the last resort

a friend of mine directed my attention this article on the bbc news page.

when i was 11 i started attending the y.o. ranch adventure camp during the summers. it was paradise for a kid like me. lots of outdoorsy stuff, no pressure arts and crafts, kooky hippy counselors, and furry exotic animals.

i started working as a counselor when i was 15 and started to see some of the other goings on of the camp world as well as those of the ranch itself. while i still had a blast, it became ever more bothersome that the the ranch and camp focused so much on hunting. now i have heard the arguments from many sides....hunting can be important and done in an ethical manner. but the sad reality is that many people just want to kill something they think is pretty and would look nice in thier living room. this was especially disturbing coming from the younguns who would ask how much it cost to kill an animal everytime we passed one on the ranch or on safari (they even said this about our giraffes!). the idea that no reverence was being passed down in these hunting families for other members of the biological community and conservation really bothered me.

the statement one of these men made about preserving some of these exotic animals only to kill them makes me think they are really missing the point of conservation.

sigh. i guess when you call someplace paradise you really should kiss it goodbye.