Drawing a line on hunting

IT IS understandable that some people find it peculiar and even objectionable that so much outrage gets expressed through the popular media against acts of cruelty against animals while there is relative silence from the same quarters when it comes to brutalities perpetrated against fellow humans.

And, yes, hard as it may be to see what sense there is in killing animals simply for the fun of it, there is truth in the points the hunting industry makes.

It is so that it has grown into a substantial job provider and foreign-exchange earner. It is so, too, that it has contributed massively to conservation in the shape of restored landscapes and wildlife numbers.

Even the need for culling as a management tool makes sense.

What riles is the idea of a rich person paying a big sum to allow him to sneak up on a lion, in the latest case one fondly named Cecil, to down it with an arrow. What similarly nauseates is the idea of someone being able to exploit a hole in the law by, just for the fun of it, holding a tiger cub in a house in Ekurhuleni, knowing it would need to be locked into a cage in a backyard when grown.

Then there are those Vietnamese business people who, according to a research report, use rhino horn not for medicinal purposes but to celebrate business deals over boardroom tables. This while they of all people should surely by now be aware of the uselessness of the substance, the threat to the species and the often deadly fight against poachers.

As with so much of the phenomenon the world over, the thread running through such instances of cruelty against animals is the pleasure the perpetrators take from it.

In contemplating these matters we may well ask ourselves about the difference between a wealthy client for the sheer fun of it killing, say, a lion, or a rhino for that matter, while a poacher in dire need of a livelihood has to risk life or limb for doing the same thing. Whichever way we look at it, it is clear that as a civilised society, we need to draw clear lines between what is passable and what is not.