Category Archives: Government

POLLUTION: BP dispersants “causing sickness”

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Image via Jennifer Aitken

BP used at least “1.9 million gallons of widely banned toxic dispersants” to treat the 4.9 million barrels of oil that leaked into the Gulf of Mexico from the Deepwater Horizon drilling-rig disaster, and the consequences of treating the oil with dispersants has the potential to make both people and wildlife sick. Via Dahr Jamail at Aljazeera.net:

Naman, who works at the Analytical Chemical Testing Lab in Mobile, Alabama, has been carrying out studies to search for the chemical markers of the dispersants BP used to both sink and break up its oil.

According to Naman, poly-aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs) from this toxic mix are making people sick. PAHs contain compounds that have been identified as carcinogenic, mutagenic, and teratogenic.

Fisherman across the four states most heavily affected by the oil disaster - Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama, and Florida - have reported seeing BP spray dispersants from aircraft and boats offshore.

“The dispersants are being added to the water and are causing chemical compounds to become water soluble, which is then given off into the air, so it is coming down as rain, in addition to being in the water and beaches of these areas of the Gulf,” Naman added.

“I’m scared of what I’m finding. These cyclic compounds intermingle with the Corexit [dispersants] and generate other cyclic compounds that aren’t good. Many have double bonds, and many are on the EPA’s danger list. This is an unprecedented environmental catastrophe.”

.       .       .

Gruesome symptoms

“I started to vomit brown, and my pee was brown also,” Matsler, a Vietnam veteran who lives in Dauphin Island, said. “I kept that up all day. Then I had a night of sweating and non-stop diarrhea unlike anything I’ve ever experienced.”

He was also suffering from skin rashes, nausea, and a sore throat.

At roughly the same time Matsler was exposed, local television station WKRG News 5 took a water sample from his area to test for dispersants. The sample literally exploded when it was mixed with an organic solvent separating the oil from the water.

Naman, the chemist who analyzed the sample, said: “We think that it most likely happened due to the presence of either methanol or methane gas or the presence of the dispersant Corexit.”

“I’m still feeling terrible,” Matsler told Al Jazeera recently. “I’m about to go to the doctor again right now. I’m short of breathe, the diarrhea has been real bad, I still have discoloration in my urine, and the day before yesterday, I was coughing up white foam with brown spots in it.”

As for Matsler’s physical reaction to his exposure, Hugh Kaufman, an EPA whistleblower and analyst, has reported this of the effects of the toxic dispersants:

“We have dolphins that are hemorrhaging. People who work near it are hemorrhaging internally. And that’s what dispersants are supposed to do…”

By the middle of last summer, the Alabama Department of Public Health said that 56 people in Mobile and Baldwin counties had sought treatment for what they believed were oil disaster-related illnesses.

“The dispersants used in BP’s draconian experiment contain solvents such as petroleum distillates and 2-butoxyethanol,” Dr. Riki Ott, a toxicologist, marine biologist, and Exxon Valdez survivor, told Al Jazeera.

“Solvents dissolve oil, grease, and rubber,” she continued, “Spill responders have told me that the hard rubber impellors in their engines and the soft rubber bushings on their outboard motor pumps are falling apart and need frequent replacement.”

“Given this evidence, it should be no surprise that solvents are also notoriously toxic to people, something the medical community has long known,” Dr. Ott added.

“In ‘Generations at Risk’, medical doctor Ted Schettler and others warn that solvents can rapidly enter the human body. They evaporate in air and are easily inhaled, they penetrate skin easily, and they cross the placenta into fetuses. For example, 2- butoxyethanol (in Corexit) is a human health hazard substance; it is a fetal toxin and it breaks down blood cells, causing blood and kidney disorders.”

Pathways of exposure to the dispersants are inhalation, ingestion, skin, and eye contact. Health impacts include headaches, vomiting, diarrhea, abdominal pains, chest pains, respiratory system damage, skin sensitization, hypertension, central nervous system depression, neurotoxic effects, genetic mutations, cardiac arrhythmia, and cardiovascular damage.

Even the federal government has taken precautions for its employees. US military officials decided to reroute training flights in the Gulf region in order to avoid oil and dispersant tainted-areas.

