That’s pretty much what the guy did. He preferred something more 3D than a photo, but he also contributed much more than he would have for only a photo.

How do we save these places and animals otherwise? People need a way to pay for conservation. Gabon is about 90% rainforest, and their key financial sectors are oil extraction and mining. Take away financial incentive to preserve that forest and those animals, and the real environmental destruction will happen. It sucks, but I can’t end capitalism in Gabon, so this is what is succeeding at holding that off for right now.

And until I see anyone show this guy was actually a scumbag, I don’t see how he’s any worse than any non-vegan at least. This guy at least owned the fact he killed animals.

Hunting is something that can be fairly easy to manage. Count your animals, stop unregulated killing, see how many paying hunters you can support while still having the animal population still trend exponentially upward. Doing things like stopping global climate change and deforestation are problems many orders of magnitude larger. And it takes a ton of money away from rich people and puts it to a good cause. They could pay less to poachers to come along with and have more guaranteed success. I don’t like people killing things that they aren’t going to at least eat, but we have learned to make lemonade from the lemons, but a lot of people can’t understand that.

There will always be more, and most will probably be a bigger POS than it sounds like this guy was. I’m not mad a trophy hunter got killed. I’m neutral on that. I’m just let down so many seem to be piling on this dead guy that didn’t likely deserve this particular kind of death. Lumping this guy in with the Musk/Bezos rich types or the Epstein people doesn’t seem appropriate here from any details we have.

I usually pass over these posts and just let people do their thing in the comments, but this was just especially ugly in here and this guy really seemed low on the potentially evil guy scale. It can be hard to wrap your head around how killing animals can save animals, and I don’t ask anyone to cheer for it, but it is modern wildlife management practice. It is part of a holistic plan, and one we can have a lot of say and control over.

I would be sad to have to take part in an animal cull. This guy found some enjoyment in it and paid a ton of money to do something that ultimately benefited more animals than it hurt. For most of this guy’s life, his actions likely helped more animals than every commenter in this thread, myself included, because I know I can’t afford to give tens of thousands of dollars to my animal causes.

If people want to get mad at me for my response, I can’t likely change that no matter how reasonable I try to be, but being on both sides of the story to some extent, I feel I know a bit of what I’m talking about.

A retired game hunter in Cape Town who knows the victim said: 'Ernie has been hunting since he could hold a rifle and has many trophies from Africa and the US.

'Although many disagree with big-game hunting, all Ernie’s hunts were strictly licensed and above board and were registered as conservation in culling animal numbers.

'Ernie had booked a hunt for dwarf forest buffalo and duikers, in particular the yellow-backed duiker and, under strict licensing laws, he could not take along his own guns.

'The hunting company would supply a shotgun and cartridges for the duiker hunt.

Gabon seems to be well respected internationally for conservation. The guy killed was a winegrower and winemaking supply seller. I don’t know anything else about him, but those aren’t occupations I necessarily associate with a high evil content, but you do you. People involved say all was above board and legal. Whether folks like it or not, animals don’t fund protection, being as they have no idea what money is. Stuff like these hunts funds conservation.

The duiker is at the same level of threat as zebras, which most of us have probably had no trouble seeing. Near threatened means we have a bunch of animals left, but we need to conserve their environment moreso than the animal itself, something this guy has spent tremendous amounts of money to fund, even if it seems ass-backwards to you.

Conservation hunting is why alligators are not extinct in the US today. It works. It’s a job that takes huge amounts of money and manpower to pull off, and it needs people willing to give that money. I don’t like sport hunting. I do wild animal rescue work myself, and I also attempt to hunt one deer a year to feed our house since I think it’s more ethical than factory farming livestock.

The comments here are pretty gross. There is zero evidence this guy did anything bad, and there are accounts to the contrary. He was paying to do a job that needed to be done anyway, and he died a terrible death. He didn’t need to be there, he’d be alive if he wasn’t there, but this was a legal hunt, for conservation purposes, these hunts are part of a comprehensive plan to manage and support healthy wildlife populations, and you guys are cheering for him being crushed to death. You don’t need to feel bad, it’s part of the risk of hunting, but the gloating sure doesn’t seem called for in this case.

“There was an incident where a child fell off a Jeep because the mother was taking a selfie and the child got jostled out of the way. The guide had to jump and pick up the child – the tiger was a few feet away.”

