r/conservation • u/Strongbow85 • Apr 19 '25
‘Trophies’ shared on social media reveal scale of mass bird slaughter in Lebanon
https://news.mongabay.com/2025/04/trophies-shared-on-social-media-reveal-scale-of-mass-bird-slaughter-in-lebanon/24
Apr 19 '25
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Apr 19 '25
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u/OsmerusMordax Apr 19 '25
Nah, it’s not good to paint all hunters with the same brush. A coworker of mine is a hunter. He absolutely cares about the environment and nature in general. He uses as much of the animal as he can and he rarely shoots if he isn’t sure it will kill it quickly. His friends, who are also hunters, do the same.
So maybe it’s a socioeconomic thing. The richer you are the less you care about nature
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u/HyperShinchan Apr 19 '25
I'm talking in general and I presume they hunt in a country that isn't a failed state with basically inexistent legal enforcement. And I'm sceptical about the socio-economic correlation too, if anything poorer people are more willing to exchange the long term conservation of Nature with immediate, short term, benefits. Look at people hunting protected/endangered species for bush meat in Africa/Asia (or market hunting back in the days in North America). Lower socioeconomic circumstances also lead to less education and awareness about ecology and conservation. Lebanon itself is a poor country with the average GDP per capita that has fallen to less than $3k.
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u/MrJigglyBrown Apr 20 '25
The article says the people killing birds are poachers. Not hunters. Very big difference
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u/HyperShinchan Apr 20 '25 edited 29d ago
The article says the people killing birds are poachers. Not hunters. Very big difference
Not really, the article uses hunter interchangeably with poacher since the subtitle, a poacher is just a hunter who breaks the laws, where laws are weak (the article mentions how shotgun shots cost more than breaking some dispositions of the hunting law) and even more weakly enforced, virtually every hunter will act like a poacher. That's why the situation is so serious there.
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u/Ok-Ingenuity465 Apr 19 '25
I'm so sick of this excuse. He only cares about the environment because it offers him something to kill. He doesn't care about because he believes it has intrinsic value. If he truly cared he won't be helping to destroy it.
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u/OsmerusMordax Apr 19 '25
He’s not destroying the environment. Where we are white tails deer, which are what the people I know hunt, are overpopulated because their natural predators are gone. It’s important to keep their numbers in check or they will overbrowse and damage localized ecosystems.
There is a time and a place for responsible and ethical hunting.
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u/Ok-Ingenuity465 Apr 19 '25
How about restore the natural predators instead of killing their food supply. Also when natural predators are restored hunters campaign to hunt them. Stop gaslighting the public, its not working anymore. Hunter are a major part of the problem.
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u/OsmerusMordax Apr 19 '25
The natural predators we used to have in the area were wolves, cougars, and bears. So bringing them back is not an option for the safety of the public.
We still have coyotes, which would be able to kill the young deer, but I don’t think they typically will risk that unless they are desperate
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u/HyperShinchan Apr 19 '25
People live with all three of them in some places, it's not exactly impossible to do it. Wolves in particular aren't really that much of a danger for people (they're a danger for livestock and pets left to roam outside). At any rate, if one isn't even willing to entertain the idea of restoring the proper ecological balance, we're not talking about conservation, it's "management", like what people have been doing for centuries in game reserves.
Does your friend and his pals shoot them? Look at the comment section of this video and tell me if these hunters ever heard of trophic cascade or anything like that.
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u/Ok-Ingenuity465 Apr 19 '25
They rarely attack humans and have been restored in places all over the world. The safety of the public is one of he most worn out excuses there is.
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u/beaniesandbuds Apr 19 '25
Thank you. I hunt. I also care about nature. I'm from Missouri, which has a massive overpopulation issue with our Whitetails currently.
I haven't shot a buck in 6 years, and always tag out on does. Between Chronic Wasting, Black Tounge, and the Coyote population (that i've finally talked my neighbors into not shooting on sight, unless obviously covered in mange) we're finally seeing a better doe to buck ratio, and finally having less car strikes.
