A hunter under attack once again by social media

gi jane

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You know folks, I am a semi-liberal and semi-vegetarian and shit, but I also know how the beneficial, honorable and ethical hunting of ANY animal is a valuable tool for conservation and education. Regardless of the type of animal I would hunt personally, I fully support this woman and her mad hunting skills. Damn, I feel empathy for this lady. She has my full support. This petition is so ridiculous!! I wish the best for this fine huntress and well-done on your hunt Madame! Hang tough! Sorry she has to be the poster girl of such ignorant hatred. :(

http://www.change.org/petitions/the...utm_medium=facebook&utm_source=share_petition
 
Melissa Bachmann

Have any of y'all seen/heard about the "outrage" over her shooting a lion in South Africa? I guess I don't understand.... I hear of lion hunts all the time. This lady has her own hunting show, and she's pretty darn cute too. Not sure what all the stir is about..... Some say it was over the smiling in the photo. Don't most of us smile in our photos????
 
Just another public figure that has managed to become a target.
 
CHASA COMMENT ON SERIOUS ANTAGONISTIC THREATS BY THE PUBLIC AND SOME PERSONALITIES ON THE HUNTING EXPLOITS OF MELISSA BACHMAN

It is with great concern that we note the plethora of debased and uncalled for attacks on a lady who had chosen to come to South Africa and partake in a legal, sustainable and responsible activity, spending her money to the benefit of both people and wildlife here. Two particularly gratuitous actions were that of the Sunday Times splashing typically biased and emotional coverage on their front page of 17 November, and of radio personality and public speaker, Jeremy Mansfield's base and vulgar language to Ms Bachman on his very public Facebook page.

We are fortunate that the majority of South Africans have the good sense to realise what the concept of Conservation by Sustainable Utilisation is, and that in a resource rich, but poverty imbalanced nation (and continent) such as ours, every resource must be utilised to its most efficient benefit. No one specie takes precedent over another in a balanced conservation solution, and emotionally (politically correct) driven policies would destroy our hugely successful conservation strategy in short order. Ms Bachman's activities both here and in other countries does just that; bring the conservation benefit to the grass roots where it matters. This is sustainable utilisation in action. Perhaps, just like not thinking of the abattoir deaths of the meat & chicken people consume, so should those who cannot understand or accept hunting, not put their mind to any aspects of conservation as they clearly cannot comprehend the reality of it.

We call on those in the media who are inclined to believe they have the right to run with an emotionally charged attack against people who are simply carrying on a fundamental human activity, in a legal and beneficial way to contact us should they wish to be steered in the direction of a proper and balanced understanding of hunting, conservation by sustainable use and the national strategy relating to it. Perhaps proper balanced journalism will then prevail.

Stephen Palos - Cell number: 082 905 7400 CHAIRMAN
 
Thanks for posting this article Brickburn, the one I had was to a ridiculous petition against Ms. Bachman. Posted to me by one of my anti-contacts. I feel so bad for this lady.
 
They had it as a top story on yahoo yesterday :banghead:, the media is stupid and to attack Melissa Bachman is even dumber. We need more people like her!
 
How about an email link so we can send her some "good job" greetings?
 
Visited her page and left her a supporting message :thumb:
 
Can't we start and anti the anti-hunting crap?
Start a petition FOR her to go back?? See how much support we can get for her?
 
Scary when someone puts some thought into an issue.

Watch out Trolls!

In defence of a lion killer | Daily Maverick

In defence of a lion killer

IVO VEGTER 19 NOV 2013 01:28 (SOUTH AFRICA)

The outrage about an American hunter, Melissa Bachman, who bragged on Twitter about bagging a splendid male lion, was terrifying to watch. Terrifying, but also deeply troubling on many levels. Emotive outrage and smug judgmentalism are no substitute for rational thought and pragmatic policy.
Every year, game hunters travel to South Africa, pockets stuffed with dollars. Most of them are men, who quietly come and go, leaving behind them R6.2 billion in industry revenue, according to Environmental Affairs minister Edna Molewa.

But when one hunter, an American television host named Melissa Bachman, dared to boast about her wonderful African hunting safari, posing with a dead lion, she got more than she bargained for. Her Facebook page and Twitter feed were over-run with vicious hatemail. She was described as the most hated woman in South Africa. Ricky Gervais was scathing, though cleverly so: Spot the typo? he wrote, about her boast, What a hunt!

I don't know Ms Bachman, so I can't speak for her character. I've seen no suggestion that she failed to obtain a legitimate hunting permit, complete with the required CITES documentation. The Maroi Conservancy which hosted her seems legitimate too, although its website has also been barged offline by angry internetters.

