Most of us know by now that decisions in congress have little to do with our will and much to do with powerful deep pocket lobbyists. Safari Club International a U.S. organization of trophy hunters is one such group that contributes primarily to the Republican Party and ingratiated itself with the Bush Administration and U.S. Fish and Wildlife Services at that time. I’ve written before that it was a travesty of justice for animals when the second Bush Administration elected Matthew Hogan as the acting director of U.S. Fish and Wildlife Services when he was formerly a SCI lobbyist. That was indeed the fox tending the henhouse.
But the SCI is nothing more than rich trophy hunters that seek the heads and skins of any type of animal whether endangered or not. If they had their way they would be hunting polar bears. According to Michael Satchell, a consultant to the Humane Society of the U.S., “With the help of friendly members of Congress and officials in USFWS, SCI has consistently attempted to navigate around the intent of the Endangered Species Act (ESA) and the Marine Mammal Protection Act (MMPA) and import once-banned trophies of endangered and threatened wildlife. Sometimes, the club has succeeded, sometimes not.”
It’s apparent SCI believes its hunting rights are above the law and works to make sure the law goes its way. And it did when the law to allow guns in our national parks was passed. This lovely little edict I wrote about was tucked inside a totally unrelated bill. I kept asking what good guns were inside a national park except to kill the animals that are supposed to be protected there, specifically wolves.
SCI saw it the same way. SCI just announced it will throw its money and power against any type of wolf protection in the courts, and help with planned wolf hunts in the Northern Rockies according to Defenders of Wildlife. Why is this not a surprise? SCI is behind Sarah Palin’s brutal attack on wolves and bears in Alaska. My guess is the plane she did not sell on Ebay, is now employed for some of these hunting ventures. SCI is still fighting for the right to kill the imperiled polar bears! Nice bunch of guys huh? You kinda want to float them out on a piece of ice and take pot shots at em and see how they like it.
As early as this fall hundreds of wolves are on the line. Pups as young as 5 months old can be targeted in hunts approved in Idaho. Of course SCI will be there with bells on.
The hunting and killing of animals, the Endangered Species Act, and the USFWS, should be lead by science and based on scientific approaches to wildlife management, not at the whim of wealthy trophy hunters contributing to members of congress. It appears our Dept. of Interior, and USFWS is continuing to follow the lead of the Bush Administration and its all out assault on our national treasures, the animals. Wolves are meant to live and thrive and maintain a natural balance within all sorts of our ecosystems. Because they do their job well, wolves are continuously the target of hunters who claim there won’t be enough to hunt. Taking out the wolves in our national parks will cause many of the ecosystems that began to return because of the wolves’ presence to diminish once again.
We’re so busy being a superior group in the animal chain that our arrogance overlooks the great ability of nature to do a better job on many fronts. I’m sickened by those that would hunt animals that are already suffering because of mankind. What kind of soul do they, can they have? We’d be a better country if we followed the ideas of Dr. Albert Schweitzer instead of the likes of the NRA or SCI. In the aftermath of WWII many looked to Schweitzer’s philosophy for “the restoration of hope and sanity,” according to Ann Cottrell Free’s book, Animals, Nature & Albert Schweitzer.
And in 1952 Dr. Schweitzer was awarded the Nobel Prize for Humanitarianism. He said in his acceptance speech: “There could be no peace, no harmony among men and nations unless prejudice and nationalism were laid aside, and all human kind recognized and embraced the universality of life—specifically, ‘all living creatures.’”
To quote Schweitzer:
“The human spirit is not dead. It lives on in secret….It has come to believe that compassion, in which all ethics must take root, can only attain its full breadth and depth if it embraces all living creatures and does not limit itself to mankind.”
I started to write so much for congress, the USFWS, the military, our health/research agencies, but the list was just too long. Our ethics are in the tank in this country if they are supposed to be rooted in compassion, because the last time I read my mail it was an ever-growing barrage of animal rights groups screaming for help from every direction.
Michael Satchell, “A View to a Kill: How Safari Club Int’l Works to Weaken ESA Protections”, Humane Society US, undated, accessed August 2005.
Cottrell Free, Ann, Animals, Nature & Albert Schweitzer, Washington, D.C: The Flying Fox Press, 1990.