Rich Americans With Guns! Oh MY!

Botswana banned sport hunting for lions last year. Western greens had a lot to do with this idiocy. Take a headline last year in Britain’s Guardian newspaper. "African Lions under threat from rich Americans with guns."

That’s one thing I like about the foreign press, unlike the frauds in the mainstream U.S. media, they make no bones about being "impartial" or "even-handed." You pick up the Guardian, you know you’re getting the mouthpiece for the ghost of Leon Trotsky. Fine. They lay their cards on the table. I like that.....While we’re on the subject, Trotsky, like Che, had it coming. Here’s the original architect of the Red Terror in 1918. Twenty years later it came back at him like a boomerang as the "Great Terror" and planted a pick-ax in the middle of his skull. Serves him right. Too bad the hatchet man was a Red Spaniard rather than a White Russian. But I’m glad he got whacked nonetheless.

Anyway, I gotta hand it to the Guardian editor who coined this headline last year. Here’s nine words and three of them guaranteed to boil the blood and foam the brain of three fourths of his readers. Consider his major market: Pinko Brits. Now behold the loaded words( rich, Americans, guns) – and imagine, for a second, their effects on the pinko central nervous system. Individually they provoke gagging and cold sweats; together the effects must be apoplectic.

Regard the first, "rich." This sets the reader’s teeth on edge immediately (unless he imagines the lucre pouring in to an entertainer. This seems the only wealth pinks find warranted) Then we come to "Americans." He sees John Wayne, Billy Graham, Minnie Pearl, Charlie Daniels, Ted Nugent. The reader instantly sneers. Perhaps he also envisions a Texas Oil man, crass, ignorant, boorish and most horribly, "rich." His eyes narrow, upper lip start twitching uncontrollably. Finally the sneer turns into a grimace.

Apoplexy for sure. Brits, of course, aren’t given to displays of emotion. So you’d probably never know it from watching him, but you can imagine the bile churning his guts and the scenes of horror and indignation flashing in his mind, as he looks away from his Guardian for a second and takes several deep breaths to compose himself, maybe reaches for the Valium.

Well, those were pinko Brits’ views on African lions. Nobody seems to ask the Africans views – least of all the pinks and greens themselves, the very "progressive" crowd always wagging their finger at us about "cultural sensitivity" about how "Westerners shouldn’t ride roughshod over the desires of the indigenous African and Asian cultures... blah..blah..blah?" Remember all that?

Okay fine. Then why not ask the Africans themselves how they feel about lions, leopards, etc? They hate the goddamn things. They’re pests, vermin. Here’s one opinion from an African national, Paul Funston, of South Africa’s Endangered Wildlife Trust: "The real solution to preserving lions lies in giving the local people incentives to tolerate lions on their land."

Bingo! You’d be amazed at the tolerance $30,000 (what it costs a tourist hunter in total fees to shoot an African Lion) generates in a country like Tanzania or Botswana where annual per-capita income runs around $150.

You betcha. "Welcome Mr Bwana hunter! I know of a real BIG Simba, sir! Let me lead to him, most gracious Bwana hunter sir!" Far from being " threatened" (as a whole) by "rich Americans with guns," lions have, in these boors, their greatest champions.

That’s the philosophy behind Safari Club International’s conservation policy. They do an amazing thing: they give animals value. As in those $30,000 in trophy fees for a lion. $50,000 for an Elephant. THAT, my friends, is one hell of an incentive to always keep these things around, believe me.

The Safari Club International puts their money where their mouths are. They’re not much on cant and the pious piffle of the typical green groups. They accomplish more for Conservation than all of them combined, using cold hard cash. So naturally they’re the one wildlife group the Animal Planet website does not link too. Figures.

Pinks and Greens simply can’t argue with these facts: hunters fund more genuine conservation than all of them combined. So they argue with the motive. They don’t like that we conserve them in order to always have some around to whack. They hate this because they’re, simply put: Puritans. "The haunting fear that someone somewhere might be enjoying himself" is their guiding principle. There’s no other logical explanation for their lunatic crusade.

Last year, the first year of the lion hunting ban, "animal-control" officers in Botswana killed ten times as many lions (because of cattle and human depredations) than sport hunters killed the year before – and remember, those brought in a cool $30,000 in foreign exchange each. In California, where animal rightists got cougar hunting banned, government "animal-control officers"(supported by hunter license fees) have killed more "problem" cougars than hunters themselves ever killed when they were allowed to hunt. This was fine with the same greenies who lobbied to end cougar hunting! They don’t call it "La-La land" out there for nothing.