I can't say I'm a big fan of hunting either. I've been invited on hunting trips, but declined for two reasons: one, I prefer to avoid media junkets, lest I be accused of being a shill for Big Hunt; and two, I prefer to avoid killing animals personally, even though I happily eat meat.

It is quite reasonable to dislike sport hunting. It is an emotional subject. But is it not curious that a perfectly legal hunt justifies crudely insulting a woman in sexist terms?

Writer and artist Sarah Britten wondered if it would have had as much impact if it was a male hunter with a lioness. She says she doesn't like hunting, but likes the reaction to Bachman's lion photo even less.

The answer seems quite obvious. Loads of men shoot loads of lions all the time. None of them make it to that interminable aggregator of dodgy viral clickbait, Buzzfeed.com: Presenter Melissa Bachman Angers Entire Internet After Shooting A Lion? None of them get called sexist names by Ricky Gervais. (If you crave a glimpse at the vile misogyny that awaits women who offend the smug left-liberal elite, read Rebecca Davis's piece elsewhere on Daily Maverick. I agree with her, up to where she calls the hunt canned? and says the outrage is justified but ought to be directed at our government.)

But let's stipulate, for the sake of argument, that we don't like hunting, and we don't like Ms Bachman. Does this justify the ugly, hypocritical anger? If her hunt was legal, what did she do wrong? Should it be made illegal?

In 1960, there were only three game farms in South Africa. There were only half a million head of game. Changes in the law to permit private ownership of game and commercialise big game hunting coincided with the sea change that we see today: 10,000 game farms, supporting 20 million head of game on as many hectares. By contrast, the government formally protects only 7.5 million hectares as national parks.

The game farm industry employs 100,000 people, which is reportedly three times more than employment in ordinary livestock farms. Income from game breeding stock sold at auction rose almost 15-fold in just six years, from R60 million in 2006 to R864 million in 2012.

Is that mere correlation, or is there some causation at work here?

The knee-jerk reaction of the chattering classes is that you don't protect animals by killing them. That seems self-evident, but, as Mark Twain said, certainly what you don't know that gets you into trouble. It's what you know for sure that just ain't so.

The notion that hunting harms the survival of species, or the environment more generally, happens to be false, and demonstrably so.

Commenting on Botswana recent decision to ban professional hunting in the hope that it would stop poaching, professor Melville Saayman of the North-West University observed: ?..the problem is that it is going to have a reversed effect.

Says Saayman: Kenya followed the same path. They also banned hunting and currently have a huge game poaching problem, so much so that some of their species face total extinction. The strategy proposed by Botswana is short-sighted and is not going to work. Game numbers will decline and this will have a serious impact on the hunting and game farm industry in the country.

In Kenya, hunting was banned in the late 1970s, but it has since lost 85% of its wildlife. Go figure.

Case studies from South Africa, says Saayman, have shown that as soon as the hunting of a species is allowed, it leads to the breeding as well as conservation of the particular species. Botswana's policy is definitely going to lead to job losses.

In the early 1990s, I was on a guided tour of the Pilanesberg Game Reserve. I looked around me at the devastated landscape, with nary a tree taller than a man. The ranger told me the park had sixty elephants too many, but that nobody wanted them, because they all had their own elephant problems, and transport was too expensive.

鉄o what are you doing about it? I asked.

展e hunt them, from the north of the park, out of sight of the regular tourists, who tend to get terribly upset about it, he replied. 典he revenue helps, but we can only host one hunt a month, which isn't enough.

The upshot of the misinformed anti-hunting and anti-culling sentiment of the dinner party set was that an entire park ecosystem was put at risk, just to save a few elephants, of which there were plenty.

It is true that some lion populations in Africa are under pressure. However, a recent academic study undertaken by Peter Lindsey and others, finds that even in countries where the threat is severe, prohibiting hunting instead of just issuing fewer permits would prove counter-productive, by reducing habitat protection, reducing tolerance for lions among local populations, and reducing funds available to combat poaching.

Some time ago, I wrote about a story out of Texas, where hunting ranches host large herds of endangered antelope like addax and dama gazelle, which are extinct in the wild in their native Africa. The reason theyæ± e there? They pay their keep, by supplying the hunting industry. What will happen if hunting these animals is banned? They will cease to exist. Entirely.

As it happens, that story also involved vile vitriol directed at a professional hunter, Corey Cogdell. That hunter was also female. Coincidence? I think not. It looks like Britten and Davis are right. Bachmans big mistake was not the hunt itself, nor even bragging about it, but being female.

