by Sharon Lee Davies-Tight
Nick Pinizzotto, CEO of Sportsmen Alliance, appeared on CBS THIS MORNING SHOW 7-31-2015.
In an interview he said, “We believe in what would be an ethical hunt”.
It sounded too much like PETA saying, we believe in the ethical treatment of animals.
What does ethical treatment of animals mean?
It’s like they pretend to be these concerned environmentalists who want to be sure that the natural order of the planet, as they see it, is maintained by them – the hunters. They’ve taken on that task by eliminating whom they think needs to be eliminated. They hunt when a species is statistically determined to be overpopulating a region, until such time the species is threatened or endangered, whereby restrictions are put in place to increase their population, then the cycle starts all over again. They act as if they’re doing a job that nobody else can stomach – like the torturers in the CIA and military who claim the same. Fact is, they all enjoy it. Nobody is suffering except the target.
If they’re so concerned about the natural order of the planet, then one might think they’d be planning trips to India or China or the inner cities of the USA. After all, American hunters think they need to go to Africa to control the African population of wildlife. It looks like when the hunt gets dry in the USA, meaning certain animals are listed as threatened or endangered, they go someplace else in the world to satisfy their need to hunt and kill.
One could accurately say that we have an overpopulation of chickens, pigs, cows, etc. Over twenty billion a year get slaughtered, just in the USA. That’s true the hunters would say, but they’re “scientifically managed” through slaughter. But I say, it’s still overpopulation, because the numbers don’t go down, they go up, meaning they’re draining the planet’s natural resources, which puts the human animal in a position of being threatened or endangered. How about proper management of chickens, pigs, cows, etc. by not breeding so many?
1- Why if the USA Fish and Wildlife Service is so concerned about other species overpopulating the earth, aren’t they working to decrease the numbers of animals raised for slaughter?
2- And then, why do hunters – through the Wildlife Service – fight so hard to get other species off the endangered and threatened list? It seems they want the overpopulation of certain species, just so they can hunt and kill them.
Visit their website to see how they justify what they do. This is just one example below:
On June 30, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service rejected a petition by the Humane Society of the United States concerning the listing of gray wolves under the Endangered Species Act. The petition requested that the status of gray wolves across the contiguous United States be changed from “endangered” to “threatened,” excepting Mexican wolves in the Southwest, which would remain as endangered status. HSUS couched this request under the guise of attempting to appear moderate and in search of compromise. Neither is true and the Sportsmen’s Alliance applauds USFWS for seeing it as an unwarranted smokescreen.
“This petition was nothing less than the radical HSUS trying to push its agenda on yet another wildlife management issue that they are in no way qualified to deal with,” said Nick Pinizzotto, Sportsmen’s Alliance president and CEO. “There is no room for misguided emotion when it comes to managing wildlife, and USFW clearly agrees.”
By proposing to list wolves as threatened, HSUS hoped to split the powerful alliance of sportsmen, agriculture and wildlife professionals. Under a “threatened” listing, more leeway exists to manage wolves preying on livestock. However, this “compromise” is not based on facts or science, and would, as a practical matter, would prevent proper wolf management that includes hunting.
With wolf populations rapidly expanding, and no other scientific reason to keep gray wolves listed under the protections of the Endangered Species Act, USFWS correctly rejected the petition.
“This petition is just another example of the tactics these groups will use to manipulate the Endangered Species Act,” said Evan Heusinkveld, vice president of government affairs for Sportsmen’s Alliance. “FWS has once again correctly found that there is no evidence that wolves outside the Southwest are either threatened or endangered.”
Not only has USFWS rejected the petition, in their evaluation of the evidence, they found that hunting is not a threat to wolves because state management plans put limits on hunting if population levels drop – just as with every other species of wildlife throughout the nation that enjoys scientific management.
In February, the Sportsmen’s Alliance and our partners appealed a misguided and shortsighted federal ruling made on Dec. 20 that put wolves back under federal protection.
“The court’s decision to reinstate federal protections until wolves recover across the entire country is not only misguided, it ignores years of policy to the contrary,” said Heusinkveld. “It’s clear to everyone involved that wolves have not only recovered, but are growing. But the real story here is that HSUS and their allies can’t stand the thought of a wolf hunting season. Instead, they are bound and determined to waste hundreds of thousands of taxpayer dollars in legal costs to prevent proper management of wolves.”
MY FURTHER COMMENT: To make this complicated story more clear let me try to summarize. The Humane Society petitioned the Fish and Wildlife Service to move gray wolves “from endangered species to threatened species”. The Fish and Wildlife Service rejected it, saying essentially that they’re no longer threatened (most of them).
It seemed to me that if they rejected the threatened status, then the endangered status would stay. But I don’t think so, otherwise the hunters wouldn’t be so happy about it.
Evidently, by saying that they were no longer threatened (and threatened means that they are likely to become an endangered within the foreseeable future throughout all or a significant portion of its range) meant that they weren’t endangered either. So, the Humane Society lost, and the hunters won. Well, the animals lost.
“Not only has USFWS rejected the petition, in their evaluation of the evidence, they found that hunting is not a threat to wolves because state management plans put limits on hunting if population levels drop – just as with every other species of wildlife throughout the nation that enjoys scientific management.”
So, ‘scientific management’ appears to be a nicer way of saying hunting/killing – like ‘enhanced interrogations’ is a nicer way of saying torture.
Still, why are hunters so anxious to get animals off the endangered or threatened list? It seems that they take responsibility for bringing back the herds (if you read the articles on their site), while they’re endangered (by not hunting them), and now that they’re not endangered, the hunters ‘ethically’ return to their serial killing sprees – until such time they become threatened or endangered again – then they go to Africa.
There are no ethics in hunting – no ethic in killing. There may be rules of the ‘hunt’, and following the rules may make them feel ethical. But there is a moral component to ethics, which all hunters conveniently block out of their psyche – as torturers and serial killers do.
The intricacy with which they form their warped collective moral views is evident throughout their website among all writers.
If you’re an animal rights activist/advocate it would be in your interest to at least read a couple of the articles. Or even if you’re not, it would be good to know how your relative, friend, neighbor, co-worker thinks. Hunters are a closed group of people. You really don’t know how they think until you read what they write. Most hunters share their killing fetish with other hunters, not with the general population.
The featured image was downloaded from Facebook.
serial killers basking in the glory of their kills – souvenirs, trinkets, trophies of murder
HAPPY WHITE HORSE™ 