AfricaHunting.com Under Attack

I is always interesting when the subject of hunting come up. I wore my new Africa Hunting.com hat over to Denver a week ago and got some surprising questions. While most of them were favorable like "what are you going to hunt" and " what are you going to do with all the meat" there were a few that I knew were baiting for a argument on the fact that I was planning on going hunting in Africa.

I can't wait until I am in Denver International Airport and Kennedy in NY with the hat on to see just what happens then.
 
Jim you will get some ugly comments no doubt!
 
You want to know what's interesting??? How angry some of these people hitting the site with their ugly messages are getting with the fact that they are being eliminated. The emails I'm getting are so ridiculous because they are not getting reaction and therefore satisfaction… Thank you to everyone for not giving them what they want!

it's not easy ( giving them what they want ) a reaction !
 
Dear All

After PM exchange with the kind and dedicated gentleman at the helm of AH admin and now reading this thread, I am re-posting an abridged original (from the Memorial thread for the late Ian Gibson tragically killed last week). Having seen the obscene trolling on the condolences thread I felt then and there, I could not let this pass without response. I agree with the sentiment to keep the latter free of discussion relating to trolls and similar "human" debris, and the pursuit and extirpation of said entities. So here follows on this thread.

I signed up to AH some time back (chasing up info on Westley Richards rifles) and after a protracted lapse, this weekend I checked up for some context having just learnt of the tragic death of Ian Gibson. This was after reading a grubby little article misreporting the incident in the UK press. The AH posts made it all much clearer. He was one of that generation of superb Pro Guides and PH's who cut their teeth in Zim' NParks Dept. These guys enjoyed a most incredible window of opportunity in the years after the end of the bushwar. The contributions of many to conservation have been laudable since they moved on.

It was very sad to see this discussion thread set up for condolences invaded by trolls, pouring over from the avalanche of invective elsewhere. This brownlash of comments on the media articles is nothing less then distasteful and disgusting. These include the SA Africa Geographic, but I will not pass comment here on how the latter's forum impacts on a professional image, which purports to respect scientific realities with respect to the environment. All these articles misreport the facts, except the one article in the UK Daily Telegraph. It is also clear that journalists (if they can be so qualified) that tried to write up the event on the Independent and Daily Mail (both UK) not only made a hash of the job but have used photos off facebook or some other social forum.

It is good to now learn that the site admin and scouts of AH have their superb weaponry accurately sighted in at - if not extirpating said trolls terminally - then at least expunging these creatures out of this forum!

As many of us are well aware in conservation and the wildlife industry, the levels of ignorance out there are truly astonishing, as to the realities of the wildlife industry, and what people like Ian Gibson achieve at the conservation coalface. Many have made great efforts in communicating the reality (e.g. the documentary in "brass tack economics" by Peter Flack for SA) on how the wildlife industry pays, and hunting is the only realistic option for landuse etc.

As a professional scientist who has taught actively to postgraduates and undergraduates in conservation biology (within the encompassing arena of the environmental and earth system sciences), the arguments and reality can be gotten across to most people with the ability to grasp the basic concepts of ecology and economics etc. Nevertheless, there are those who have no interest in reality and especially the conservation crisis. This a significant cohort whose fanaticism is frightening. The size seems to be growing and/or has taken on something resembling leadership or rather rabble-rousing. The quintessential qualification of an affiliate is a grotesque ignorance of ecological if not scientific realities. The risks to derailing practical operations and successful projects on the ground rise accordingly.

The extent of the backlash and its venom is now very clear. The recent surge in WWW site attacks etc seems to have been incited - and/or be related - to a close run of negative anti-hunting articles in the international media, fueled by twitter etc.

have a good day

kind regards

nihili illigitimi carborundum - don't let the bastards grind you down!
 
Here follows 2 recent posts from the Africa Geographic Blog (under a report of last week’s death of Ian Gibson in Chewore) where at least some respondents are hitting the trolls with earthly realities. Minor copyedits for clarity. It quotes one of Peter Medawar's classics, and it takes no prisoners :)
 
POST 1: The regrettable standard of media reporting of this incident by writers employed as professional journalists is astoundingly poor. I hope Africa Geographic demonstrate some initiative in setting the record straight. This first demands some respect for scientific realities, especially pertaining to African conservation.

Far worse is the torrent of vitriolic responses that testify to the seriousness of the conservation crisis in Africa. I will reserve judgement for later on the lapse of ethics and gross immaturity they reveal of the trolls. I challenge you to read and think - yes the english verb - on some critical realities.

This lashing out is a symptom of a deeper, disturbing problem. It is very clear that too few understand the realities and especially the stark escalating losses of biodiversity and especially elephant habitat across Africa. Those of us active as professional scientists (in my case teaching conservation biology to postgrads and undergrad students for over 2 decades) the successful conservation strategies are widely recognized. Successful models are to be admired, and at all costs not allowed to collapse any further, because of fiscal starvation as African governmental infrastructure continues to decay. Economics is key.