Listen up greenies: for humans to thrive, animals must die. Live with it. They’ll either be killed by people like Ted Nugent and myself, with smiles on our face ( which upsets you), or by government drones punching a clock and frowning (which you seem to prefer.) The animals are just as dead. We’ll pay for the privilege and take out the beast in a blaze of glory, then honor his memory with a dinner party or rug. The government performs a sordid (and expensive) execution then dumps them in a mass grave, like Fidel or Che’s execution victims.

Ask hunters who’ve been on Safari what happens when they whack out a lion or leopard or elephant. Sure, in Hollywood, Manhattan, London and Paris they moan and wail. But in Africa the locals REJOICE! There’s a "Lion Dance" a "Leopard Dance" an "Elephant Dance." They’re ecstatic. A pest is dead. Go ahead and call them crazy because they rejoice when a menace to their livelihood and lives is gone. We wouldn’t understand. We only rejoice like that when our team scores a touch down. Crazy indeed.

Think about it: imagine the Bug-spray man coming to your house: "Tell ya what," he says. "I’ll give ya 100 bucks for every roach I kill, $200 for any rats and a cool 500 semolions for a whack at the raccoon messing up your attic."

You’d be dancing the Watusi too. And the Hustle and the Bump and the Boot-Scootin’ Boogie. I’d also make sure to have plenty of these creatures around for his next visit. Hell, I’d start feeding them, making nice little beds for them by the fire. Hell, maybe they’re not pests after all!

Did I say a pest? That’s too mild a term. You’d never know it from Animal Planet but leopards and lions kill and maim hundreds of Africans every year, and decimate their meager property, their cow herds. Who knows that the leopard, far from the "endangered" nonsense you always read, is actually the most common cat on earth next to the house cat?

True stuff here. And elephants are constantly trampling and destroying the crops and homes of those Third World residents so prominent in pinko cant and slogans. The very Born Free cubs ended up man-killers and were finally dispatched by "animal-control officers."

The Guardian with the aforementioned headline led the charge to ban lion hunting in Botswana. Forget their altruistic claptrap. The inside story has is that Botswana’s "vice president" is in a "photo safari" business with a local greenie named Derek Joubert who’s tight with Greens worldwide.

These photo safaris don’t bring in a fraction of the revenue to the locals as the Teddy Roosevelt, Ernest Hemingway, Ted Nugent kind. Simply put, a lion is less valuable a natural resource as the subject of a cutesy photo than as a rug. But all the proceeds from the cutesy photos found their way into a couple of politicians’ pockets. End of story.

Western Greenies lapped it up when Mau Mau Chieftain turned Kenyan "President" Jomo Kenyatta banned Elephant hunting in Kenya thirty years ago. "Oh how marvelously enlightened!" they cooed in London salons. "How progressive!" they gurgled in Manhattan’s Upper West side.

Five years later Kenyan elephants were indeed "endangered," poached to the brink extinction. Kenya was much poorer too. Turns out, Kenyatta was actually protecting the illicit Ivory racket of one of his tribal chums with the hunting ban. They needed every elephant they could get their hands on. Like I said, a Western hunter pays $50,000 for the chance to whack a big tusker. (Which then feeds a whole tribe for weeks, by the way). Poached tusks bring in much less – but ah, Kenyatta was pocketing a big chunk of it. Enlightened indeed!

Don’t get me wrong. I mention Jomo "Burning Spear" Kenyatta only because we’re dealing with hunting here. Plus, I like the way he made monkeys out of the World Wildlife Fund. Maybe they’ll learn something about free markets. (What a joke.)

Fact is, Kenyatta is a politician like any other. A Kenyan elephant had a price on the world market of $50,000. Kenyatta throttled the market for private and political gain. Don’t tariffs do the same thing? Import quotas? Price supports? If only our own politicians were any different.

Humberto Fontova [send him mail] holds an M.A. in History from Tulane University. He’s the author of Helldiver’s Rodeo described as "Highly entertaining!" by Publisher’s Weekly, as "Terrific!" by Salon.com, and as "Just what the doctor ordered!" by Ted Nugent.