Commercial breeding for hunting

lechweoryx

lechweoryx

Well-Known Member
I am coming across more and more websites of ranches which are breeding wildlife and selling them on to hunting ranches. I am very confused why they have for sale endangered animals like addax, Arabian oryx and Scimitar-horned oryx. Shouldn't all these rare species be part of captive breeding programmes to repopulate the wild instead of been bred to be killed. I thought every specimin of these rare animals was important.
 
Well those 3 species breed so well that all the males can't always be replaced properly so...
 
lechweoryx said:
sale endangered animals like addax, Arabian oryx and Scimitar-horned oryx.
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There are now tens of thousands of exotic hoofed animals bred in ranches in south USA, including 100s of these 3 species. This is several times more than managed zoo and wild populations of addax and scimitar-horned oryx.

Ultimately, the problem is lack of well managed and safe reserves in North Africa and Arabia to put them back. Together with limited number of zoo spaces for antelope worldwide.

Whether breeding (any) animals for game hunting is OK, I don't know. There are serious issues about conditions on transport and shooting.

Ultimately, zoos and conservation organizations need to pull heads out of the sand and collaborate with commercial sector of exotic animal trade - game ranching, exotic bird trade etc. I think ignoring farms or calling to close all farms is counter-productive (and simply not realistic). Game ranches have more spaces than zoos can dream about ever. Not to mention valuable expertise. Perhaps better would be to identify more serious and ethical sector of the farms and involve them in conservation.
 
Steve Robinson said:
Want to conserve something????

Put a value on it.
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Very true.



Keep in mind that however distasteful we might find the reason for their being bred, breeding for hunting does encourage the propagation of large numbers of these antelope that would likely not be bred otherwise. It is in the interests of the breeders to keep the population going.

So they are acting to maintain as stable and healthy as possible a population of an endangered species. Maybe not my favourite flavour of conservation, but it can be very handy.
 
Alot of these places have better breeding records than most zoo's. If you are breeding a animal to then shoot it you must hold a healthy breeding population as hunters are after strong healthy animals for trophies.

If a animal ever becomes extinct in the wild these places could be of great importance after all you would be able to buy the animal alive as well as dead.
 
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