Robert Borsak - Australia's Sarah Palin? Do you want him in your Parliament?

I wonder if Australia's now most infamous elephant trophy hunter, Robert Borsak, took the tusks home for mounting on his wall?

Trophy hunting is immoral poaching. The only difference between poaching and trophy hunting is when a country's dictator, like Robert Mugabe, proclaims poaching legal. It harks to the 19th Century when native animals were exploited as 'game' and 'vermin'. Elephants in Africa and India were colonists 'big game', so they used an 'elephant gun' - the tool of a brave hero hunter on horseback facing a charging elephant herd in the wild. Such is the nostalgic aspiration, so our hero hunter can convey thrilling African adventure stories of stalking and killing at fire side chats then point to his proud mounted trophy on his loungeroom wall.

Borsak "killed several (in Zimbabwe), including a bull elephant he shot in the head from a distance of six paces." [Andrew Clennell, SMH 21-Jul-09]. The spoils of a 'big-game safari'. I wonder if Borsak just stepped out of the 4WD, walked up to this inherently shortsighted elephant downwind; the elephant stationary and unsure of what was going on; then Borsak shot it in the head at close range. Borsak the big game hunter! In this beautiful savannah country, home of the bush elephants, what of the elephant family this bull elephant leaves behind?

Borsak couldn't care. Brutal, corrupt Mugabe couldn't care.

The African Elephant is the largest land mammal on Earth. Poaching and human encroachment since the late 1970's has decimated the 1.3 million odd numbers to around 600,000 today. Scientists had estimated in the 1980s that had no protective measures been taken, the African bush elephant and forest elephant would be extinct in the wild by 1995.

Under the 1973 conservation agreement 'The Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora, (CITES) the African Elephant is partially protected against poaching and over-exploitation through international trade. But the agreements are voluntary and CITES does not protect the elephant against habitat loss, nor does it explicitly address market demand, nor does it provide for ground enforcement.

"The International Union for the Conservation of Nature (IUCN) has listed the African elephant as near threatened, while the UN Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species (CITES) of Flora and Fauna has placed it under its Appendix I and II. CITES Appendix I includes species threatened with extinction, with trade related to these species only permitted in exceptional circumstance, while Appendix II encompasses species not necessarily threatened with extinction, but in which trade must be controlled to avoid uses incompatible with their survival." 'Save the Elephants'

In Chad, the African Bush Elephant officially protected, but ground enforcement of poaching is less than effective because of limited because resources, money and manpower. In southeastern Chad in 2006, aerial surveys confirmed the poaching slaughter of over 100 elephant near Zakouma National Park, a region with decades-old history of elephant poaching. [See report by conservationist J. Michael Fay and National Geographic photographer Michael Nichols highlighting the poaching threat to this - the world's largest remaining concentration of elephants." Play the video:
'Ivory Wars, Last Stand in Zakouma'

Trophy hunting harks back to the 19th century and continues today, thanks to demands from the Borsaks of the world. According to the World Wildlife Fund on the Status of African Elephants, Absalom Shigwedha, The Namibian, July 9, 2009, "Large quantities of African ivory are still finding their way into illegal markets in Africa and beyond, in places such as Asia. 'Status of African Elephants'

Time is overdue for the international community, the UN with The African Union to establish strong and effective laws and funding to protect the African Elephant from poaching (illegal or dubiously otherwise), from ivory trade and from habitat loss.