BY JOHN NASH
On July 8th, The Maverick published an article by Don Pinnock, a well known Greenie pillock, entitled, with more neck than even his subject, “Giraffes under siege: The silent crisis of trophy hunting and its threat to survival”.
The article is a textbook example of paltering – eco-junk food, fed to non-hunters by snake-oil spinners, eco-mendicants and certain lying UK MPs. It carries a stark warning to the put-upon UK rural community – truth and logic won’t save you from these urban high priests and parasites who make a living out of hate-mongering, and this example will show you why unless you have the guts to expose their lies.
Don Pillock
Because a lie gets halfway around the world before the truth has a chance to get its pants on, just about everything Pinnock writes is warp speed, gaslit garbage.
He starts his article with, “..the world’s tallest mammal is being quietly driven towards extinction – not by habitat loss alone, but by the insatiable appetite for trophies that turn gentle giants into rugs and flywhisks”. An impressive three porkies in one sentence – giraffes are (a) not being driven to extinction, they are (b) not being driven to extinction by trophy hunters and (c) there is no insatiable appetite for trophies – the few hunters who can afford giraffe trophies are easily catered for by private hunting reserves in Southern Africa, where giraffe numbers are rising because, in addition to a rug and fly whisk, Pinnock conveniently overlooks the rather more important 800 kgs of precious meat on each impressive beast.
His tall tale continues – “Hunting such a creature seems bizarre. What could be gained from bagging one of Africa’s friendliest wild animals? For some it’s apparently irresistible”. Hunting a giraffe may be described as bizarre by a deceitful urban pen-pusher with gullible townie readers to hoodwink, but to a whole human, someone who lives a proper life, indoors and out, who participates occasionally in real nature as a human predator rather than simply as an onlooker or twitcher, hunting is something else entirely.
The hunting spirit is innate in man, and trophy hunting celebrates 100,000 years of perfectly normal human evolutionary behaviour. It awakens a fierce, ancient passion and provides great emotional rewards for those fortunate enough to participate. If a hunt also adds sustainably to a collection of trophies, it adds even more satisfaction for those who value them – human civilisation has always used animals as a resource, for a wide array of important purposes throughout the whole of human history, including for food, clothing, transportation, materials, tools and for sport. Without hunting and human hunting instinct, we wouldn’t even be here.
The piffle continues, “Last month the Wildlife & Conservation Foundation (WCF) published new figures that lay bare the stark reality: in 2023 alone nearly 1,800 giraffe trophies were shipped around the world, feeding a global market that has become a little-known but significant threat to the species’ survival”. For a start, a single giraffe may furnish ten different useful products, plus a trophy, so this 1800 number is meaningless. Meaningless is also hardly surprising – laid bare, the WCF appears to be a registered charity whose three trustees, McLintock, Egan and Read, are also rabid greenie activists with zero wildlife experience. Its annual return to the UK Charity Commission, when checked, says, “Nothing to report” – it appears to be a charity registered funnel, a conjoined twin of the notorious Scam-paign to Ban Trophy Hunting, run by “Honest Eddy” Gonçalves, the financially secretive UK money harvester – the one with invisible accounts.
Pinnock continues, “Professor Fred Bercovitch, a leading giraffe expert and former executive director of Save the Giraffes, issued a stark warning: “We’ve seen a 40% decline in giraffe numbers over the past three decades. If the current rate of decline continues, giraffes will be extinct before long.” Another tin-shaking warning …but coming from an organisation called Save the Giraffes (donate here), what do you expect, besides hyperbole?
Helpfully, he adds, “Today, fewer than 100,000 giraffes remain across Africa – a fraction of the estimated 450,000 elephants that share the same landscapes. But while elephants draw global outcry when they’re hunted for ivory, giraffes slip under the radar and they’re being picked off, sometimes bred in captivity solely to be shot and shipped as trophies. In the early 1900s, giraffes were relentlessly hunted in the Lowveld. They were prized not for meat or ivory, but for their tails – used to swat flies and craft ceremonial regalia – and their hides, which were fashioned into whips and sjamboks. Bones were crushed for manure.”
Ah-ha… such interesting facts…the first significant one being the statement, “…sometimes bred in captivity solely to be shot and shipped as trophies”. He admits that he knows giraffes are being privately raised for hunting, and therefore, he must know that you free ranch giraffes to protect the other, wild-born population. Of course, being Pinnock, he uses the pejorative term “bred in captivity” to suggest “caged”, rather than “privately owned wild animals” (POWA), the more honest description. Note too, that POWA giraffes are raised as free-range wild farm stock for live sales, meat, hunting and photo-tourism – not “solely for trophies” – they are raised commercially, for profit. Note too, he knows they were used for whips, sjamboks, fly swats, regalia, bone meal and so on – commercial products all, none of which were trophies, so the drop in numbers wasn’t due to trophy hunting, was it? If he was a hunter, he would have just shot a hole in his foot.
Having told you at great length that they are becoming extinct, he then adds, “Giraffe numbers are increasing only in national parks and protected reserves – places where trophy hunting is banned”. So, numbers are actually increasing in places (so they aren’t really becoming extinct, are they?) and then a bare-faced lie by omission – “increasing..in National Parks and protected reserves…where trophy hunting is banned”.
Since Pinnock is a South African, he can’t get out much…South Africa has forty million acres of private hunting reserves, also called game farms, where sustainably hunted giraffes are doing very well and have doubled in number since 1995, thanks very much.