There are some solid responses defending ecological and socio-economic realities in these comments [on this blog]. These laudable respondents draw on the facts of the complex "elephant problem". In contrast, the shallowness of the bulk of what can be termed "emotional preservationist vitriol" is utterly lacking in credibility. Overall, these anti-hunting comments flooding this column, and the wider media, reveal how the facts of the biodiversity crisis in Africa - the future of savanna Loxodonta especially - are so very poorly understood. In a fit of such emotional angst, does the thought not occur to ask why the vast proportion of remaining elephant habitat in savannas is designated for the sustainable hunting and cropping of large mammals? Fortunately, in the case of Chewore Safari Area, and much of the Middle Zambezi valley in which it lies, this has been the landuse policy since early in the 20th century. Elephants are the critical economic factor keeping this wilderness ecologically intact.

Stop trophy hunting in these regions? Then condemn the wildlife - starting with all edible large mammals - in these landscapes to extinction. They will soon be overtaken by land hungry peasants, struggling to exist in regions ill-suited to agriculture. What has kept Chewore, and allied regions, relatively intact are the millions of US$dollars that has flowed back from hunting leases and trophy fees to sustain conservation operations and to rural livelihoods. Not only are Safari operators major employers for local communities but the PHs in these countries are the last line of defence against poachers.

Oh, what about national parks reserved for "low-impact" tourism, one should ask? Mana Pools NP is the appropriate example. Culling operations, elephants inclusive, routinely proceeds therein. Generally national parks officers do this, or PH's help or back up on these operations, especially when buffalo and elephants are shot. These parks are the core conservation areas within the landscape mosaic. This is the tried and demonstrated system of legislated land use and land mgmt that has sustained this savanna biodiversity for decades. It is the proven – i.e. tested - conservation model for biodiversity, elephants inclusive. And as a key driver of savanna ecology and habitat structure especially, elephants have to be managed otherwise woodlands (riparian fringes especially) are trashed and converted to grasslands. The latter's biota are distinctly different. Mgmt seeks to maintain representative biodiversity at the landscape scale, especially toward securing the hydrological integrity of wetlands and drainage networks.

The Safari Blocks encircle and buffer these core areas in protected area networks against burgeoning human threat from blanket poaching and land hunger. As far as most African peasants are concerned, an elephants destroys one's crops and tramples one's children. The stark message to the affluent environmentalist? Elephants have no value to these poor people, unless they see tangible benefits. These communities desire more land to live in, and to try and farm. To survive against encroaching agrolandscapes, revenue from these safari areas has to maintain a critical inflow of $/Ha, if biodiversity conservation is to persist. Safari hunting of elephants is critical to the economics of sustainable conservation of savanna wilderness.

A central part the scientific solution is to cull elephants sustainably. And this is where trophy hunting revenues swing the economics positively in favour of the wildlife industry. The alternative to conservation is one [a negative] that we conservationists, committed and/or professionals inclusive abhor. A loss of these landscapes to expanding demands of poverty stricken rural people is the option. Elephants will vanish along with much of the biodiversity. Ban hunting and all of us will witness not only widespread extirpation of wildlife, but condemn these relatively intact habitats to collapse into an engulfing environmental wreck. Future impacts on ecosystem services at the regional and continental scale will be catastrophic, ultimately. Especially in extremes of drought or floods. The emotional preservationists devoted "to save the Elephants", who rank themselves as environmentalists need to reconcile with these basic scientific facts and tenets of ecological economics and biodiversity conservation."
 
POST 2: The poor quality of reporting on elephant conservation issues [in general] in this sad incident has indeed been magnified by the lapse of ethics and gross immaturity in attacks on the safari industry, which many active conservation scientists support as a sound model of land use policy. Vitriolic flaming and worse by anonymous commentators reflects very very badly on the preservationist faction within the diaspora of those who count themselves to be environmentally concerned. Abusing a dead conservationist is despicable, and in Ian Gibson a dedicated defender of what the Chewore wilderness and all its wildlife stands for. It is one thing to operate a keyboard and write in any manner of style, it is quite another to contemplate the impact of one's message, which requires a modicum of critical thinking. You [=trolls] deserve all the contempt you reap.

To reiterate the call below, the likes of Africa Geographic should demonstrate some professional leadership in setting the record straight. A return to scientific realities underscoring African conservation issues will be a welcome start.

Such odious abuse of a deceased conservationist can be read as the symptom of a wholesale failure to understand the scientific realities already exhibited in successful conservation policy. These successes are demonstrably conserving savanna biodiversity (Loxodonta africanus inclusive).