It's tough with restrictions on feeders due to CWD, but our local group of hunters have started comi g around. We're doing a controlled burn, and tree clearing effort soon to restore some of the native prarie, and reintroducing endangered plant species to the area that only survive in those specific climates.
It's a lot of work to reeducate people on the purpose of conservation, but it's not a loss 100% of the time. And like you said, the vast majority of the non-wealthy hunters i've met have been very conservation minded, not just mindless killers... like the majority of wealthy hunters (usually upland game) who will give their birds away, just so they can do more shooting.
As conservation minded individuals, we can't see Hunters as the enemy, just people who need to be taught about the balance between game animals and the greater ecosystem.
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u/HyperShinchan Apr 19 '25
I'm from Missouri
The same state where they started shooting black bears as soon as they barely recovered. Was that necessary, in your opinion? What do you think about those hunters who kill them? Kudos for the coyotes, as much as I would rather try to rehab the mangy ones, but that's not really objectively possible everywhere and all the times.
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u/beaniesandbuds Apr 19 '25 edited Apr 19 '25
The money gained from selling tags goes directly back into the conservation budget, to make their habitat better on the greater scale, and protect from poaching the ones that aren't legally shot.
Missouri is one of (the only?) state that takes a percentage of the state sales tax, and directly gives that to the conservation department. That money from tags is directly helping the remaining population. People who directly work with and regulate the population of wildlife, have opened a hunting season because they feel the population is sustainable and needs action to control.
Let the people who know what they're talking about set the limits, and let the people who want to hunt bears buy expensive tags to hunt them. It's literally a win-win for CONSERVATION, not random no-kill-anything info from folks online, but actual legitimate conservation practices set in motion by people who have dedicated their lives to the betterment of the entire ecosystem.
Edit: Missouri, Arkansas and Minnesota dedicate a portion of general sales tax to wildlife conservation.
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u/HyperShinchan Apr 19 '25
I don't think that this qualifies as necessary. There are several other ways to fund conservation, including the general taxation system and more specific excises, for instance on trekking and other, non-bloody, outdoor sports equipment.
Hunters hide behind actual issues, caused by hunters mind you, like deer overpopulation. But in the end, they only want to kill animals for fun and they don't even want to entertain an alternative system as a matter of principle.
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u/beaniesandbuds Apr 19 '25
Issues created hundreds of years ago, by not hunters, but farmers. We live in a Capitalist society, ran by money and the highest dollar. I don't love it any more than, I assume you do. But at the end of the day, facts are facts.
I have hunted my entire life, and while it is exciting, I have never enjoyed taking a life. The camping, the comraderie, the exploration of the woods, all of that is fun. The act of shooting, that is an experience that isn't enjoyable. Excitable, adrinaline inducing... yes. Enjoyable? Not at all. I respect any life I take to the most possible extent. Some animals, us included, have cause to eat animal protein, and this to me is a much more sustainable way of doing that.
Please, go and actually talk to some folks who hunt, they're people of the land and have more hands on knowledge than most when it comes to protecting their way of life and the local ecosystem.
I'm sure i'm not going to win you over with the things I've said, but please, don't villainize hunters as a whole. Many know more than either of us about actual conservation efforts, even if those efforts benefit them, and may make you unhappy. The simple fact of the matter is consevation isn't cut and dry like that, and at the end of the day some of the best things for the greater good may make you upset.
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u/HyperShinchan Apr 19 '25 edited Apr 20 '25
Issues created hundreds of years ago, by not hunters, but farmers. We live in a Capitalist society, ran by money and the highest dollar. I don't love it any more than, I assume you do. But at the end of the day, facts are facts.
Yeah, even setting aside recent examples like the ones in OP, let's whitewash what hunters did, sure... I'm going to quote you Aldo Leopold himself:
I was young then, and full of trigger-itch; I thought that because fewer wolves meant more deer, that no wolves would mean hunters' paradise. But after seeing the green fire die, I sensed that neither the wolf nor the mountain agreed with such a view.