Let's consider the story of the Maroi Conservancy, where the hunt in question occurred. It consists of a number of private properties along the Zimbabwean border in Limpopo Province, that have agreed to pull down the fences between them.

A profile of the conservancy is quite clear about the change that hunting has made: in the past, parts of the conservancy were intensively farmed for citrus and other crops, and some landowners tried running cattle. None of them managed for game. Poaching was common, with people cutting the fences to trespass. Now, all the meat from animals that are hunted goes to the local community to encourage them not to poach.

In other words, where there used to be a few crop farms with poaching problems, Maroi is now a fully-functional breeding game conservancy, supported by revenue from hunting.

Presumably, Maroi charged Bachman in the region of $30,000, which is the going rate for a full-maned lion. By comparison, most animals cost under $10,000. An elephant typically goes for $100,000, and a rhino yes, hunting them for trophies is legal fetches even more. And here's one for the trivia buffs: What is the cheapest animal on a typical trophy price list? Even cheaper than an impala female, a jackal fetches just $100. Poor put-upon vermin!

In terms of their vulnerability, lions aren't under nearly as much pressure as rhinos. What has hunting done for the rhino population? Extending full private property rights to the animals and legalising trophy hunting has arguably saved both the black and white rhino from going extinct decades ago, according to a detailed study conducted by environmental economist Michael Sas-Rolfes.

As we all know, rhino are not out of the woods, and the recent spike in poaching is a grave concern. However, the solution is not to continue the ban on trading in rhino products, which is failing, but to lift it, and to let rhino farmers like John Hume breed the animals for their horn. It is gratifying to see that minister Molewa thinks along the same lines, and will apply against all odds to CITES to lift the ban on the trade in rhino products.

As a child, on game viewing holidays, I remember learning how rare the roan antelope, bontebok, sable antelope and black wildebeest were. Today, they are relatively common, and the Professional Hunters Assocation of South Africa (PHASA) names them among the species that once were on the brink of being wiped out, but are today thriving on private game farms supported by hunting revenue.

çš„ am of the firm belief that the hunting industry and the game farming industry are important partners, who play a key role in terms of conservation, tourism, and economic development," Molewa told a hunting indaba in 2010.

Earlier this year, she reiterated the government's policy to promote South Africa as a destination of choice for hunting?

David Mabunda, the CEO of SanParks, agrees: a developing country, it would be suicidal to want to make trade-offs between hunting and photographic ecotourism. We don't have the luxury of choice. We need both.

In light of all this, does the massive outcry about Melissa Bachman make sense? No, unless youæ± e a misogynist or simply dislike American braggarts. Her public boasts about her kills may be tacky, and decidely ill-advised, but frankly, see appears to be someone who is passionate about the hunt, and isn't ashamed of her prowess.

This is not about her feelings. Anyone who dresses up like Lara Croft in Tomb Raider is probably tough enough to handle the hate directed at her by Internet trolls. If she's at all typical of professional hunters, she can comfort herself with the knowledge that she is more in tune with nature and its conservation than most of the haters.

Her detractors might brag about shooting animals with cameras, but if my safari-company contacts are any guide, most of them are shallow tourists who demand to be driven about in air-conditioned luxury, to see all of the big five in one day, as if that is a more informed reflection of nature than a professional hunt.

South Africa officially considers Bachman a welcome and valued visitor, and rightly so. Even if you disagree, and you arrogantly think you have the moral authority to judge her arrogance, the real story is this. Your smug superiority risks depriving South Africa of tourism revenue and employment. It risks depriving the country of much-needed funding for conservation. It risks reducing the value of our wildlife, which reduces the incentive for private farm owners to breed and protect game. Hypocritical anger is a greater threat to conservation than Bachman's rifle will ever be.

Think about that, the next time you pen a bullying comment, safely hidden behind your screen. Moral superiority cuts both ways.
DM
 
Outstanding article!
 
Yes well written.
 
Fantastic article! Thanks for posting Brick!
 
they are some good words
except that bit about her being a girl is a crime , she should be commended for not condemned
 
Brick,

Thanks for posting the article. Thought out and well written.
 
You know we could make verbal assaults and file unwarranted petitions that contain false information against the anti-hunters. Except we spend all our time and money on animal conservation that works and hunting. I think it is sad that Melissa has to carry the load that is ours too. With the money she spends hunting I am sure SA will ban her to appease those who will never spend a dime there.
 
Thats the dumbest thing I have seen in awhile. I don't think I would want many lions hanging around my farm. They would be treated like coyotes's or any other varmint.
 
Just a vile petition
 

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