Joe Rogan - The Truth About Trophy Hunting

This and everybody else wearing suit and ties and I'm like do they give you grief for dressing like that Not to my face, but maybe later fucking Oregon hillbilly. Yes, probably And so yeah, I don't know. I don't know why I'm on there. I don't who contacted you Second or the interior apartment so like you're in the middle of a run running up Mount Pitska Yeah, no, I got a call Washington DC Shut the fuck up for the guy. I'm like, oh my god This can't be good because it was after okay, so Trump put out the tweet and he said something like he doesn't see how hunting for elephants is Conservation or or helps wildlife. It's a it's a horror show doesn't you know elephants or any other animals something like that I was like what in the hell is that? What are we talking about? You know elephants talk about elephants? That's fine. Whatever but he said or any other animal. Yeah, so I took that tweet I I posted it and addressed it and I don't know if he saw it I don't really know but soon after that I got a call for this thing and so because I was you know, I know just from hunting in Africa and how it works and That hunting is necessary over there if the animals are gonna survive if that's a complicated story Yeah, complicated situation, but people people don't want to hear that now and so Here's an example of in Tanzania. There was the largest hunting concession And I'm trying to think how big it was I can't put the number on how big it was but they'd been in business for 40 years So a hunting concession is is they have you know hunters from? usually America Go over there. They pay for that for the access to the land and they pay for the right to hunt these animals So this place had been in business for 40 years They went out of business because of this import ban Obama put an import ban on the ivory of elephants Coming back as trophies, but also by lines. Yeah, the lion thing was right after cease of the line And it was done as a political measure, right? So he put a ban on you can go over there and hunt them still because you know, we're from America We can't say what's legal in Africa But he can say what he did was say we can hunt them whatever because I can't control that but you can't bring them home So nobody's gonna go and spend 75,000 kill an elephant or 50,000 to kill a lion if they can't bring it home, right? so that basically shut down hunting and This Outfit in Tanzania that had business business for 40 years. They closed they went out of business about I Think it was about two months ago now And what happens is when they don't have a the concession they can't pay for that land It is given back to the people and for us here. They'll be like, oh, that's great You gave the land back to the people no It's not good to give the land back to the people there because that people can't do anything They don't have any money. They don't just like so what happens is a poachers as soon as the hunting concession moves out poachers move in and Kill every animal the only reason the animals that were being protected in that hunting concession Was because there was hunting in there these this outfit would spin I think in the last three years They spent over two million dollars on anti poaching efforts So two million dollars to protect basically their investment, which is those animals that were in there Yeah, they'd kill a couple because because elephants were hunted and they ran the hunts and probably lions but by and large they're protecting The majority of the herd well, give me that give me those numbers again Because you were giving me the numbers on elephants legally and illegally killed right? So so and I asked this back at our first international wildlife conservation council meeting and this you know PETA was there and all these animal rights activists. I don't want to say psychos that could be disrespectful But anyway these extremists were there and so it was kind of heated in some point some cases But I did ask this question how many elephants are killed legally in Africa each year? And the number is about 400 400 to kill legally in the entire continent. Yeah Yeah, so big area so big that you can get America the United States of America You can also get all the European countries. You could fit a lot of shit in Africa Africa is huge huge place Yeah, and so there's some there's some areas where you're not gonna hunt elephants because there's not there's not enough it or They don't live there, but there's some areas where there's too many elephants. It's just yeah, that's what's confusing to people people here Elephants are going extinct. Well, yeah, they are in some places Yeah, and then in other places the problem is with local farmers They have these plots of land and the elephants come in and eat everything and destroy their land and they can't do anything about it What are you gonna do this? How the how big is an elephant? How many thousands of pounds 10,000 pounds or some shit? I don't even know they're huge. They're huge. They don't do a goddamn thing about it They don't care about elephants. They don't the people that they're like the elephant is ruining my crop. Yeah, that's what I need to eat Yeah, I'm gonna kill the elephant. It's gonna lay there and rot. Yeah, there's these these people are starving Yeah, it's there's a food chain going on there and humans Here where we are we're we're so far