Don Pinnock is the arch-typical animal rightist!!!!!
I understand that he is now a qualified ‘criminologist’ in Cape Town. Poor Cape Town! One of the jobs Pinnock had before coming to South Africa – before he started indicating that he was an expert in wildlife management – was that of cable-car driver at the Rock of Gibraltar. In that capacity he probably learnt a great deal about the antics of the tourist-attracting Gibraltar Monkeys (Barbary Macaques). He certainly has no idea about the management of Africa’s national parks or its wild animals. And he takes his cues from other animal rights extremists who are equally uninformed. Talk about the blind leading the blind! Nevertheless, the Daily Maverick Newspaper – which makes a big noise about being the only source of media “TRUTH” in South Africa – idolizes Pinnock and they treat him like some kind of pseudo-wildlife-management-professor. The Daily Maverick, it seems, hasn’t yet learned that when you have a plumbing crisis on your hands, you don’t employ a carpenter to fix it. Hence, I don’t read the Daily Maverick anymore. I don’t read it because I never know if what they publish is the truth or if it is somebody’s imagined fabrication… except, of course, when I see an article written by Pinnock! Just that name identifies the article as being hyperbole. In my opinion the Daily Maverick is one of the “voices” of animal rights in South Africa. It deserves, therefore, no recognition from a responsible society!
I am a university-trained field ecologist and have 62 years of hands-on national park administration and wildlife management experience. I have written some 20 books on big game hunting and wildlife management. I am also an investigative wildlife management journalist with a considerable following. My special interests are elephant management and black rhino management. Even though I have extensive big game ‘management-hunting’ and game capture experience, I have not practiced any kind of “management-hunting” for nearly 40 years. I have never have been a trophy hunter. And I am not even, unfortunately, a biltong hunter – because I love my biltong. I am, however, deeply involved in South Africa’s commercial wildlife industry in many ways and I educate the public about the principles and practices of wildlife management; about the attributes of hunting; and about the sustainable utilization of all our wild living resources for the benefit of our people. Indeed, I have written some 20 books on these subjects – some of which are university-level text-books which are still in use in several South African Universities. I sincerely believe that hunting is an integral part of wildlife management; that hunting is a vital wildlife management tool; that hunting is one of man’s heritages; that hunting in an important human instinct that, when denied by man, adversely influences his psychological balances. And modern psychologists agree with me in this regard.
So, Pinnock is in error when he describes me as being a ‘hunter’. Nevertheless, I acknowledge, myself, that I am strongly supportive of responsible hunting – both responsible biltong hunting; and responsible trophy hunting. And I support the sustainable ‘harvesting’ of Africa’s wildlife for benefit of Africa’s people.
Having explained my bona fides, I can now get down to discussing Pinnock’s preposterous statement that runaway wild fires, and not ‘too many elephants’, are responsible for Botswana’s tree destruction history. In doing so, I am going to state my case very succinctly – so as not to give any kind of credibility to Pinnock’s opinions.
There is absolutely NO DOUBT AT ALL that elephants, and ONLY ELEPHANTS, have been responsible for the damage done to mature trees everywhere in Botswana’s wildlife systems, and for the elimination of Botswana’s riverine forest at Chobe. And that has been an ongoing state of affairs since, at least, the middle 1950s. Furthermore, I am in absolutely no doubt at all that he only answer to this problem is drastic elephant population reduction.
Pinnock, it must be remembered, is a cable-car driver and now, it seems, a ‘criminologist’ in Cape Town, too. He is also, in his imprinted ideology, anti-hunting and anti-hands-on wildlife management. Finally, he is a died-in-the-wool animal rightist. He deserves, therefore, absolutely no credibility whatsoever when he pontificates about wildlife management matters in the Daily Maverick!
So, Andre, let’s put this argument to bed. Let’s not even try to discuss any of the detail in his arguments. The more credibility we afford this nefarious person, the more diatribe we will have to endure from his pen in the future – and the more people he might influence. Lets shut him down tight. NOW! And let’s not lift the lid, not even by a fraction!
Kind regards
Ron Thomson
