Why Trophy Hunting Can Be Good for Animals | Adam Ruins Everything

[Music] trophy hunting is good what are you talking about Josie hunting is barbaric I am against it you can tell by my tote bag look I don't like it any more than you do I'm an animal lover to see this argument is really counterintuitive and frankly kind of difficult to accept but I ask that you keep an open mind and hear me out because the evidence suggests that in specific situations trophy hunting can really help endangered animals but how how can killing animals help animals come here I'll show you a [Music] counterintuitive argument about trophy hunting as read by Adam Conover whoa I'm not Strich I am a frog man and in Africa animals like these are in desperate straits oh my god can I finally talk to animals do you love me hey no touching there are only five thousand of us left alive you know I drink 50 gallons of water a day and I'm not as thirsty as this girl and the real threat to these animals isn't trophy hunters sup I'm a rich bro takes occasional hunting trips to Africa what can I say KaBlam and rare mammals make you feel like a man meant to do that Judge this dweeb all you want but he's not why these animals are at risk of dying out the real threats are loss of habitat and poaching we're a criminal cartel that systematically kills thousands of animals a year we cut off the horns and tusks and sell them to foreign businessmen I shot Babar right through the heart for money poachers are organized they're ruthless and they are decimating animal populations in some countries rhino horn is believed to cure cancer and even hangovers and sales for twenty eight thousand dollars a pound that's more than gold or cocaine yeah that's awful why don't a local stop them well they're kind of busy you know living their lives yeah I got a family to feed why should I waste time protecting a freaking lion in his defense I do eat his livestock on the regs hey sometimes I attack adults and children quick Hey and just as harmful to animal populations is the habitat loss caused by farming these animals are literally running out of places to live so some African nations came up with a plan they took advantage of the existing demand for trophy hunting I would like to bazooka one rhinoceros please and used it to fund animal conservation fine there's an aggressive male who's too old to breed has attacked free people and killed five other rhinos he's basically and off you can shoot him for 350 thousand deal this is what I choose to spend my money on for some reason here's your receipt and you're I'm a rich jerk who shoots rhinos totebag what the hell he's gonna kill a rhino yes but we are going to use that money to save more rhinos say wow yeah in Namibia revenue from trophy hunting is the main way they fund new wildlife conservancies and in South Africa a portion of the proceeds from trophy hunting is given directly to local landowners and that incentivizes them to give the Rhinos land to live on and to protect them from poachers hey stay away from those rhinos they're worth more alive than dead breathe my little moneybags Yee but he's keeping them alive so they can be hunted absolutely true but still this system works 1/3 of all white rhinos in South Africa now live on private land and their population has gone from just a hundred to more than 18-thousand I'm so confused you know ostriches don't really do that right I don't go you're good Veronica I understand that this is hard to believe I had a tough time with it too but then I talked to Rosie Cooney the chair of the sustainable use and livelihood specialist group of the International Union for the Conservation of Nature glad I got through that whole title it's true Veronica trophy hunting can be a valuable part of conservation efforts if you find hunting distasteful it's not the hunters running these programs it's the government agencies or sometimes even conservation groups themselves the hunters motives don't really matter the money they generate can really help the animals who need it but how do I know the money is going to the right place well that's a good question like any program where there's a lot of corruption or where things are badly managed these programs don't work well at all but that doesn't change the fact that when they are well-managed these programs can be a huge help for wildlife conservation in Namibia for example 100 percent of the hunting concession fees go straight to the local communities it's been a huge success I don't know I still think that we should ban trophy hunting and find another way to help these animals sorry but that's not a great idea many countries are depending on this revenue to protect animals to pay the game guards to buy the vehicles what happens if that money dries up it's very easy for us in the developed world to judge how other countries should manage their animals but should it be our decision or should it be up to the communities who live with these animals every day hunting is a really important source of conservation revenue even where you are Veronica in the u.s. hunting fees generate around 200 million dollars a year which for many states is their primary source of conservation funding if we banned all trophy hunting everywhere right now it would do way more harm than good bye guys yeah thank you bye oh man fun way to travel okay stop I don't care how much good it does I hate that anyone would be allowed to kill an animal I just want to stop them from suffering why is killing them the only solution I know it's hard we love these animals so much we can't imagine any benefit coming from their deaths it just seems wrong but you know what's worse than one animal getting killed by a hunter hundreds of thousands being wiped out by poaching and loss of habitat the truth is in some nations the regulated hunting of a few individuals is helping to save entire species so cute animals have to die to live I guess that's one way of putting it I'm doing this for your own good hey guys Adam here coming to you from the Adam ruins everything set here's my producer John and we're taking a little break to tell you guys that I am going on tour this fall I'm doing a brand new hour all about the crazy history of America screwed up election system and I'm taking it to 15 cities we're going to Seattle Portland San Francisco San Diego Phoenix Austin Dallas Houston Brooklyn Washington Philadelphia Detroit Minneapolis Milwaukee and yes even Chicago I hope you come you're going to learn you're going to laugh a lot I'll give you a big hug you can find out tickets and tour dates at Adam Conover net and until then I hope you watch Adam ruins everything every Tuesday at 10:00 on truTV okay I gotta go make more TV show bye [Music]

