REXANO AR fanatic talks conservation Bart Culver Carole Baskin snow leopard

AR Fanatic Talks Conservation

By Bart Culver

Until very recently it has been quite apparent that AR (animal rights) fanatics knew nothing and cared even less about the plight of animals in the wild. Conservation was a very uncomfortable topic for them and the only thing they had to say about it was a couple of sound bites that were designed to summarily dismiss the subject.

1. “They belong in the wild”
2. “Private sector exotics are irrelevant to conservation because they do not have pedigrees”

Many private owners of big cats have been pointing out the inanity and hypocrisy of these lame remarks while doing serious conservation work. Now it seems the AR fanatics have taken notice. For the first time to my knowledge, a scamstuary has now begun talking about conservation in whole paragraphs. And they are doing it with the characteristic attitude of self righteous, self-aggrandizement so essential to their primary purpose of fund raising. Their message as usual is, “everybody who has these animals is abusing them except us. We are their saviors”.

On page one of Carol Baskin’s puff sheet, Big Cat Times, under the headline, “Big Plans for Saving the Snow Leopard in the Wild”, is an article about a group of mountaineers based in Tampa that plans to climb a mountain in China. Funds raised from the climb will go to Baskin’s Big Cat Rescue to build snow leopard habitats, and to unspecified ‘conservation efforts’. Really? All of a sudden the snow leopards Baskin bought from a private breeder are relevant to conservation?

On page two Carol congratulates her daughter for coming up with a way for Big Cat Rescue to “save the snow leopard in the wild”. How? In their gift shop they are selling hand crafts made of camel hair from Mongolia. This is a Snow Leopard Trust project and Big Cat Rescue is participating.

What a terrible shame if Baskin convinces one single legislator that she is saving the snow leopard by selling handcrafts and therefore, no other efforts, certainly not captive breeding, are necessary or excusable.

I do not question the integrity of the Snow Leopard Trust, but this project is an excellent example of just how tenuous in-situ conservation efforts turn out to be. It’s another example of the strategy of creating an alternative source of income in exchange for a commitment from indigenous people not to kill certain animals.

According to Carol, herdsman that makes a dollar a day can make $25.00 for a snow leopard pelt that retails for over $5,000. She says the herdsman kill snow leopards mostly as revenge for predation on their goats. So the Snow Leopard Trust is teaching the villagers to make crafts and providing a market for them, and also providing wormers and medicines to increase their goat herds. If anybody kills a snow leopard the whole village looses this support for a whole year. So all the villagers are motivated to police each other. There are also game wardens motivated by getting a cut of the confiscations. Someday they hope this system will actually operative in the black.

Question: For a free camel hair toothbrush, which of the following political, economic, cultural and natural forces will cause this project to fail?

1. The people making $4,975 profit on the pelts will offer to pay more for them, provide medicine, and buy the crafts.

2. .People will spend the money they make from the crafts on guns and four wheelers, enabling them to hunt snow leopards more effectively.

3. Some people will have no interest or ability in these crafts and will not benefit. They will blame the snow leopard for this new disparity of wealth.

4. The artificially increased goats herds will destroy the fragile habitat, killing the snow leopards’ wild prey, forcing them to increase their predation on the goats.

5. Instead of reporting a snow leopard killing and causing the village to loose support, villagers will say nothing.

6. In places like the Pakistani Pashtoon where the army is afraid to go, game wardens will not be effective.

7. Outsiders, such as the Taliban, will kill snow leopards and Snow Leopard Trust personnel

8. All of the above.

All over the world the fate of in-situ conservation is the same. Indigenous cultures do not have an ethic that prevents them from destroying their environment. Nature has always been the only thing that kept them in check. The minute anyone with the best of intentions tilts that balance, the eco-system collapses. Fight hunger, disease and infant mortality while preaching against birth control and you have more starving people then ever. Build a hospital and you need a road to the hospital. Down that road come poachers, loggers, buyers and sellers of disasters, large and small. Money finds a way.

Buy the land outright and if you don’t post armed guards 24 hours a day and pay them very well, everything of value will disappear. Even in the rare cases where there is a stable, competent, civilized government, the only successful in-situ conservation projects have required the killing of large numbers of people and animals.

The preserves are never big enough to function as eco-systems. They are fragments. If poaching is brought under control, the animal populations quickly exceed the carrying capacity of the land and begin destroying the habitat. Long before a viable gene pool is achieved, the animals must be culled.

The only conservation effort that does not work this way is captive husbandry. It actually creates habitat. It brings in food resources from outside. It absolutely protects the animals from poaching, disease, starvation and predation. It creates more conservationists by selling surplus animals to people who love them. It squarely faces the ugly truth about how far we have gone in destroying this planet and it does not give up. It is truly Noah’s Ark, charting the most rational course to weather the flood of humanity.

Already its opponents tacitly admit it is outperformed governments, institutions, and the remnants of nature. Self-righteous hypocrites who say that captive husbandry is cruel and these animals belong in the wild do not really understand how it feels to starve and be hunted by humans. The more I hear of their ignorant self-aggrandizing falderal, the more I think it is them who belong in the wild.

Bart Culver has over twenty years experience living with dozens of exotic felines. Contact him at Klandaga@yahoo.com

Published January 2007