Hunting animals actually makes sense sometimes

Aug 2, 2015 16:44 GMT  ·  By

The death of Cecil the lion, shot dead earlier this month by American recreational big-game hunter Walter Palmer, has reignited a long-standing debate: the legitimacy of hunting. 

The 13-year-old feline, studied and tracked by wildlife researchers at Oxford University for years, undoubtedly met a gruesome demise: he was lured out of Zimbabwe’s Hwange National Park, wounded by an arrow shot and only two days later tracked down and killed for good.

Once dead, he was skinned and decapitated, his head Walter Palmer’s for the taking. Apparently, the big-game hunter very badly wanted a trophy to take home to remind him of the kill.

As much fun as Walter Palmer probably had killing Cecil, it all went downhill after word of his hunting expedition got out. Animal lovers were quick to label him a murderer, and a petition asking that he be extradited to Zimbabwe and made to pay for actions was started and signed by thousands.

Truth be told, there really is no going about it: the killing of Cecil the lion was brutal and the global outrage that followed is perfectly justified. Still, this does not mean hunting in itself is bad.

There are pros to hunting

Hunting has been around since life emerged on our planet. T. rex hunted, saber-toothed cats hunted and so did the first humans. They had to, otherwise they would have, well, starved to death. Plainly put, hunting was, in those days, done for survival.

Mind you, it still is in some corners of the world. It might be that food is no longer an issue in the developed world, but this does not mean that the same is true all the globe around. Quite the contrary, there are still communities that need to hunt to feed.

Besides, hunting is an effective way to keep animal populations in check, especially when it comes to invasive species. In the US, for instance, Burmese pythons are an invasive species in the Everglades, and so it is legal to hunt them to control their population.

The Everglades ecosystem is a delicate one, and if not tracked down and killed but instead allowed to breed uncontrollably, Burmese pythons would surely damage it beyond repair. Things are so bad that, between 2000 and 2010, some 1,300 pythons had to be removed.

The figure is impressive and yet these killings failed to grab headlines or spark global outrage. Why? Well, because hunting the snakes and shooting them dead actually made sense.

So when does hunting become a problem?

Hunting for survival or to control animal populations is perfectly understandable. Hunting for sport or pleasure, on the other hand, isn’t. Killing a creature not because you need its meat to survive or because it is a direct threat to you is cruel and, since we’re speaking our mind here, immoral.

For starters, hunting can’t really be considered a sport. Sure, the occasional adrenaline rush is known to happen, but there’s hardly a competition going on. The animal that’s hunted does not even know it is in a game whose stake is its life.

Besides, when it comes to hunting, there can only be one winner: the human holding the firearm. And wearing the camouflage outfit and riding in the back of a getaway car together with a bunch of other humans who all have his back.

Animal attacks on hunters sometimes occur, but they are very rare, and when they do happen they are described as vicious and ferocious. This hardly seems fair now, does it?

As for hunting for pleasure, now that’s just wrong. When unnecessary and done just for the fun of it or to bring home a trophy, hunting can only be described as brutal and inhumane. We humans are supposed to have a consciousness and hunting for pleasure goes against it.

Whenever such killings occur, they are just as bad as killing other people and, therefore, blameworthy. The same goes for the shooting of Cecil the lion. Walter Palmer might have had a good time, but what he did was wrong and so it’s perfectly understandable that people are judging him for it.