• Bipta@kbin.social
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      8 months ago

      Also people (as a group, not individuals) are responsible for most of our own suffering, and also most of the suffering of elephants.

      One species is helpless against human evils and the other is only largely helpless.

  • masterofn001@lemmy.ca
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    8 months ago

    How many people do elephants kill?

    How many people do people kill?

    People suck.

    • Flying Squid@lemmy.worldM
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      8 months ago

      I was going to say- maybe that’s the right attitude?

      Elephants are very smart and they aren’t destroying the planet.

      • Billiam@lemmy.world
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        8 months ago

        Yeah, this is definitely a “he’s making a point, just not the point he wants to make” kinda thing. Maybe if he said that Europeans care more about elephants than they do about Africans, it would have been a little clearer.

        • Optional@lemmy.world
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          8 months ago

          How about globally? Elephants knocking down more trees than humans? What is it, like, 50/50? 60/40?

          Did you know elephants clearcut the rainforest to raise cattle? And they invented crack! Heck, they’d vote Democrat if we’d let ‘em.

          • FaceDeer@fedia.io
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            8 months ago

            There’s about 400,000 elephants and 8 billion humans, it’s not a fair fight.

    • HikingVet@lemmy.ca
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      8 months ago

      The amount of people that elephants kill is not 0. Though, most of the human deaths that involve elephants are probably the human’s fault.

  • katy ✨@lemmy.blahaj.zone
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    8 months ago

    i mean of course a poacher and authoritarian would think that

    Masisi has been accused by some of having authoritarian views, and contributing to undermining democracy in Botswana.[29] > Former President Ian Khama, who has fallen out with Masisi since his election, alleged that Masisi “stifled dissent” in an interview with the Financial Times, and added that Botswana’s reputation was being undermined locally and internationally, and that democracy was in decline.[30]

    Masisi is in support of elephant hunting in Botswana, and believes that allowing some ivory trading would allow more funding for conservation. In 2019, he presented stools made from elephant feet to the national leaders of Namibia, Zambia and Zimbabwe, a move that received some criticism from international media outlets.[31][32][33] Masisi reversed the ban on elephant hunting put in place by his predecessor, and removed Botswana’s “Shoot to Kill” anti-poaching policy.[34]

  • Damionsipher@lemmy.world
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    8 months ago

    The world would be a much better place if we placed nature’at least at the same level of care as we place generalized human need.

  • mozz@mbin.grits.dev
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    8 months ago

    “No Mercy” has a great bit where Redmond O’Hanlon wants to try to rescue an orphaned baby gorilla, and his guide absolutely loses his shit about it. He says I do not fucking understand white people. Anywhere we’ve been, I can take you a mile in any direction and find actual human being people many of them children who need a fuck of a lot of help. If you want to help them, you could always do that, or maybe your government could stop shooting them or taking all their stuff and leaving them starving. But no: You see one gorilla and you’re all sentimental and so all a sudden that becomes the overriding priority of this previously non humanitarian mission when all the rest of it you didn’t give a fuck about.

    (In Redmond’s defense, they did also do a certain amount for the people also; he talks elsewhere about it being an actual problem because they kept giving their medicine away to people who needed it, leaving them potentially in a really really bad spot if they wound up needing it later on.)

    • Wanderer@lemm.ee
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      8 months ago

      I think a lot of animal suffering has come from humans. Humans really need to fix this.

      In that other case you know it would be seen as the white man coming in to try “fix” the black community. It’s been tried many times, even now charities where white people go to Africa and donate time is not allowed on TV used to be a big thing but people cried racism. People are going to complain either way.

  • jordanlund@lemmy.worldM
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    8 months ago

    Well, yeah, there are 8 billion people now. How many elephants are there? 400,000?

  • LibertyLizard@slrpnk.net
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    8 months ago

    Botswana government also does this, but for different people. Probably most people have some other group or groups they don’t regard as having full value as humans.

    Anyway, I thought the suggestion to export the elephants was a good one. I’ll take a herd in my local area.

  • tal@lemmy.today
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    8 months ago

    Botswana recently threatened to send 30,000 elephants to the UK and Germany after both countries proposed stricter controls on hunting trophies.

    The UK does have a lot of islands. Probably a little cold for elephants, though.

  • lars@lemmy.sdf.org
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    8 months ago

    Europeans care more about elephants than people, says Botswana president

    is a rare English ambiguity construction that means either:

    Europeans care more about elephants than Europeans care about people

    or

    Europeans care more about elephants than people care about elephants

    we’ll never know