above the food chain that we're like sitting in a platform looking down watching it They're they're embedded it their ground level though in there. It's it's the whole It's a whole analogy of you can't have first world world people solving third world problems Yeah, that's you know, and it's just we people here have all the answers It's like you have everything you want you have you live in excess. Yeah, you're fat you have you throw food away What are you talking about? You have no idea what it's like in Africa. So there 400 elephants are killed legally 30,000 are poached a year 30,000 and the reason that's happening is because the hunting had to move out the hunting closed down or Hunting is what pays for the anti poaching efforts But when hunting money isn't there the poachers run rampant 30,000 elephants. That's why they are devastated It's such a not hunting It's such a hard thing for people to swallow because what I this is from the point of view of someone who loves wildlife I think this is what people want What they want is the humans to leave the animals alone and the animals to live in this state of bliss Where they exist perfectly and the balance of nature of predator and prey all plays out in a natural way Without people going over there and shooting elephants then sticking their tusks on their wall Yeah, I mean we've all seen those pictures of these giant fat fucks holding a rifle standing over a lion And you're like this just looks wrong. Yeah, it looks like American gluttony makes its way over to Africa and some guy Shoots a line with a rifle now He's standing on its head and he's gonna put it on his wall and yeah fat fucking house somewhere That bothers people I get it. I get it too. I mean, I'm not arguing that But you got to fix Africa first Yeah You're not trying so this idea that if you just leave all those animals alone and stop hunting them everything's gonna be fine No, they're gonna be wiped out. You got to people have to look at it pragmatically first and then idealistically because pragmatically You have to understand that these animals 20 years ago were on the verge of extinction so many different antelope so many different What we would call game animals animals that people eat were on the verge of extinction until they started Instituting these big hunting concessions and having people come in from Europe and America and hunting in Africa Then the community started to prosper because if someone's paying, you know, I don't know how much is it to shoot like a Neil guy or something like that. Maybe 1500 so think of how many of those things get shot and some of that money goes to the ranch some of that money goes to the professional hunting guys anti poaching conservation efforts and then you have Unprecedented numbers. There's more of those animals today than there have been in decades. Yeah, and it's all because people put value on them Yeah, it's all about the animals have to have value and people say no. Well the animal has value being alive It's like okay What does to you it does to you if you don't live over there if you're not pouring your children aren't starving to death a Picture of an of a lion is amazing. Okay, and that animal is beautiful. There's value in it being alive But you got to understand those people need to eat they need to work So if they're not working for the hunting concession if the hunting concession goes out of business like the largest one in Tanzania did after 40 Years, what are they gonna do? They can't go get a job at the mill, you know what I mean? There's nothing there's not industry over there. So what happens is as they some of those people and I don't know for a fact But I would I'm gonna make an educated guess if they would go from working as anti poaching Officers or helping keep the animals alive as as part of the anti poaching program Straight to poaching. Yeah. Well that that's happened back and forth both ways, right? Yeah Former poachers became anti poaching officers when the opportunity presented itself and they were great ones because they knew how it worked I knew where the weaknesses were and that saved animals, but it's just like It's it's sad because that you know that last two months without that hunting concession there without the anti poaching Program in place I guarantee it's been a slaughter The animals that were being protected are now just being slaughtered by poachers And again, the difference between looking at things pragmatically and looking at things idealistically idealistically We would like all those people in Africa to have plenty of food and plenty of opportunity for employment and plenty of things to do with their life, but they don't yeah, you know and the the situation that Had emerged with these hunting concessions is superior to the situation that's in place now Yeah, and it's also superior for the animals themselves including the lions in Zimbabwe They had to kill look this up Jamie See if you could because they had to call I think it was something along the lines of 200 lions recently because they had Decimated the undulate population because they weren't kept in check All right Because the undulate the way these the balance of nature works out is you have to have a balance between Predator and prey. Yeah, the only way to keep the balance of predator is humans. That's it The only thing that exists unless they keep yeah Zimbabwe wild-rive