't take spherical trigonometry to figure this out.  Why not take the fraction of a percent of the money from a hunting permit that actually makes it to the "conservation efforts" and give it to an actual conservation organization and maybe, this is going to sound nuts, not kill the elephant?  With that, you've actually made some difference and spared a creature that you claim to love and respect.

Best News of the Year?

If it's not, it's up there (no thanks to Japan)!

http://www.xinhuanet.com/english/2017-12/30/c_136861722.htm

A Truly Noble Cause

These guys hunt quarry that actually shoots back and they do it in defense of those that can not defend themselves.  This is conservation, not the twisted idea that "legally" killing endangered animals somehow helps them.  Even more twisted is the "logic" that an animal must have an economic value attached to it to be worthy of saving.  The fact (baffling though it is) that certain (in fact, useless to humans) parts of these animals' anatomy have an economic value is the very reason for the poaching.  I've heard all of the self-ennobling bullshit stories about how hunting "fees" help the community and how the meat from the slaughtered animals feeds the people who otherwise would have none, yadda, yadda.  The fact is that trophy hunters would still kill the animal whether the meat went to use or not, and those "fees" mostly go to line the pockets of corrupt officials.   I have no issue with the ethical hunting of non-endangered species but I find little ethical about trophy hunting species that are critically endangered and intelligent.  The idea of looking upon a great bull elephant and thinking "What a magnificent creature, I must kill it" is as incomprehensible to me as it is indefensible.

Behold the faces of true bravery, men who clearly are able to appreciate majesty without wanting to either kill it or possess it.

http://www.latimes.com/world/la-fg-environmental-activists-congo-20171222-htmlstory.html

Sign the Petition, Please

Imagine this, you've never seen an elephant before because they don't exist on Earth.  Now imagine that they were discovered to exist on any other planet.  That would be the biggest news in human history, bar none.  Intelligent life on another world, not even the Kardashians would matter!   Unfortunately for them, they do exist here and because they, and most other animal species, have been here for most of human history, they are taken for granted and generally disregarded, or worse.
Since elephants are probably more intelligent than the majority of humans, we should probably be glad that they don't have opposable thumbs.  There will likely be a day when humans don't have to imagine that elephants don't exist on earth, and that's nothing short of tragic.  

http://www.onegreenplanet.org/news/save-packy-the-oregon-zoo-elephant/

Some Cool Elephant Video

https://www.thedodo.com/elephants-run-to-friend--1567122404.html

No More Ivory

Effective immediately, Vicknair Restorations will no longer offer any Elephant ivory products such as bead sights, Colt SAA grips (or grips of any kind), inlays, etc.  I will also not fit any products made of this material, regardless of who supplies it.  I can provide bead sights made of wild boar tusk which is indistinguishable from actual ivory.   The reason for this decision is that I do not wish to profit from or promote the use of Elephant ivory in any way.  These animals are sentient beings and are ruthlessly slaughtered for their tusks, when they aren't being killed as a trophy to live out some Ernest Hemingway fantasy.  They are an endangered species and it is unconscionable destroy them in order to use their ivory as mere decoration, especially with so many substitutes available.  It matters not to me that your ivory grips, sights, whatever are from "legal pre-ban" ivory, an intelligent being died so that those products could be made.  If this has a negative impact upon my business, then so be it.  If you disagree, that's fine too but I'd suggest that you do a little research into Elephants so that your opinion will at least be an informed one.  If you actually do some research you will learn that these are intelligent, self-aware creatures with a social structure and the ability to feel the same range of emotions as humans.  If this offends anyone, in any way, I'm NOT sorry.

http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2014/08/140818-elephants-africa-poaching-cites-census/

http://www.soselephants.org/about_elephants.html

http://www.bloodyivory.org/stop-the-ivory-trade

http://onlyelephantsneedivory.weebly.com/

This is where your ivory fill-in-the-blank came from.  Enjoy it.