Killing Whales and Giraffes to Save Them
Most of us are very familiar with the tired old mantra of animal shelters that still argue that the only way to save homeless pets is by killing them. “It’s a necessary evil,” they explain. “It’s better than other things that might happen to them.” As if there are no other options.
No surprise, then, that the same old argument is still being wheeled to defend the killing of some of the iconic wildlife in the world. Two examples from last week:
Last week, the British Daily Mail reported that people are paying tens of thousands of dollars for the privilege of taking a family expedition to Africa to kill giraffes.
While it’s no surprise that there are people shooting giraffes for fun, the big surprise in this report was that the trophy hunters are being given a passive endorsement given by the Giraffe Conservation Foundation, the only dedicated giraffe conservation group in the world.
“It’s a complicated argument,” says the organization’s founder. Dr. Julian Fennessey, trying to explain why “licensed” hunting is OK.
In fact, it’s not complicated. It’s very simple: killing giraffes is wrong. It can’t be made right – especially by the person who’s supposed to be the last best defender of the giraffes. 
(Photos of the children were blanked out by the newspaper)
While it’s no surprise that there are despicable people shooting giraffes for fun, the big surprise in this report was that the trophy hunters are being given a passive endorsement given by the Giraffe Conservation Foundation, the only dedicated giraffe conservation group in the world.
“It’s a complicated argument,” says the organization’s founder. Dr. Julian Fennessey, trying to explain why “licensed” hunting is OK.
In fact, it’s not complicated. It’s very simple: killing giraffes is wrong. It can’t be made right – especially by the person who’s supposed to be the last best defender of the giraffes.
Dr. Fennessey goes on:
“There are lots of factors. The loss of habitat and breaking up of populations by man-made constructions are the main factors threatening their numbers. In the countries where you can hunt legally, the populations are increasing but across Africa the overall numbers are dropping alarmingly.
“If properly managed … legal hunting can actually help local communities by bringing in money and making meat available to them. …
“Some just like to have their photo taken next to the dead giraffe, but others pay taxidermists to mount the head and neck so they can take them home as a souvenir. Or they might want to take the skin home.”
And this is justified on the basis that it’s helping giraffes.
Killing whales to save them
Last week’s other example came from three scientists who argued in the journal Nature that we could save more whales from the whaling industry by putting a price on killing whales so that conservationists and whalers could bid on the right to “harvest” them or protect them.
Quotas [could] be bought and sold, creating a market that would be economically, ecologically and socially viable for whalers and whales alike. Because conservationists could bid for quotas, whalers could profit from whales even without harvesting the animals.
“Whale shares” would be allocated to member nations of the International Whaling Commission (IWC) and traded in a global market, and the number of whales hunted would depend on who owned the shares.
The proposal grows out of the fact that the IWC has been so completely toothless about stopping the whale slaughter that’s conducted mostly by nations like Japan, Norway and Iceland. Rather than gather the global community to put real pressure on these outlaws, the IWC holds occasional meetings and does nothing.
The United States tried to forge a global deal that would have allowed whaling nations to hunt whales legally as long as they curbed their catch. But those efforts collapsed two years ago.
The new proposal – selling whale shares like carbon offsets – turns whales, who are among the most intelligent, social and iconic of all living creatures, into commodities. It has echoes of dealing with the horrors of slavery and child labor by having a cap-and-trade system on human trafficking and putting quotas on the number of children who can be used at factories.
Fortunately, the proposal has been falling like a lead balloon wherever it’s landed. Patrick Ramage of the International Fund for Animal Welfare suggested that “the professors probably should get out a bit more.” He agrees that new approached to saving the whales are needed, “but breathing new life and economic value into this rapidly dying industry is a breathtakingly dumb idea.”
Phil Kline of Greenpeace whales argued that it would be impossible to distinguish between legal and illegal hunting if whaling were legalized again: “It would be safe to assume illegal whaling would flourish if a legal whaling trade was set up.”
And Zoe Science Editor Dr. Lori Marino noted that while the “whales for sale” proposal is a desperate attempt to stop the whaling industry, it’s morally misplaced.
It represents a commoditization of sentient beings that will only worsen the situation for whales over the long run. It is completely at odds with current thinking about who other animals are and how we should treat them.
How to stop the killing
The great danger of a scheme like this is that it actively legitimizes something that is fundamentally wrong rather than stopping it.
Twenty years ago, when dogs and cats were being killed at shelters at the rate of about 17 million per year, a no-kill movement began to flourish across the nation. The success of this movement was rooted in a firm commitment to the fact that killing homeless pets is wrong. It wasn’t about giving shelters quotas; it took the fundamental position that killing is wrong. The programs that made it all possible (adoption and spay/neuter) stemmed from that simple commitment.
The same applies when it comes to saving the whales, the giraffes, the wolves, the sharks … all the other animals. We start, not with some cap-and-trade arithmetic, but with a simple bottom line:
Stop the killing.