There is much nattering among the ARista lobby in the UK over this photo.
Prince Harry killed a buffalo.
Won’t someone please think of the children?
The big outrage is that his father, Prince Charles, just recently made ending the illegal wildlife trade a major public campaign of his. Prince Charles and Prince William are going to be in a film that talks about wildlife conservation.
And I think this is wonderful.
But then Prince William is seen hunting wild boar in Spain, and people lose their minds. Never mind that wild boar are actually overpopulating in large parts of their range on the European continent. They were actually extirpated from the British Isles but were accidentally restocked when a few escaped English game farms. The animals are still very uncommon in the UK, so most people have no idea what wild boar actually do when they exist at very high numbers. Namely, they destroy crops and forest land, and without large numbers of wolves– their only real natural predator– the only way to manage them is through culling or hunting. Hunting raises some funds for wildlife conservation, but if you cull, you have to pay for the professional cullers.
So it would be much more sensible to allow hunting, don’t you think?
But the real outrage I’ve seen is about Prince Harry killing this buffalo while the whole family has pledged to support wildlife conservation as their major campaign this year.
He must surely be a hypocrite! Right?
Well, behind the outrage there is a story.
The buffalo that Prince Harry killed was an Asian water buffalo. These animals exist in both wild and domestic populations in Asia, and there is a bit of debate as to whether there is only one species of water buffalo in Asia or two of them. The two species are not split between wild and domestic, but rather, there is a river population and a swamp population that differ in chromosome number and almost never interbreed in their native range in the wild. They are both sources for the domestic water buffalo, and in captivity, they do cross and produce fertile offspring despite the chromosome number difference.
Prince Harry did not kill a wild water buffalo of any species.
He wasn’t even in Asia when he shot it.
He was in Argentina.
What are water buffaloes doing in Argentina?
Well, they were brought to South America as meat, dairy, and draft animals. Now, it’s certainly true that certain game ranches in South America do raise water buffalo to hunt, which is certainly a problem, but killing an invasive species– especially a feral domestic animal– is one of the best things that can be done to protect wildlife.
In the Southern Cone of South America, there are big game ranches that have stocked their lands with water buffalo and even red deer. Now, these ranches may be criticized for many things, but they do keep some areas wild that would otherwise be used for agriculture or development, which winds up being good for at least some native species. Would it be better to have these ranches with a few small herds of managed feral buffalo or to have them filled with Indicus cattle?
And this is not much different from the English sporting tradition of managing the legendary wild park cattle as a game species. At least, no one in Argentina made up any nonsense about these buffaloes being an ancient native species. According to legend, these wild white cattle were the original wild white aurochs of England, when in truth they were nothing more than feral domestics that were selectively bred through culling to have the white coloration. And they were bred as game animals in exactly the same way the Argentines breed water buffalo.
Not a single royal is going out and shooting endangered species. They are not going to Africa and shooting “Cape” buffalo or elephants.
They are not shooting tigers or rhinos.
And by campaigning for real wildlife conservation and not animal rights outrages, they are actually doing the world a lot of good.
Real conservation is not anti-hunting. It sees hunting as an important management tool that can be used to reduce populations and generate revenue at the same time.
This is where the animal rights outrages come into total conflict with scientific management and sound economics. You cannot save animals because you get enough people in your wealthy, developed country to look down their noses at hunters. You can only save animals when you can create some economic value for the animals in their native countries or, at the very least, be able to find some intelligent way to mitigate any damages caused by such animals.
This is the big problem in conservation.
We have many people in the West who want to save species, but they don’t live in the countries or regions where these animals exist. Westerners are outraged at the poaching and habitat destruction, but they fail to understand that these issues are the symptom of greater human problems. When you have people living on the edge, your morals as well-fed Westerner really don’t mean much. You can be outraged all you want, but unless you address the human problems with conservation, all you will have is outrages and bromides.
I wish the royal family the best of luck in their venture in trying shed light on the need to conserve wildlife, but i also hope they can talk some sense into their citizens about the importance of hunting in conservation. I think this would be a great opportunity.
Otherwise, people are going to go on and on complaining about the supposed hyprocrisy of the royal family.
Of course, I’m not even a monarchist, and I’m very happy to live in a republic!
There is a certain kind of person/class who believe that as long as they’re not killing a member of an endangered species they can grab their gun and go kill anything else and there are some who expect to be applauded for it!
Harry as a member of the British royal family is also a member of the hunting, shooting and killing class. His father and/or other members of his family are probably some sort of figureheads for the RSPCA which as everyone knows is the abbreviation of Royal Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals. His grandfather prince Philip was head of the Word Wildlife Fund. Being members/patrons of these institutions has never stopped the royals hunting.
A major part of the royals objective is to get themselves onto the boards or be patrons of anything popular in that way they give themselves a veneer of caring and increase their own popularity.