Of course, like all zealots, Pinnock carefully fails to mention the real problems – that giraffe numbers are actually falling in non-trophy hunting places like Kenya, where a giraffe is called a motorbike in the bushmeat trade because its meat “will buy a motorbike” – and Kenya has two million motorbikes… poaching for bushmeat is a real problem for giraffes, not trophy hunting, and a wire snare, cut from a farm fence, costs nothing.
Then this, “People might be shocked to learn that there was even a confiscation of giraffe genitalia listed as a trophy,” Let’s face it, at 1.5m long and 12Kgs, a big penis – there’s another one, in Pinnock’s mirror.
Now for some more v. scary green woo-woo -“the issue is not simply about the legal hunts – it’s the laundering of illegal kills through the legitimate trade in trophies. Officially, the trophy hunting industry claims that about 300 giraffes are legally shot each year. But US government data suggests that closer to 400 trophies enter the country annually.” “If those figures are correct, that means at least 25% are from illegally killed giraffes,” Rubbish. “Trophy hunting is providing an avenue for the illegal trade.” Rubbish based on rubbish. For a start, if the paperwork is within 25%, that is amazingly accurate for Africa, where the ability to write any old numbers in a box is considered clever. Then, 300 or 400 legally traded trophies are precisely that – legally traded because they don’t affect the 100,000 giraffes. The rest of the statement is just about as bright as saying you should ban shops because they are a source of shoplifting, or ban women because birth is eventually 100% fatal.
Next up, a greenie somersault of epic proportion, on a par with Ruth Tingay’s ‘gamekeepers hunt raptors’ nonsense – “If trophy hunting truly helps conservation, you could ban the import of trophies while still allowing controlled hunting that benefits the ecosystem”. Trophy hunting IS beneficial controlled hunting. The trophy is just the inedible bit – the rest is still eaten. The bones still get carved and save ivory. The trophy hunt itself adds extra value for the people selling the giraffe – that’s why giraffes are doing so well in trophy hunting countries, over and above those in the protected reserves – its all ADDITIONAL value, making giraffes really worth keeping.
Next, some diversionary deceit – “While trophy hunting does generate income, where it ends up is murky at best”. “If a million dollars comes in, up to 99% might go to government officials and landowners, with scraps left for the local community, Bercovitch says”. “Independent studies suggest as little as 3% of trophy hunting revenue reaches households living near hunting concessions”. I live in the UK, surrounded by rich farmland – none of the farm income reaches me. So what? Trophy hunting outfitters pay for concessions and pay taxes. The country benefits.
More deceit –“When a destitute local person kills an animal for bushmeat to feed their family, they can be thrown in jail. But a wealthy hunter can pay tens of thousands of dollars to shoot the same animal – and take its head home. That’s real colonialism.” Spoken like a true half-wit (one with only half the picture). When a hunting tourist shoots an animal, it is RATS – Regulated, Accountable, Transparent and Sustainable. He pays for a hunting permit and also for the animal because it belongs to someone – and the meat is still eaten locally. When a destitute local poacher kills an animal without a permit, it is very different – illegal, because it is poaching – unregulated, unaccounted, non-transparent and probably not sustainable – bushmeat is the biggest unregulated killer of all across Africa. Trophy hunters are the customers of Africans. The only colonialists are well-fed neo-colonialist zealots like Pinnock, trying to impose mad Western foreign ‘animal rights’ insanity on Africans.
Up next, a common trope – “Unlike trophy hunting, wildlife tourism generates far greater income, creates more jobs and gives communities a reason to protect living animals”. It does in popular tourist areas, but there aren’t enough tourists to support all of the Parks already, let alone another million sq. kms of Africa. The income from hunting is good, practical land-use in remote places, extra and in addition to the income from ecotourism. Africa needs both. Don’t mention the tourist trinkets made from poached giraffes.
Then, “If you’re willing to pay to shoot a giraffe in a remote place, why wouldn’t you pay to photograph it alive?” Because hunters pay to hunt, as a human predator, not as a civilian spectator. It’s the difference between playing rugby and watching rugby.
Then, a Greenie invert – “When the world tells Brazil to stop deforestation, it’s not colonialism – it’s protecting a global heritage. Giraffes are no different.” South Africa’s private hunting reserves have created and rewilded forty million acres of extra habitat with extra giraffes, over and above the national parks. Brazil is destroying habitat. Spot the difference.
And finally, how about a confusion worthy of Father’s Day in Norfolk – “Historical precedent also offers a grim reminder of what happens when humans hunt species into oblivion…The dodo, the quagga, Steller’s sea cow – all driven to extinction by humans.” Er, Pinnock, the dodo was killed for food by visiting sailors and by introduced rats and pigs eating eggs, the quagga was killed by farmland clearance and commercial hide hunters, while the sea cow was killed for its meat, fat, and hide by sailors and fur traders, all of them long, long before extinction became a Greenie industry – and note – not a trophy hunter among them.
It would be difficult to get more deceit into one article. It’s almost as dishonest as the Greenie MPs in the Mother of Parliaments…
John Nash grew up in West Cornwall and was a £10 pom to Johannesburg in the early 1960’s. He started well in construction project management, mainly high-rise buildings but it wasn’t really Africa, so he went bush, prospecting and trading around the murkier bits of the bottom half of the continent. Now retired back in Cornwall among all the other evil old pirates. His interests are still sustainable resources, wildlife management and the utilitarian needs of rural Africa. John is the co-author of Dear Townies with the Editor.
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