'Mane' Monday

          It’s ‘Mane’ Monday everyone and first, I want you to take a moment and admire this handsome lion from the Pittsburgh Zoo.  He died a few years ago (of old age) but he was always a favorite there.

          Finished?

          Good, let’s paw along…

          An interesting thing happened a couple of weeks ago. That nut in the White House (and we all know who I mean don’t we?) adjusted the ban on elephant and even lion trophies.  It didn’t matter that everyone protested this idea a few months ago and that everyone still is ticked off about the horrible way Cecil the lion died, he just had to do it.  After all, we couldn’t let anything Barack Obama put into place stand, could we? Besides, we couldn’t have the president’s son’s whining,
“But-but dad you promised I could kill an elephant-wahhhh!”

          (Note: Before this continues, this piece is in no way to celebrate Barack Obama’s commitment to saving nature or wildlife.  Obama had a lot of time and ability to do a lot more when he was in office and didn’t.  Thanks to a lot of laziness on his party, we had the Cecil incident.  So, again, don’t misunderstand this, Obama failed here big time, but he did put something in place. It was a crumb, but you must acknowledge it was there.  However, it was a shame Cecil the lion had to get killed before he acted.)

          Back to the main issue…

          Everyone seems to have a presence on Twitter but I’m stating the obvious.  With that being said, I remember the overall outrage when the president decided, out of nowhere it seemed, to lift Obama’s trophy hunting ban.  The outrage itself was a welcome sight, and it poured out hard enough that Trump, at least for a bit, changed his mind.  However, his goodwill didn’t last, and the doors have been open, yet again for more trophy hunting horror stories.  Now, since I have thrown all of that out there, here’s my question for you…

          Why did the outrage disappear?  Come to think of it, here’s another question, why did all of us (suddenly) decide to trust Trump on this?

          Look, I don’t have to throw out the numbers.  All of you are smart enough to realize that lions and elephants (along with many, many more types of animals) are in trouble.  A lot of you also know that there are a lot of rich people in America that seem to get some kind of cheap thrill out of trophy hunting, especially since a large group of these animals have declining populations.  This is all common knowledge, yet I’m baffled by our overall attitude.  We just kind of shrug our shoulders and move on.  What exactly are a lot of you thinking out there?  Do you think there’s an overabundance of lions, elephants and zebras that they’re never going to disappear?  Haven’t we learned anything from the demise of the Northern White Rhino?  I mean what’s it going to take for a lot of you to realize that people’s mania for trophy hunting is upsetting nature’s balance? 

          I throw out these questions not for sarcasm but out of general interest.  Let’s cut to the basics.  I want to live in a world where we have a nice balance of zoos, nature reserves and animals running free in the wild.  I want to be able to think that a lion has staying power.  I want to see ‘Mane’ Mondays infinite in people’s minds. So, I plead with all of you- the next time you see Mr. Trump or one of his groupies tweet about allowing trophies imported into this country again- go back to being mad and stay mad.  Do you really want more ‘Cecil’ stories to pop up?  That’s where this casual attitude is leading us and if we keep it up this gorgeous cat will permanently disappear.