Yeesh…

In Kenya, private safari guide Zarek Cockar thinks that the issue goes beyond mobile phones and individual behaviour to a recalibration of what we expect from a safari.

“Photographers with large lenses pushing to get onto the ground for a better angle can be far bigger offenders than someone quietly taking a photo on a phone,” he said. “The deeper issue is often poor expectation setting from the outset. If guests arrive believing wildlife encounters are about getting ever closer or capturing a dramatic shot at any cost, the guide is then placed under enormous pressure to deliver.”

My first thought was at least people with actual cameras can at least be annoying from further away, but this comment from the guide reminded me this is still a problem in a lot of areas with easy access everywhere. I’ve seen plenty of scenes where an animal will live in a readily accessible place and people just swarm the location. Just because they can take a photo further away still doesn’t necessarily make it the photo they want. People will always want better.

Ecotourism can be great, but the focus needs to be on the animals, and the tourism needs to come second. Pretty much all of these animals are “rare” because people couldn’t be bothered to leave them alone.

The new rules for Indian tiger safaris

• Visitors are now required to put their mobile phones in a box before entering a tiger reserve, or to put it on silent and keep it in their bag. Per the legal ruling, the use of mobile phones within tourism zones of core tiger habitats is not permitted.

• Roads in tiger reserves cannot be used between dusk and dawn except for emergency vehicles.

• Fringe areas around tiger reserves have restricted development plans.

These seem like basic, common sense rules. I see no problems here. It’s a good start.

Yup, that’s what did the trick. A lot of legal things I try to hunt embed the pdf, so I tried that, and I think the link was the 5th search result.

He thinks he is the normal one.

“I was standing in front of my parked car on I-684 cutting the penis out of a road killed raccoon, thinking about how weird some of my family members have turned out to be,” Kennedy wrote in the journal.

I tried skimming some other article on him filing to see if anyone else linked it, but they did not. Then I tried “kash patel court filing pdf” and after checking a few I found the link I shared that seems to be an insider law news site and they had it.

AboveTheLaw.com

Kash Patel’s $250 Million Defamation Lawsuit Looks Better With Beer Goggles

Full Complaint

18. The Article included numerous false and defamatory statements of fact concerning Director Patel, including but not limited to:

a. That Director Patel “is known to drink to the point of obvious intoxication, in many cases at the private club Ned’s in Washington, D.C., while in the presence of White House and other administration staff.”

b. That Director Patel “is also known to drink to excess at the Poodle Room in Las Vegas, where he frequently spends parts of his weekends.”

c. That “[e]arly in his tenure, meetings and briefings had to be rescheduled for later in the day as a result of his alcohol-fueled nights.”

d. That “[o]n multiple occasions in the past year, members of his security detail had difficulty waking Patel because he was seemingly intoxicated, according to information supplied to Justice Department and White House officials.”

e. That “[a] request for ‘breaching equipment’—normally used by SWAT and hostage-rescue teams to quickly gain entry into buildings—was made last year because Patel had been unreachable behind locked doors.”

f. That Director Patel’s alleged alcohol consumption has negatively impacted various law-enforcement investigations, including the Charlie Kirk murder investigation.

g. That Director Patel “recently expressed frustration with the look of FBI merchandise, complaining that it isn’t intimidating enough.” h. That on April 10, 2026, Director Patel “panicked, frantically calling aides and allies to announce that he had been fired by the White House,” and that his behavior was a “freak-out.”

i. That Director Patel is “often away or unreachable, delaying time-sensitive decisions needed to advance investigations,” and that on several occasions, Director Patel’s “delays resulted in normally unflappable agents ‘losing their shit.’”

j. That Director Patel’s “drinking has been a recurring source of concern across the government.”

k. The false implication that Director Patel violated DOJ’s ethics rules prohibiting “habitually using alcohol or other intoxicants to excess.”

l. That Director Patel has used his position to improperly “target political or personal adversaries of the president.”

m. The false implication that Director Patel abuses alcohol, thereby making him vulnerable to exploitation or coercion by foreign adversaries.

n. The false implication that this alleged alcohol abuse “has become a threat to public safety,” including in the context of “a domestic terrorist attack,” and constitutes a national-security vulnerability.

o. That Director Patel “is deeply concerned that his job is in jeopardy.”

p. That Director Patel has had a problem with “unexplained absences,” and “spotty attendance at the office,” thereby falsely implying that Director Patel has been derelict in his duties.

q. That Director Patel left the country vulnerable because “Days before the United States launched its war with Iran, Patel fired members of a counterintelligence squad that was devoted, in part, to Iran."

