Elephants and Guns and Video

There has been a lot of drama over the last week about Bob Parsons from GoDaddy harvesting a "nuisance" elephant in Zimbabwe and then posting a video of it online. I am by no means anti-hunting or anti-animal management, but I haven't hunted in over 20 years. Fished, you bet, but 98% CPR (Catch Photo Release).

However, I have had a hard time wrapping my head around the killing of this particular elephant. I am aware that a lot of harvested elephants are done to protect crops and provide much needed meat for local villages. I am also aware that this happens all the time and no one cares. So why is this particular instance causing so much drama? Is it because it's someone "famous"? Or is it because this became another "slacktivism" meme running rampant on Facebook?

I love animals. I think they should be protected and I think that they should be managed in a responsible way. I'm not sure how this one event is any different than all of the hunting shows on TV, or the thousands of web sites that discuss hunting, or the the thousands of outfitters that provide these types of 'vacations', but we haven't seen this level of protest over it until one man with a lot of money did it and posted a video of his hunt. And as someone that spends a lot of time, on a daily basis, trying to make the lives of animals in need better in some way, it does strike me in a bad way to see the mobs jump in and out of something we spend so much time involved in.

For the record, estimates put the elephant population in Zimbabwe at 100,000. The environment there can support roughly half that many.

But, since you are all involved let's see if there is something useful you can do while you are here. Try one of these things instead of getting indignant on Facebook.

Donate real money to http://www.savetheelephants.org/

Move your domain name from GoDaddy to NameCheap and they will donate $1 to save the elephants http://community.namecheap.com/blog/2011/03/30/elephants/ (way to go Tamar).