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By Susanne Rust /Los Angeles Times
Los Angeles: In mid-December, Aaron Raby shot and killed an elephant. A few hours later, he had a piece, with slices of tomato and avocado.
Raby, a self-proclaimed “blue-necked” crane operator in Los Angeles, paid more than $30,000 for this exclusive party: he traveled more than 16,000 km in South Africa to shoot and kill the defensive pachyderm. He then paid about $10,000 to preserve his head in reminiscence of his adventure.
Still, Rathrough would probably never get his trophy, which is still in South Africa being ready through a taxidermist, if California passes new legislation, Senate Bill 1175.
The legislation, which passed through the state Senate and is expected to pass the meeting on Tuesday, would ban the importation and ownership of portions of animals from a list of endangered and threatened African species, adding elephants, lions and rhinos.
“It’s time to wake up and we’re in the middle of a mass extinction event,” said Democratic Sen. Henry Stern of Canoga Park, who drafted and directed the bill in the Senate.
A similar law was passed by the House and Senate two years ago, but was eventually vetoed by then-Governor Jerry Brown, who called the trophy ban “unenforceable.” Stern said the cases have been replaced ever since and he is confident that current Gov. Gavin Newsom will point out this year’s bill.
For Raby, the consequences of his new murder are only beginning to manifest. After the hunt, he posted photographs of his trophy on Facebook, YouTube and AfricaHunting.com, one for hunters.
People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals, an animal rights organization, independently received a video of the elephant shooting, which he released Monday, and plans to use it on a crusade at the end of the session for stern’s passage of legislation.
Raby said he had been the victim of online threats and harassment, for example, when he posted a symbol of himself with a lion he had killed. But PETA’s crusade will surely give you a new notoriety and deepen the debate about trophy hunting.
“I don’t understand why it’s any other matter than mine, ” said Raby. “What I did is legal. I didn’t violate a law. They will put up a ban because an Array organization … complains that they don’t like to hunt.”
California has half the trophy fight in the component because the federal government has been reluctant to ban those imports. This year, Trump’s management approved the importation of a Tanzanian lion trophy, the first since lions began receiving protections in January 2016 as an endangered species.
Fearing that the administration will approve more trophy imports, advocates expect California to provide a line of defense.
For years, trophy hunting has also quietly divided conservation biologists. Last fall, this was publicly divided into the pages of the prestigious clinical journal Science.
Some experts say the practice provides budget to local communities, increases the budget for wildlife control, and provides others living near harmful or destructive animals, such as lions and elephants, with an incentive to avoid being killed.
Others say that there is no evidence that trophy hunting gives them that and, even if they did, they wonder whether killing and dismembering such creatures justifies those purposes.
The scope of imports is broad. In 2017, more than 650,000 wildlife trophies were imported into the United States, adding rare or threatened species worldwide, according to a report by the Congressional Research Service.
Last winter, after years of diligent savings, Rathrough embarked on a two-week expedition to South Africa, led by a pair of experienced safari guides.
A video of the hunt, which PETA shared with the Los Angeles Times, an elephant trapped in front of the hunter and his phalanx of guides and trackers. When the young pachyderm looks at him with widened ears, the guides install a tripod on which Raby puts his rifle.
WARNING: THE VIDEO CONTAINS A GRAPHIC PIE
Raby shoots and the ball hits the elephant in his head. The elephant collapses on his knees. For the next 2 1/2 minutes, Raby shoots the elephant 4 times more, 3 more by hitting the animal’s head. The photographs show the elephant breathing heavily, moaning, bleeding and rising.
Raby’s guides continue to inspire him for a cleaner photo. They are never offered or withdrawn to intercede to temporarily end the suffering of the animal.
The video stops before the elephant’s death, later photographs, which Raby posted on YouTube and his Facebook page, show the teams skinning and boning the elephant.
Raby has killed many animals in North America, as well as in Europe, Africa and Russia. Photos of his raids can be seen on his public Instagram page, adding one showing a dead glutton and hugging a dead leopard.
The elephant is the focus of Raby’s “Big Five” African quest. He had already killed a lion, a rhinoceros, a Cape buffalo and a leopard.
Raby said he wasn’t hunting to kill, but to delight and the adventure of hunting: living outside, cooking around a campfire, following an animal and diving into nature.
He also notes that lions kill agricultural and grazing animals, and infrequently humans, while elephants can destroy houses and crops.
“We paid a lot of cash to hunt those animals,” Raby said. “If we didn’t hunt, this land would become farm animal ranches and there would be poaching. They don’t need lions to kill their farm animals or elephants to destroy their crops.”
Mike Axelrad, a Trophy hunter from Texas, said the hunt presented monetary incentives to avoid poaching. He said the animals are poisoned if they are considered a nuisance, a painful and prolonged death.
Craig Packer, professor of biology and director of the Lion Research Center at the University of Minnesota, said there are examples of successful trophy-hunting conservation reserves in countries such as Namibia and Zimbabwe, where profits from foreign fighter expeditions have provided investment to conserve habitat. and employ other people from local communities.
Unfortunately, he said, in peak places, those reserves do not translate into the desired results, because the cash spent through hunters (a lion hunt can range from $20,000 to $70,000) is not close to the type of cash needed to conserve biodiversity and manage habitat. Or employ enough people to have a meaningful effect on a community.
In addition, corruption in many countries and regions makes it very unlikely to know where the cash is going, who and how hunting is regulated.
“Many of these hunting reserves are night operations. Business owners rush, sell big catches and leave. They’re there in the long run,” he said.
Others dispute Packer’s examples of hunting.
“The Emperor Has No Clothes,” Adrian Treves, a conservation biologist at the University of Wisconsin and director of the Carnivore Community Laboratory.
Treves says there is no concrete evidence of the concept that hunting promotes biodiversity, habitat conservation or local employment and participation. Supporters have a tendency to continually cite the few studies that the hunting argument, creating a study framework that boils down to “self-quote,” he said.
Ethics is an even bigger problem, Chelsea Batavia, a conservation biologist at Oregon State University.
“We know that these animals are intelligent, emotionally capable and have a confused social life,” he said. Even if promoters can prove that trophy hunting benefits conservation, he added, “Do the ends justify the means?”
The debate, he said, will have to be placed in the context of colonialism, where European traditions were and continue to be imposed on Africans. What is needed, he said, are conservation measures of choice that are not issued through the summit or from the outside, but are supported and followed through local communities.
PETA is requesting that officials from South Africa investigate Raby’s hunt and, in particular, the prolonged death of the elephant.
In a letter to officials at the Balule preserve, Jared Goodman, PETA’s vice president and deputy general counsel, said the kill violated the preserve’s requirement that animals are provided with “ethical and humane” treatment and that its guides comply “with the highest moral and ethical standards in recognition of a reverence for life and good sportsmanship”.
As for Raby, he said he’d leave California if Stern’s law.
“We’re not all bloodthirsty psychopaths that other people claim to be,” he said. “I promise you, I can read an animal better than the one who opposes hunting. They say they love animals, but they don’t know anything about them.”
tca / dpa
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