Chasseur,

As I said, I do agree with you on most points you made! The culling teams I saw in Africa are certainly the most skilled to wipe out an entire family. You are correct shooting cows is more dangerous than bulls (my two tuskless cows and one bull hunt in Zimbabwe confirmed this). It is even more dangerous when you must shoot the whole herd.

However, I am contrary to culling for a totally different perspective. I don't agree with the idea the small herds should be killed at once. Yes, it will keep elephants tame for pictures in NP. But I moraly cannot accept it. It is wrong from the African culture and moral point of view.

As I said, I totaly agree with all your arguments on efficiency and safety. But elephants should not be killed the most efficient way neither should the elephant be hunted the safest way.

In other words, I don't dispute it is the most efficient KILLING PROTOCOL, I just plain don't agree with it.

Regarding tying shoelaces, watch out, scientists such as Chyintia Moss can do much more than that!

Three scientists: Moss, Douglas Hamilton and Leackey were able to overide the entire culture of the Kenyan people. She was able to order the murder of Wakambas and Wadorobo people and became a hero for doing it!!! These type of people ordered the eviction of the Waliangulus from Tsavo National Parks and latter ordered them to be shot when they returned to Tsavo (Leackey policy on shoot on sight).

At the same time Cyntia camped and lived in these National Parks, in the homelands and hunting grounds of these people she helped to kill, with a lot of money raised from books telling urban people the story of elephants she named. The africans she killed did not have names!!!

Scientists writte from their cultural point of view. Most of the "elephant specialists" are fully aware that if they are in favor of hunting they wont get money from National Geographic, from the Amercian Science Foundation, the World Wide Fund, etc. They know they are not going to get a TV documentary on the air. They are boicotted. And so they just don't exist.

Scientists, like anybody else, tie their shoe laces in the way their parents did teach them. They are the product of their cultures. And the urban New Yorker culture will not save the Africa wilderness nor the elephants.

The NewYorker/London urban culture will create an environmental world order called "Totems and Temples".

"Totems": are animals that these scientists's religion, and their testaments (which they call "scientific papers") teach the kids should not be hunted nor eaten! Yes, they want to tell us which animals shall be eaten (fish, chicken) and which shall not.

"Temples" are the National Parks, and in some Kenyan Parks the visitor is not allowed to touch his feet on the ground!!! Yes, in several Parks you shall not leave the car and put one foot on the African earth. These hunting grounds stollen from the hunting cultures are not to be touched. It is called non-consumptive use of nature!!!

NON-CONSUMPTIVE means: you fly a jet that burns 30 tons of fuel on the upper atmosphere (destroying ozone), fills the land with trash, build huge hotels, build roads, drive thourgh the parks, take millions of tons of iron from mines to make cameras, and waste thousands of gallons of the most toxic chemicals to make cameras batteries and developing films. And then you conclude: we are non-consumptive turists!!!

These scientists themselves don't belive in what they say. Neither should we listen to half of what they say.

I don't accept scientists with such a dogmatic religion.

I don't accept scientists like some of my colleges who shoot animals for museums but in front of everybody are totally against the killing of any animal.

And it has all to do with culture, which political power, with twisted moral values from those who don't belong on the land, who dislike the wilderness and who created their culture in skyscrapers.

I love the greates Philosopher/Antropologist of the past two centuries, the great French Levi-Strauss. What he said about culture and progress should be explainde to those "scientists".

Dante