Recently I came across an article that reminded me of a situation that occurred last year:

http://www.bizjournals.com/dayton/blog/morning_call/2012/10/one-year-after-exotic-animals-escape.html

A man in Ohio who owned many exotic animals decided to let them all loose one day before committing suicide.  The animals wandered through the suburban neighborhoods, and 50 of the 56 escaped animals were shot by authorities to prevent civilian injury.  The animals killed included 18 Bengal tigers, 17 lions, 6 black bears, 3 mountain lions, 2 grizzly bears, a baboon, and 2 wolves.  The number of animals killed by authorities, most being endangered animals, angered me.  In the first place, the man should not have even been allowed to own the animals.  Ohio laws on exotic animals made it easier for people to own a tiger than a squirrel.  I was upset at the number of dead animals, especially because I think that authorities should have tranquilized the animals before shooting them, and at least try to save them.  I understand they presented a threat to the people, but as long as the citizens stayed in their homes, they would be safe.  This article, posted  a year after that incident, talked about new laws that have been passed in Ohio that restrict the buying and selling of exotic animals in the state.  It makes me happy to know that people are doing things in the government to prevent such incidents from happening again.  

Another thing I have a major issue with is sport hunting.  Though I don't generally like hunting and eating the catch, since there is plenty of meat in supermarkets that gets wasted every day because it isn't bought, at least hunting and eating the meat is better than hunting and keeping the parts for trophies and nothing else.  Images such as the ones below horrify me, because people cause the deaths of innocent animals with families and lives of their own for pure pleasure.  I find that idea barbaric.  It is one thing to kill an animal and at least eat its meat, like many deer hunters do, but another totally different thing to kill an animal merely to hang its head on a wall of trophy heads.  I hope to do something to end the reckless allowance of sport hunting when I grow up.  The animals usually don't even have a chance against the long range guns and technology hunters are given.  Often they have babies that they never get home to, family groups they help sustain.  Personally, as a vegetarian from a whole family of vegetarians, I don't see the necessity to eating meat, however, I in no way condemn it.  I just believe that meat should be respected the way Native Americans respected it.  The animals should be respected, nothing should be wasted, and it must be understood that in order to sustain your life you had to take another.  The way the settlers in the United States treated bison, killing millions so their carcasses piled up in mounds 15 times the height of a human disgusts me. 

 

http://www.alaskatrophyadventures.com/hunt04.htm

http://lionexploitation.wordpress.com/canned-lion-hunting/legal-status-in-south-africa/

 entire tourist families would pose next to dead giraffes in several national parks in Africa in order to take home pictures of themselves next to the "trophy giraffes" they brought down. http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2089806/The-giraffe-hunters-pay-10-000-shoot-gentle-giants-guns-bows-sport.html