Channel: CollegeHumor

Views: 5,866,087

Rating: 4.7935553 out of 5

Keywords: Collegehumor, CH originals, comedy, sketch comedy, internet, humor, funny, sketch, trophy hunting, adam ruins everything, animal rights

Id: YUA8i5S0YMU

Length: 7min 28sec (448 seconds)

Published: Wed Sep 21 2016

Reddit Comments

[u/agencyguy]

Relevant Louis Theroux insert of first world mentality vs African hunting culture and conservation:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZVTmt1pa7xI

[u/MachoMacchio]

If you enjoyed this, Radiolab did an excellent 50 minute program on this: http://www.radiolab.org/story/rhino-hunter/

It's the actual in-depth story about that aggressive rhino tag that was quickly mentioned in this video at the 2:40.

[u/Elitus1337]

This is probably the most surprising one they've done, and that's saying something.

[u/Treeality]

Do Ostriches really not put their head in the ground? Huh. You learn something new everyday!

[u/JewJewJubes]

Adam the rare Pepe

[u/GamingWithBilly]

Just to add to this, many times hunters don't even get the chance to actually collect on their purchased tags to hunt. Out of the last 9 years I've hunted, I've only taken 1 deer. That's 8 years I've just thrown money into a system that I never got to collect on. And when you're hunting for sport, you tend to pass up smaller trophies in hopes of getting a big trophy.

My deer tag is $26.50 (not including a hunting license). Say on average hunters only get a deer every 4 years. And every year there are 73,000 in one state (that number actually comes from All of Oregon's 2015 controlled deer hunts). And only 1/4 of those hunters get a deer per the avg 4 years. That could be about $1,450,875 in free money going toward wildlife conservation, in which none of that money led to a dead deer.

Anyways, that's just a generalization of the whole hunting system with crude numbers. I'm sure if you wanted to dig around in your own state websites, you can find out exactly how much it benefits wildlife.

[u/HuntingThrowaway98]

Storytime. My dad is a big trophy hunter and I have lots of interesting things to add to this. First, this is all correct. Hunting keeps these trophy animals alive more than you would think. My dad was in Zimbabwe when all the stuff with Cecil the lion went down. The guides he was staying with were talking about how bad this was for them, as it attracts A LOT of native attention to what is actually a good thing for the lions. One of the biggest arguments they had was that the locals REALLY don't like it when the lions eat their kids... They said if they ban lion hunting they are fully ready to set out poisoned meat and kill off all the lions. If they are no longer worth $50k each there is no reason to let them kill their kids. The locals there do not care about the lion population at all other than that they are worth so much money. Hunting literally is what keeps almost all lions alive. Also, these guys have some serious street justice. My dad said he would be amazed if the guides that hunted Cecil are still alive. They are very very ruthless.

Now about elephants. My dad has gone elephant hunting on "damage permits" twice. It's actually pretty cool how they do this. First, they only kill the old tuskless cows. These are very mean because they have no tusks and have to fight that much harder, they have a big negative impact on the herd. Next, they are only allowed to shoot them at night when they get on locals farms. Elephants are extremely smart, however, extremely big. At night they go out and eat the locals farms and even walking across the farm really hurts the locals only food supply. So they wait until the elephants are in a locals farm and then they go out and kill one tuskless cow. This scares the others off and they remember. They normally won't come back to that farm for a few months.

What's really cool is that after the hunt, all the locals in the area have heard the gunshots and know what's going on. They line up and wait. The guides cut up all the meat leaving nothing to waste and each villager is allowed to take 2 pieces. My dad took a video of this happening, it was serious business. Two armed guards stood there with AK-47s making sure you only took 2 pieces. They said this would have easily turned into a huge brawl if they didn't have the guards. This is the only meat these people will get all year. African animals are actually very scarce outside of the private land which is protected by 12-foot tall fences. All the villagers have killed and eaten all the wildlife they are able to catch/hunt with bows/spears. Also if the there were tusks still under the skin 100% of its value went to their local schools, which is quite a lot.

So TLDR; The locals will poison all the lions if they are no longer allowed to sell hunts, as they eat their kids which they don't like. Also hunting elephants on damage tags: helps the herd, protects the local farms and feeds the locals the only meat they get all year.

[u/aWintergreen]

That organizations name is so long their acronym has an acronym inside of it.

[u/katbutt22]

She should be brown, you know a female ostrich, not a male