CBL is merely a symptom of a much greater problem. That is the lack of an effective response by hunters/sustainable use proponents/meat eaters/producers-of-meat and the Associations which represent them to the massive (and growing) influence of animal activists and the anti-hunting sentiment.
In fact, the animal activist movement was allowed to develop in a vacuum. It doesn’t help to point out that Ron warned about this many years ago, but no-one heeded him. It does help, however, to point out that he’s been a leading light all along and it behoves people to listen to, if not heed his advice. His instincts in this matter have mostly been correct.
Note that the lack of an effective response is placed ahead of the animal activist actions because that is the core problem, in my opinion. Don’t blame the animal activists. They’re only following their anthropomorphic beliefs which arise out of their circumstances and perceptions, whilst the entrepreneurial core make money out of that and egg-it-on with clever propaganda. If one has a subjective view, one can only admire what they’ve achieved and criticize what the pro-hunting lobby has not achieved.
Further to that, for the hunters and pro-sustainable use proponents to criticize and denigrate the animal activist and anti-hunting lobby is a waste of time, unless it’s used in a constructive way to quicken the passion of hunters to prompt them into action.
What is for certain, is that it’s a mindless strategy for hunters and killers of animals to fall upon themselves like a pack of jackals attacking one of their injured kin, over issues such as this CBL thing. It will achieve nothing for hunters and only enhance the position of anti-hunters. That’s simply because one cannot put a kinder face to killing animals, especially wildlife, to those who abhor it. It only serves to put a “kinder fact” to us, hunters.
The time is a minute-to-midnight as the world’s animal activists mobilize politicians to ban imports of hunting trophies and when they, soon, start lobbying airlines not to carry hunting firearms as Franz mentioned. There’s no time to be lost with internecine squabbling over issues like CBL.
There is only one thing which will save us and that is worldwide court rulings to establish the inalienable right to hunt and to kill animals on a sustainable basis and more especially, to enhance the conservation of biodiversity whilst doing so.
John Rance
