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发帖数: 1480 | 1 我也懒得翻译了， 需要涨知识的读读吧。
http://time.com/3976344/cecil-lion-zimbabwe-walter-palmer/
The world's anger at hunter Walter Palmer is understandable but misplaced
Earlier this month, a 55-year-old American dentist named Walter Palmer went
on a safari holiday in western Zimbabwe, where, over a 40-hour period, he
maimed, cautiously tracked, and finally killed a lion. Palmer, a veteran big
-game hunter, insists that he had secured the necessary hunting permits,
unaware at the time that his target was the most famous lion in Africa.
Hwange National Park is Zimbabwe’s oldest and largest wildlife reserve, and
the lion Palmer killed was its star attraction. It even had a name: Cecil.
For killing Cecil, Palmer has become a figure of global hate, and the lion
depicted not so much as a bloodthirsty killer himself but a sort of cuddly
mascot, who would affably tag alongside caravans of delighted tourists. #
CecilTheLion was a top trending topic on Google and Twitter around the world
throughout Tuesday — although nobody seemed to notice that he bore the
same first name as the now reviled British adventurer and colonizer Sir
Cecil Rhodes, who founded the white settler state of Rhodesia, as Zimbabwe
was formerly known, and whose statue was recently pulled down in Cape Town.
The press has obligingly cast Palmer as a leering sadist and gone to great
lengths to unearth alleged past wrongdoing unrelated to his hunting hobby.
Prominent journalist Piers Morgan said that he wanted to hunt “fat, greedy,
selfish, murderous businessmen like Dr Palmer” (who is neither fat nor a
businessman) and then “skin him alive” and “cut his head from his neck.”
Sharon Osbourne tweeted of her hope that he “loses his home, his practice
& his money” (before noting: “He has already lost his soul”). Cara
Delevingne called him “a poor excuse of a human being.”
The Yelp page of Palmer’s Minnesota dental practice has meanwhile become a
catalog of ad hominem attacks. “Brought my lion here for dentistry and was
horrified by the result,” one user wrote. “All kidding aside, I hope you
die painfully.”
Faced with a shrieking, global witch hunt of this magnitude, Palmer,
understandably, has mostly been incommunicado since the maelstrom began, but
as repulsive as his hobby may be to many, it is indisputable that tourists
such as him are not the real reason Zimbabwe’s precious wildlife is being
decimated. To understand that, one has to look at the ruinous land-
management policies practiced by the Mugabe regime over the past 15 years.
It is no accident that one of the two men who accompanied the dentist on the
safari, and who have now been arrested, was a farmer (the other was a
professional hunter hired by Palmer as a guide). State wildlife officials
claim that Honest Trymore Ndlovu helped lured the lion off the wildlife
reserve and onto his property, Antoinette Farm, where the beast was killed.
Why would he do such a thing? Perhaps because he is a farmer in a country
where agriculture is an industry of destitution. Zimbabwe was once
celebrated as the “breadbasket of Africa,” whose fertile earth supplied
the world with abundant tobacco, corn and wheat. Today, 76% of its rural
population lives in abject poverty, dependent on foreign food aid and
desperate measures — like the poaching of the wildlife that inhabits its
otherwise barren lands, or rendering assistance to those who want to hunt or
poach.
In 2000, Zimbabwe President Robert Mugabe enacted a disastrous land-reform
policy. Farms were divided up and nationalized and many plots were handed
out to generals and ministers. Thousands of white landowners were violently
evicted from their farms, which were then parceled into smallholdings and
given to black Zimbabweans. The destruction of property rights led to a
disintegrating economy and widespread poverty. Poaching — to feed the
insatiable demand for rhino horn and ivory in China and other parts of Asia
— became rife and much of the wildlife in Zimbabwe was simply wiped out.
Until 2000 Zimbabwe had a successful wildlife-management program, with many
big-game animals flourishing. But by 2003, a staggering 80% of the animals
that had lived on Zimbabwean safari camps (which employed firm quotas to
regulate animal population sizes) had died. By 2007, there were only 14
private game farms in the country, compared with 620 prior to the land
seizures of 2000, according to a National Geographic report. With the
protection of private game reserves nearly nonexistent, once abundant
wildlife began dying off, hunted by desperate farmers with no other options
for sustenance.
Despite the passing of harsher laws for poachers in 2011 illegal hunting in
Zimbabwe is still big business. Poaching syndicates earn hundreds of
thousands of dollars exporting ivory and animal skins. Many conservationists
believe allowing the community to reap the benefits of wildlife management
— by, ironically, running the sorts of safaris on which Palmer shot his
lion — will help curb illegal poaching. But it is impossible to have that
debate while the world brays for the ruin of a lone Minnesotan dentist, and
fails to criticize a regime whose policies were responsible for the almost
complete extinction of Zimbabwean wildlife in the first place.
— With reporting by Helen Regan |
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