This is the place to call in a classic quote by the Nobel Laureate, the late Sir Peter Medawar. No one has since encapsulated this dilemma of a human condition exacerbating through the 20th century, and one that we now see exploding with the aid of digital media. It most worrying impacts weaken what passes for reasoning in pseudo-scientific environmentalism. This quote was originally published in a scholarly anthropological journal in 1961. It is the triumphant finale to a devastating review of a work of pseudoscience [entitled] The Phenomenon of Man authored by Pere Teilhard de Chardin published in Mind (70: Jan, 99-106 - pdf attached). I single two pertinent statements from the review:

pg 99 "This little bouquet of aphorisms, each one thought sufficiently important by its author to deserve a paragraph to itself, is taken from Pere Teilhard's The Phenomenon of Man. It is a book widely held to be of the utmost profundity and significance; it created something like a sensation upon its publication a few years ago in France, and some reviewers hereabouts have called it the Book of the Year-one, the Book of the Century. Yet the greater part of it, I shall show, is nonsense, tricked out by a variety of tedious metaphysical conceits, and its author can be excused of dishonesty only on the grounds that before deceiving others he has taken great pains to deceive himself. The Phenomenon of Man cannot be read without a feeling of suffocation, a gasping and flailing around for sense. There is an argument in it, to be sure-a feeble argument, abominably expressed."

pg 105 "How have people come to be taken in by The Phenomenon of Man? We must not underestimate the size of the market for works of this kind, for philosophy-fiction. Just as compulsory primary education created a market catered for by cheap dailies and weeklies, so the spread of secondary and latterly of tertiary education has created a large population of people, often with well developed literary and scholarly tastes, who have been educated far beyond -their capacity to undertake analytical thought."

POSTSCRIPT: The widespread, and unquestioning, belief in such poor arguments bears disturbing parallels with the miasma of misunderstanding and hysteria exhibited in pseudoscientific attempts in some environmentalist circles to "preserve" selected charismatic species, yet these parties ignore the socio-economic crisis impacting on the habitat and its biodiversity, in which all these species evolved.
 

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:A Blowup:Isn't it funny how the groups opposed to the legal, ethical, licensed sport of hunting is so quick to threaten death to those who do AND innocent family members??? See?!?!? If you start eating like a rabbit you get the mentality of a murderer!;)
 
I would like to know if I'm victim of an attack against tour site. I can't access with my computer but I can do it with my mobile. Am I banned by your admin by mistake or is there something done to cut the way to your site? Thé reply is web site inaccessible since several days.
 
I would like to know if I'm victim of an attack against tour site. I can't access with my computer but I can do it with my mobile. Am I banned by your admin by mistake or is there something done to cut the way to your site? Thé reply is web site inaccessible since several days.
Hi Houlotte, You haven't been banned from the site however you have been blocked in the firewall of the server for too many queries in a short amount of time. Please email me your ip address at info@africahunting.com, the number you will see going to this link http://whatismyip.liquidweb.com and I will unblock you.
 
Many thanks! It's working again.
 
Hi Guys

Where do I start?

First off so sorry to hear of the problems and attacks on AfricaHunting.com. and GOOD on you guys for keeping things running.

Having read the above replies and reports I am very greatful my wife and I have closed our face book account. Perhaps I am old and paranoid but it seems to me that facebook and other such media are increasingly becoming high jacked by the radicalist and extreamist
.
All I can do is leave you my best wishes and a quote from a member of the home of a lot of the worlds extreamists.

Violence and agretion is the first recourse of the ignorent and the bigot but the last of the wise................. Choose to which you belong

Keep safe and keep up the good work

Russel
 
Hi Guys.

We all know that the greatest danger to "Game" through out the world is the ever increasing human population and habitat destruction.

To put it simply in blunt economical terms................... YOU dont Pay you dont stay................................................ Game HAS to pay to stay.

You and I help to meet that down payment with our fees, time and sadly sometimes with our lives.
Keep hunting guys and be safe.

Russel
Ps Remember each time you are out hunting you are in effect an armed patrol who knows where you will pitch this makes game theft and habitat destruction much much more difficult. believe you me more than one hunt has ended up in a brush with game thieves.
Pps remember not all game thieves wear tattey clothes and are but a short step from hunger many go by the name of "developer"
PPPs damn the trolls and or there agents
 
Our FB page continuously gets attached by animal activists - for them, death is death and do not under stand sustainable conversation and never will.

If any of you have a copy of the African Outfitter magazine March/April 2015 - read the article on Page 92 - very very interesting and will shed some light on why animal activists growing in such rapid numbers.

Don't get me wrong, let them look after domestic animal abuse, the oceans that are fished out and illegal animal trade - but leave alone sustainable conversation to those that know...
 
Adriaan,
Very well put......
We need to stop the Anti's.....
Please post page 92 in African Outfitter Magazine,
To help spread the word...

Thank you
Robert
 
Here we go... Enjoy the read!

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Adriaan,
Thank you for this post.....
I will read it when I get out of the office....
 

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