They Call This A Protest?

The Complementary Spouse and I were able to attend a couple of days at the Safari Club International Convention in Las Vegas. It coincided with the SHOT Show which really worked out well for us.

Just like with those who push gun prohibition, the hunt prohibitionists are divided between the well-funded astroturf groups and the wannabe players like Compassion Works International. The former would include well-funded organizations like PETA, the Humane Society of the US, and the Center for Biological Diversity. I would liken the latter to groups like the Coalition to Stop Gun Violence (sic). In other words, they put on “protests” with lots of advance fanfare that draw little more than a dozen protestors.

Frankly, I would not have even known of CWI if I hadn’t seen a mobile billboard like this one on Saturday, January 22nd, as we were leaving the Mandalay Bay complex.

After doing a bit of online sleuthing, I found their website and their social media pages. They call themselves “animal advocates” and “activists”. As part of their mission statement they say:

CWI is  committed to ending speciesism and fostering a compassionate, vegan world that shows respect for the autonomy of all beings.

Ye gads!

They say that they participated in protests every night of the SCI Convention as part of the Worldwide Rally Against Trophy Hunting (WRATH). They say that they had people standing in solidarity with animals who braved the cold of Las Vegas to make their voices heard. The cold of Las Vegas? If I remember correctly the evening temperatures were in the 50s.

Here is a picture from one of their protests that I found on their Facebook page. I count all of 16 participants.

By contrast, the auctions and events held at the Safari Club International Convention raised over $15 million for wildife conservation and advocacy. I sincerely doubt that these protestors have ever considered funding anti-poaching efforts in Africa or even the United States.

While I am sure some of these protestors are well-intentioned, they fail to recognize their own neocolonialism and cultural imperialism. They believe that THEY – upper middle-class Americans – know what is best for Africans and not the scientists and wildlife conservationists on the ground in countries like Zimbabwe, Botswana, and Namibia (among many others). These and other African countries use a model of wildlife conservation where the wildlife policy is governed by science, that animals are considered a public resource, and that it is a shared resource that must not be wasted.

In the interest of full disclosure, I am a member of both the Dallas Safari Club and SCI. Also in the interest of full disclosure, I have treated the anti-hunting movement with disdain long before I learned of DSC and SCI.