Safari Club International supports legal, regulated trophy hunting and condemns criminal poaching of wildlife.
Hunting and poaching are not the same. One is good for wildlife and the other is bad.
Yet there seems to be confusion in the media about the difference between legal hunting and illegal poaching – the two terms, when used interchangeably, are used improperly.
There is a video circulating in the mainstream and social media that shows a father and son criminally poaching a sow black bear and her cubs in Alaska. The crimes were recorded on video because the mother bear was collared and part of a study.
“SCI wants to set the record straight,” said SCI President Paul Babaz. “What is shown on that video is not hunting and the two men in the video are not members of SCI. SCI members are ethical hunters. Those two men are convicted criminals.”
In fact, SCI and its members as well as SCI Foundation engage in effective wildlife conservation projects around the world, including bear conservation.
Because it is based on scientifically supported sustainable use of wildlife resources; legal, regulated trophy hunting results in enhanced wildlife populations. Poaching merely kills animals, and in extreme cases threatens entire species.
Legal, regulated trophy hunting never threatens species. In other words, legal hunting is the solution, while illegal poaching is the problem. Using the two terms interchangeably adds to the problem.
“SCI members and other ethical hunters around the world are proud of what we do to help assure healthy wildlife populations for now and in the future,” SCI President Babaz noted. “As much as we work to conserve wildlife resources, we work as diligently in our opposition to the criminal poaching of them.”
