Elephants on Contraception Limits Ivory Harvesting

Dear Ron

I have always wondered why SADC countries can’t harvest ivory from plentiful elephants.

For South Africa, putting elephants on contraception sadly limits ivory harvesting. Why not cull them and harvest the ivory and other products?

The meat would be given to poor communities. The hide can be sold to companies that sell hides  to shoe and bag manufacturers.

eK

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Dear Emmanuel

The reason why ANYBODY can’t harvest elephants for their ivory and/or hide is because of the existence of the animal rights criminals. AND because our governments have been persuaded to listen to them. Indeed, I believe many African governments are on the animal rightists’ pay role.

Putting elephant cows on contraceptives is cruel and ineffective – because they require a booster every six months – and how do you know (out of a herd of 30 000) which elephants were NOT treated six months before, and which ones WERE so treated. Besides that contraceptives keep the cows in perpetual oestrus and that means they get no peace from randy old bulls. It is therefore cruel.

What most people do not know is that elephant hide recovered from a culling programme is much more valuable than the ivory that has also been recovered.  Elephant hide produces a very high-class leather and should be used MORE on expensive furniture that for boots and bags.

There are a lot that people ‘who know the ropes’ and can tell the world about this sort of information. But the animal rights criminals block us all the way.

Kind regards

Ron

Ron Thomson

I am NOT a ‘trophy hunter’ - and never have been. I am not involved in the trophy hunting safari business. I am also not a game rancher. But I have ‘administratively controlled’ professional hunters and safari outfitters in my capacity as a government game warden. I am an 80 year old ex-game warden with 60 years of continuous experience in hands-on wildlife management, and national park management, in Africa (1959 to 2019). In breakdown, I have 24 years experience in the management of national parks in Rhodesia/Zimbabwe - and in the management of the wild animal populations that lived inside those national parks; one year as the Chief Nature Conservation of the Ciskei in South Africa; three years as Director of the Bophuthatswana National Parks Board in South Africa; and I worked for three years as a professional hunter in the South African Great Karoo (taking foreign hunters on quests for plains game trophies). I discovered, however, that professional hunting was not my forte. I worked as an investigative wildlife journalist for 30 years in South Africa. I have written fifteen books and hundreds of magazine articles on the subject of wildlife management and big game hunting in Africa. Five of my books are university-level text books on wildlife management. I am a university-trained ecologist; was a member of the Institute of Biology (London) for 20 years; and was a registered chartered biologist for the European Union for 20 years. I have VAST experience in the “management hunting” of elephants, buffaloes, lions, leopards and hippos (as part of my official national park work in the control of problem animals); and I pioneered the capture of black rhino in Zimbabwe’s Zambezi Valley (1964 - 1970). My university thesis was entitled: “The Factors Affecting the Survival and Distribution of Black Rhinos in Rhodesia”. Look at my personal website if you want any further details about my experience: www.ronthomsonshuntingbooks.co.za.

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One thought on “Elephants on Contraception Limits Ivory Harvesting

  • Sadly, it really isn’t enough that wildlife in its varied forms, has the sole and only purpose of being an ornament.
    With careful, ethical and focused management, wildlife is self sustaining …….. wildlife WILL support itself, but no if left to its own devices.
    The problem that we have is that the AR activists campaign on the basis that they alone have the best interests of our environment at heart – and whilst perhaps the only point of agreement, is that both sides want the very same thing – it’s just that those who by political bent as activists and whilst claiming the moral high ground, in reality don’t have a plan beyond doing nothing …. and that has never worked in any other sector of humanity, and it won’t now.

    Reply

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