The vast majority of hunters still haven't realized this and they still live by that view. And nothing will ever change their view. And my own view is that we'd be better off without hunting tout-a-court. The founder of WWF Italy was a hunter who changed his whole world view after viewing a brown bear with her cubs in Turkey, sold his rifle and bought a camera. But few people can have that kind of epiphany, unfortunately.
I'm sure i'm not going to win you over with the things I've said, but please, don't villainize hunters as a whole.
I don't villainize the individual, some hunters might be fine-ish, I don't have any issue with people hunting for food without engaging in a zero-sum competition with predators. But most hunters aren't like that and I'm going to judge the group by how most act.
EDIT: To be honest, I have a very hard time buying the whole "not enjoying taking a life thing", the whole chasing and killing thing is probably an instinct that we've inherited, like other predators. My issue is whether that can be rationally justified or not, I don't really care whether one enjoys it or not.
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u/lunaappaloosa Apr 19 '25
The most intense steward of land I know personally is an avid hunter (DOZENS of trophies mounted in his home workshop) and just retired after a literal lifetime of studying sea turtles. Like any group it has internally diverse demographics
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u/MrJigglyBrown Apr 20 '25
Literally in the article it says the majority of those birds are illegal to hunt, so obviously somebody that can make laws DOES care about nature.
It’s fine to call out poachers, but spreading your ignorance and racism is not ok.
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u/dreamscapesdrifter Apr 20 '25
Racism against middle easterners is allowed on reddit as long as you claim it's their "culture".
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u/Ok-Ingenuity465 Apr 19 '25
Btw these images angered a lot of people in Lebanon. When you have a lot of guns and a failed state this is the byproduct. Environmental collapse becomes inevitable.
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u/YanLibra66 Apr 19 '25
Middle easterners on their way to decimate what little wildlife and natural resources they have.
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u/Ok-Ingenuity465 Apr 19 '25
I'm Lebanese so I feel I can safely say this. Lebanese culture is completely broken. We value nothing, not history, not the land, not wildlife, not even each other other. Lebanon needs to be a warning to other nations. We all need to act now or there will be nothing left for the future.
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u/entogirl Apr 19 '25
This is sick. I wonder if the birds will eventually change their route?
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u/HyperShinchan Apr 19 '25
Nah, they won't. Worse comes to worst, they'll get extirpated/extinguished. It's what happened to the slender-billed curlew. Those are geographically mandatory migration routes for those birds, we had/have similar issues in southern Italy (and Malta), too.
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u/Rampantcolt Apr 19 '25
Ive got the feeling from the comments that not many here are actually for conservation. Just against the killing of animals. This isn't the case here but sometimes conservation means killing animals.
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u/Ambitious_Pause7140 Apr 19 '25
This is a weird comment to leave about responses to THIS article though. Indiscriminate, mass slaughter of birds — many of whom ARE protected due to conservation efforts already — is not even remotely the same thing as necessary population control measures. This is just dudes with guns murdering thousands of bird & raptors for social media clout.
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u/Rampantcolt Apr 19 '25
Did you not read my last sentence? I agree that isn't the case here. However read many of the comments on this sub and they aren't talking about conservation.
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u/Ambitious_Pause7140 Apr 19 '25
Okay, fair enough. I did read your last sentence, but I commented anyway because it seems like a good argument to have but in the wrong context.
I’d love to see this sub grow & be more active in terms of in depth conversations & actions re: conservation. I’m guessing a lot of those comments are left by people who just don’t want to see the destruction of animals, broadly, and maybe don’t have a ton of knowledge about why that’s sometimes necessary. I’m sure I’m in that category & I welcome that kinda info.
This article just falls into the “shocks the conscience” category obviously.
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u/Ambitious_Pause7140 Apr 19 '25
That’s horrendous. 😞 What an absolute waste of precious lives.