African Indaba Vol 6
Afriican Indaba e-Newslletter Vollume 6, Number 2 Page 1 AFRICAN INDABA Volume 6, Issue No 2 eNewsletter March 2008 Dedicated to the People and Wildlife of Africa cloak of conservation, striving for supremacy in a tournament of Hunting for Truth: Why Ratio- frauds and follies. The problem for hunting today is that nobody will tell the truth. nalizing the Ritual Must Fail On the one side, there are those who are opposed to Guest Editorial by Shane Mahoney hunting, who obviously do not hunt, and who portray the activity as barbaric, unnecessary, and inappropriate to today’s society, Editor’s Introduction: Shane Mahoney, Director of Newfound- and mankind’s future. They concentrate on the suffering of the land Wildlife Research, is a research biologist with broad expe- individual animal and upon the behavior of persons who might rience and an internationally known writer and lecturer on envi- inflict it. They portray nature as more benign, more right, without ronmental and resource conservation issues. He is a leading man than with him; and hunters as fermented juveniles who conservationist, philosopher and extraordinary speaker on the enjoy killing as a diversionary sport and who see animals as future of hunting and sport fishing and the role hunters and an- targets for their violence. glers have played in conserving the planet’s wildlife legacy. To persons who argue for animal rights, hunting is a Shane Mahoney has published in a broad spectrum of scientific cruel wastefulness and the hunt an anachronism, something we journals including Ibis, Canadian Journal of Zoology, Wilson should have put behind us, as we have bear baiting and cock Bulletin, Alces, Journal of Wildlife Management, Forest Ecology and Management, Rangifer, and Journal of Molecular Ecology.
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