reserve will call 200 lions to control a population Explosion claiming hunters have been scared off by the outcry over Cecil the lion Yeah, the whole thing is so weird because what people just jump on it, you know that you watch the Lion King Oh Simba, no, don't kill Simba and oh see so he's got a name and all this craziness It got to such a weird point where there was this discussion about Cecil's brother That Cecil's brother got a riddle Jericho. Look. Oh my god They killed Jericho and then people were relieved because they found it was a different lion and it wasn't Cecil's brother Jericho So this is like they're watching a goddamn reality show. It's like keeping up with the Kardashians. Yeah in Africa Yeah, will you give a shit? What the fucking name of the the African? Lion is yeah, you're crazy. It's not Jericho. Oh, it's it's it's Michael the lion. So it's okay. Yeah, that's crazy It's still a fucking lion, but this shows you this first world view of This wildlife situation that is not ideal by any stretch of the imagination I think part of it like with that the whole cease of the lion thing it gave people a purpose It's like oh, I have something to stand for I got I have a purpose now and that's where I know people are struggling out They're finding what's my purpose? Yeah, am I doing you know and they're spinning their wheels? They don't I don't know what they do, but that gave them something to fight for Yeah, and it wasn't right. It didn't help anything. It hurt those 200 lions could have been $50,000 each to a hundred 10 million dollars or two it went to Zimbabwe Stayed there or or at least employed people But no, they were killed and there's no game. Yeah, it still sucks all across the board It sucks the whole situation sucks these weird high fence operations where they let lions loose And then they let them out of the cage and then people show up that day and the lions don't know what the fuck's going On and they shoot this line and then stand up that sucks, too Yeah, I don't like that the whole thing is weird. It's it's not Look wildlife in Africa and the high fence wildlife It's not ideal by any stretch of the imagination and these animals that were going extinct and now aren't Because people were hunting them. It's fucking strange. That's a strange balance Yeah The only reason they existed so people can come over there and shoot them like we don't I don't want that I mean, I would like them to just exist Well the thing yeah But people aren't gonna contribute that money to pay for the anti poaching just to go take a picture It's like if you go to the Missouri breaks or something like that you go hunting mule deer like Those that's what I like. I like animals that exist because they they're there. This is their spot This is where they are like if you go to the Missouri breaks and you go up into those those hills and look for Mule deer those fuckers have been there for thousands of years. I mean they have found skulls of deer of white-tailed deer in Florida that are two million years old, right? They're the exact same animal two million years ago. So for millions of years longer than there have been human beings Those things have been in that form running around North America and wherever the fuck they can that's what I like I like that too, but don't forget that hunting has played a part in keeping those numbers healthy You know the deer and the out there's more deer There's no big game animal north big game animals in North America now than there were a hundred years ago and that's through hunting and conservation that is true, but it's also because 150 years ago people went fucking ham. Yeah wiped out most of them I mean right was real bad when they were doing market hunting before refrigeration exactly Yeah, but but we've learned from that you learn. Okay, this is how this is how we need to do it This is how hunting fits in this equation and that's where you know, we talked about the international wildlife conservation council That's given me a way in to talk about a bunch of other things, too so one of those and we talked about animals in North America is Ryan Zinky who's the secretary of interior? He created this new I guess it's a bill. I'm not like this political expert. I'm a bow hunter, right? I Wear a flannel shirt and baseball hat, but he did create this I'm gonna call it a bill, but that protects the the winter That we call them wildlife corridor So it's where the animals can go from the summer summer range to the winter range where there's not going to be development there So he created that because that's how those animals like in Montana Make it through the winter right if if they're up in the summer They make it through Getting in fall and then all of a sudden winter hits they have to have a way down Into the low country to where they can their winter migration to where they can survive The snow and where they can make down and there's good feed down there if there's gas rigs or Middle mineral extraction efforts going on that impede that then they might get hung up up there and get stuck in the snow and die So he realizes that he realized the need for that he created this this new program That's going to make sure that there's no development in there It keeps those corridors open and that's that's why our numbers do so Well is because there's people like that with the vision on keeping our animals healthy with this