I think of Old Money in the sense of stuff that isn’t showy, but when you handle the items or see them up close, you know instantly they are premium items.

Clothes are the classic example. They don’t have gaudy logos or anything like that to call attention to them. But they’re stuff that you could hand down. Real quality wool, cashmere, the buttons themselves are premium, that kind of thing.

Cars again are more upscale touring types, not sports cars. The richest guy I’ve known drove a Hyundai Santa Fe. He spent his money on houses and fancy travel and his car was just for getting around.

New money is the showy and usually overpriced stuff covered in logos.

Simplest way to think of it is New Money is for newly rich people that feel the need to wave it around they’ve made it big. Old Money knows blowing it to impress people is stupid. You buy stuff that enhances your life and pampers you.

We live in a relatively low cost of living area and make decent money. We could pull off New Money if either of us cared about that. We cannot afford anything I’d consider Old Money. That’s a whole different world.

They do deserve to live. But some drug lord messed that up for them.

Hippos are really cool, but they are one of the most dangerous animals in the world. With no predators, one can hardly think it’s reasonable to allow uncontrollable growth of a population of deadly animals that can snap a gator in half and will purposefully attack humans.

They’re one of my favorite animals, but I totally understand why they are planning to do this.

Sounds delicious! I like things with the rose or orange water, they’re so unique.

I don’t have any cool Iranian music or recipes, but I shared some cute Iranian owls recently!

Trump said future operations will be nationwide “but primarily in those Blue States where CROOKED DEMOCRAT POLITICIANS” are in charge, Trump said, namechecking California, Illinois, Minnesota, Maine, and New York.

Perfect. I appreciate it!

It is far from the end of the USPS’s problems. I did not intend to sound like I was discounting anything else you said. IIRC, they’re still the only entity required to fund themselves, and with declining volume, they can’t reduce service, but also have no power of their own to raise the price of mail. Right wingers have been trying to crush them for a long time, and it’s impressive they do what they do despite those efforts.

The postal workers union also seems to be struggling a lot, which can’t help things if all the workers are unhappy as well. I really feel bad for the USPS as it’s one of the few gov institutions that no normal person really seems to have anything against and they provide a valuable service for every American.

They need to fully fund their employees retirement health benefits 75 years into the future

This should have been done away with in the 2022 Postal Services Reform Act, signed by President Biden.

The specific part of that reform addressing this was the USPS Fairness Act, which since there is a bunch of news about it failing to be passed so many times, because looking up something called a Fairness Act is so generic a term, and because the US diverged from a path of sanity, I can’t find out if this is being enforced currently or what the heck the deal is, but that requirement is at least not supposed to exist anymore.

Our boxes also look like a postal box, just with a very narrow drop slot.

I think all ours are indoors at libraries and district courthouses.

There were some lawsuits here about people forgetting to date the ballots and I think that is why there’s a person there now to supervise drop offs.

Last year was noticeably different though with all the signs out front and people were stuck waiting as everything was being looked at during busy times because we didn’t have many drop off sites for how many people live here and they’re only open during business hours.

We got emails when our ballots have been received and then again when they’re counted.

I went back and reread it, and it says there’s an exemption if you all live in the same household. So I think if you live with your parents you can be designated for both of them, but if they live separately from you, you could only do one.

County drop box rules

Please be advised that you are only allowed to return your own ballot, unless you have a disability and a completed Authorized Designated Agent Form accompanies the returned ballot.

And then from the agent form:

Who can be a designated agent?

The person you designate as your agent is only allowed to serve as a designated agent for ONE voter, unless the additional voter(s) live in the same household as you (the voter named in this form

Last time I voted, they had signs all over the grass saying “One Person, One Ballot” and someone was guarding the box and checking envelopes.

It doesn’t feel like much effort is made to help us understand them. All their accomplishments in science, math, and medicine barely get mentioned at least when I was in school. We got Mesopotamia, and that was about it. I don’t think we even covered what actual countries this is today.

As you said, the only real news I ever hear about is of conflicts, not the reasons for them, just that they’re going on. Europe and America have screwed around with them ever since oil was found, so no wonder why there is so much instability.