This image popped up on the WildTiger twitter feed again this morning after a friend had retweeted a reference by The Guardian to their original story. For those who don't know these are the sons of Donald Trump with a leopard they had killed in a trophy hunt.
I'm not going to write as such about this family. I have no time for bigots and most days I feel sickened by the anti-this, anti-that, racist, misogynistic rants that clatter the news waves. To me this divisive behaviour, everyone blaming each other, is why we still have to face images like the one here anyway, it's a symptom of our own mismanagement. And it actually plays into the hands of groups like ISIS anyway plus other real enemies we should be uniting to combat instead of this pathetic, fearful bigotry. Put it this way, I would never hire any of these weak people for a serious jungle or mountain wildlife expedition.
Another issue this brings up is the perception of poachers as well as the dynamics of illegal wildlife trade. This is getting tiring, I see ill informed comment everywhere regarding this stuff. I don't have time right now (but believe me it's going to be a hard hit when it comes) to really go into it although I have touched on it several times before. These issues are HUMAN issues. It's a cop out to simply start raging "China this" or "Vietnam that" or whatever. Poverty and rampant corruption are everywhere... and the two are intertwined.
Developing (and also the even lower catergory of "least developed") countries, yes, they are places where poaching is rampant. However the destination nations for wildlife parts (remember, China is the ONLY country ahead of the USA in this regard) very much has a first world mix. Keyboard warriors the world over are bloody quick to fire shots at distant shores while being blind to their own backyards.
I can tell you categorically because I've spent a lot of time with ground level poachers that if they had the resources that the two bastards in the image had they would not have to even consider poaching as a livelihood. They'd be unlikely to kill anything. Yes, there are serious market drivers for different elements of wildlife crime, and certainly big cats to China is a massive problem. But wildlife crime is everywhere. It's part of an overall problem of environmental crime. It's global and needs a holistic approach.
There's too much hypocrisy. This is as a big a problem as bigotry. The only answer is to unite and address the real issues instead of constantly hiding behind the blame game. That's weak... as weak as the two bastards in the image.
