Reposted from another forum (author Jaga):
I'm not sure what I hope to gain my jumping into this fracas, but as someone who's spent a lot of time in Africa involved with photographing game (I'm not a hunter of big game for the record), I think it's very easy to jump to what I believe are the wrong conclusions....
My understanding from experts on the matter is as follows:
- Countries with well run hunting concessions have outperformed their peer countries that do not allow hunting in terms of maintenance of wildlife herds. The income from the hunting is what pays for the necessary game rangers and provides an alterative view of animals than protein sources. An elephant license can bring in $15-25k in a country where the average GDP is only $500 per person.
- In most countries today there is an organized culling of the elephant population to prevent the elephants from destroying the ecosystem (the eat a lot and knock down trees to eat, and will grow uncontrolled with no predators). In the process of trying to locate the value of an elephant license, I confirmed that as of the end of 2008, there was an elephant overpopulation in Zim and that they actively cull the heard of 100,000. Their parks can only sustainably support 45,000. Hunting is a revenue generative way to accomplish this.
- What she did was an absurdly dangerous and brave thing to do... crawling in the middle of a herd of 37 elephants and shooting at 12 yard with a bow... almost unthinkable. Kind of like walking unarmed into the biggest Arnold afterparty and identifying yourself as the narc responsible for the Oklahoma 'roid bust.
- yes, it's a little cras that she did this on a "bet"...she needs better PR. But it might have been more along the lines of Vas and Casie's wager...equally dangerous and foolhardy potentially, with risk of loss of life.
