They killed the elephants because they were damaging crops...

Bob Parsons flew all the way to Zimbabwe and trekked into the wilderness to save the village's crops and do his small part in keeping down the country's elephant population? What a stand-up guy!

Here's a more likely narrative: Bob Parsons wants to kill elephants for sport. Bob Parsons finds out where in the world he can do so legally and with some semblance of morality. Bob Parsons goes there and has a hell of a good time shooting elephants.

Wait! That reads like I support him. There's was a definite tone of sarcasm when I wrote that!

My bad for misinterpreting.

Why don't just relocate them? He has the money.

> Why don't just relocate them? He has the money.

Where?

Almost all of the comments on this subject are Western in the most offensive sense of the word.

We see elephants as wonderous beasts. However, we're not living with them.

For the folks who live with them, elephants can be horribly destructive. They don't kill many people, but they do cause food shortages and the like.

It takes a lot of nerve to say that our desire to have a cool animal somewhere else should take precedence over their lives.

Elephants in the wild won't exist unless they're "good neighbors". That requires making sure that they're profitable to the people around them.

Parsons paid them lots of money to kill an elephant that was going to be killed anyway. Realistically, his alternative was to do nothing.

What have you done to help those people benefit from living near elephants in the wild?

Maybe they should take the hint and move the fuck away from elephant country? Nah, easier just to kill them.

It's like the people saying "why didn't he just pay for chili peppers and/or tobacco dust to repel the elephants?"

He had an opportunity to shoot an elephant in a debatably ethical way, and he wanted to shoot an elephant.

Indeed. That's my point. Why?