I am not a big fan of the institution of monarchy, but I don’t know these people or what they actually think.
Prince Harry has had some moments though.
I don’t care about them either way but I don’t like the caring veneer its totally dishonest.
Well once more I like the the article and agree w/ the sentiments. Conservation is about saving species and habitats, not individual animals. One way to save species and habitat is to mitigate the environmental impact of invasives–such as Asian water buffalo in S. America or European boar in N. America. One way to do that is to encourage hunting of same. Another way is to reintroduce apex predators such as wolves back into their former habitats. The first is unpopular w/ the Boos, the second w/ the Phobes. Balance people–balance.
Double thumbs up on this one!
However, there were newspaper stories a few years ago implicating Harry Wales in the shooting of an extremely rare species of harrier here in England Whether these stories were true or not, who knows. The general point about the royals love of killing animals was exemplified not very long ago by newpaper pictures of Queen Eilzabeth beating an apparently injured pheasant to death with what looked like a stick. Stories of their relative the king of Spain out ‘hunting’ endangered elephants were of an altogether more shocking matter and did the Spanish royal family no good at all. Not great for elephant kinhd either also which is more to the point.
“…beating an apparently injured pheasant to death with what looked like a stick”.
What would you have done with an injured pheasant?
Pricked birds are not unheard of at shoots. The most ethical thing is to put injured birds quickly out of misery.
The tool for that is called ‘priest, a most useful, efficient thing when picking-up.
Yes obviously, but the queen getting personally involved in artificially contrived pheasant shooting is not what most of the British public see as part the job description for a British monarch in the 21st century. Trust me on that one.
Wouldn’t it be fair if most of the British public of the 21st century take a deep breath and just let HM enjoy her off-duty country pursuits…
you’re right of course and none of us wants to end up locked in the tower of London..!
“We have many people in the West who want to save species, but they don’t live in the countries or regions where these animals exist. Westerners are outraged at the poaching and habitat destruction, but they fail to understand that these issues are the symptom of greater human problems. When you have people living on the edge, your morals as well-fed Westerner really don’t mean much. You can be outraged all you want, but unless you address the human problems with conservation, all you will have is outrages and bromides.”
There are win-win situations in wildlife conservation and the locals impacted by endangered species. You may already be aware that Anatolian Shepherd dogs are indirectly saving Cheetah population in Namibia since 1994.
Something you may not have heard about is that In Northern Pakistan a Cooperative Insurance Program compensates villagers whose livestock is killed by snow leopards.
Just thinking Suhail how so many westerners are being “well-fed” into an early grave these days on seriously poor corn syrup based diets.
I agree that compensating villagers for livestock killed by rare cats is the sensible governmental approach along with enthusing local people about conservation. As you probably know, compensation schemes are also carried out in respect of tigers.
I would think that schemes might be considered to compensate sheep farmers here in Britain following the reintroduction of wolves and lynx – if ever that happens. We have too many deer, but New Zealand has a bigger deer problem and an even more important sheep economy, but I don’t know whether that country has yet seriously considered introducing predators because obviously the wolves would also take sheep. Catch 22. I believe they shoot a lot of deer in New Zealand, which might be difficult in a more populated country like Britain.
Importing another species that can easily turn into an uncontrolled invasive one (wolves) is hardly a prudent approach to control an already existing invasive species (deer). I am afraid in New Zealand thay have to hunt or export the deer out.
Right Suhail, let’s call it the cane toad ‘solution’?
The comment about Westerners not understanding is also applicable to “city folk” or Eastern US folk who don’t understand the Western States of the US. It’s all fine and well to argue for wild horse herds when the herd is going to be nowhere near your ranch. Ditto for wolves, etc. The issue of the faux “red wolf” is a case in point where ranchers are prosecuted yet the Feds can’t tell for sure if the animal shot is a “red wolf” or a coyote (no surprise since the red wolf is really a coyote/wolf hybrid). You have “outrage” about shooting pumas/ cougars in the west (where they are NOT endangered and can be serious predators of livestock in rural areas of CA and can present risks to people in suburban areas) by people living in mid LA, San Francisco or Sacramento where they may never have even encountered a horse, well enough one killed by a cougar.
Conservation is fine. Teddy Roosevelt was a conservationist. he was also an enthusiastic hunter. We know a bit more about ecological balance than Teddy did, but nevertheless, hunters have preserved more wetlands, wild areas and wild animals than many a “Desert preservation act” has (the latest absurdity is an expansion of highway 39;5 with a little fence to keep the tortoise and other wild animals from getting killed during construction. Never mind that the expansion of housing and the highway once completed will kill plenty as well as the fence preventing animals on one side meeting and breeding animals on the other since the “passways” seem to have been forgotten)
Peggy Richter
Pity the wall builders, they usually get a bad press from those who write the history books – albeit justifiably in most cases.