Corexit 9527 is some nasty stuff. Via Wikipedia:

Corexit 9527, considered by the EPA to be an acute health hazard, is stated by its manufacturer to be potentially harmful to red blood cells, the kidneys and the liver, and may irritate eyes and skin.[14][24] The chemical 2-butoxyethanol, found in Corexit 9527, was identified as having caused lasting health problems in workers involved in the cleanup of the Exxon Valdez oil spill.[25] According to the Alaska Community Action on Toxics, the use of Corexit during the Exxon Valdez oil spill caused people “respiratory, nervous system, liver, kidney and blood disorders”.[16] Like 9527, 9500 can cause hemolysis (rupture of blood cells) and may also cause internal bleeding.[4]

According to the EPA, Corexit is more toxic than dispersants made by several competitors and less effective in handling southern Louisiana crude.[26] On May 20, 2010, the EPA ordered BP to look for less toxic alternatives to Corexit, and later ordered BP to stop spraying dispersants, but BP responded that it thought that Corexit was the best alternative and continued to spray it.[3]

Reportedly Corexit may be toxic to marine life and helps keep spilled oil submerged. There is concern that the quantities used in the Gulf will create ‘unprecedented underwater damage to organisms.’[27] Nalco spokesman Charlie Pajor said that oil mixed with Corexit is “more toxic to marine life, but less toxic to life along the shore and animals at the surface” because the dispersant allows the oil to stay submerged below the surface of the water.[28] Corexit 9500 causes oil to form into small droplets in the water; fish may be harmed when they eat these droplets.[4] According to its Material safety data sheet, Corexit may also bioaccumulate, remaining in the flesh and building up over time.[29] Thus predators who eat smaller fish with the toxin in their systems may end up with much higher levels in their flesh.[4]

A “presidential commission tasked with investigating the causes of the Deepwater Horizon accident” has determined that there wasn’t enough scientific evidence to guide governmental agencies in making their decisions to use dispersants. Via Science Now:

According to the working paper, a lack of studies on dispersant toxicity meant that the Coast Guard’s Thad Allen, EPA’s Lisa Jackson, and NOAA’s Jane Lubchenco were “seriously handicapped” when deciding whether the chemicals should be used. “Because federal agencies had failed to plan adequately, they did not possess the scientific information that officials most certainly would have wanted to guide their choices.” But the paper concludes that their decision to use dispersants was reasonable under the circumstances, noting that the trio quickly consulted with a group of 50 experts. So far, the use of dispersants appears to have had greater benefit than cost.

The appeal of dispersants is that they break up oil into small droplets, which are less harmful to birds and other wildlife. The droplets are also thought to break down faster. And releasing dispersants at the gushing wellhead was intended to help protect workers on the surface by reducing the amount of oil and associated volatile organic compounds. The problem was the lack of adequate toxicity data on the dispersants themselves. Officials didn’t know the possible impacts on marine life, given the hundreds of thousands of gallons being used over several months (more than 2.5 million in all). They also didn’t know the relative toxicity of the various dispersants.

The commission staff members also concluded that the lack of planning led to delays in response; according to interviews with Coast Guard responders, EPA field staff hadn’t been delegated the authority to grant permission for dispersants to be used and were inexperienced with dispersants, thus delaying the response. The Coast Guard sources also felt that “EPA scientists with such experience were not being adequately consulted in EPA’s decision-making process.”

CLIMATE CHANGE policy & politics

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Image via Neubie on Flickr

Even with a Democratic majority, climate change legislation didn’t pass, but at least it was there. However, due to widespread climate change denialism within the Republican Party, a GOP win could mean the end of climate change policy altogether. Via NPR:

The more carbon that gets released into the atmosphere, the higher the average temperature rises.

That’s a scientific fact.

Human activities, such as driving, flying, building and even turning on the lights, are the biggest contributor to the release of carbon.

That too, is a fact.

And yet the majority of Republicans running for House and Senate seats this year disagree.

.       .       .

Bill McKibben, scholar in residence at Middlebury College in Vermont and the founder of 350.org, says it is a tragedy that conservatives are turning their back on the science behind climate change.

“On this issue maybe more than most, we need that interplay of liberal and conservative,” he says. “Liberals are good at sort of pointing the way forward in kind of progressive new directions and conservatives are good at providing the anchor that says human nature won’t go along with that. That back and forth has been very useful.”

If Republicans take control of the House this November, McKibben says, he doesn’t see a future for climate change policy.

“Look, the Democrats — with a huge majority — couldn’t pass climate change legislation even of a very, very weak variety this year, so I doubt there’ll be any action over the next two years.”

That is, unless conservatives decide to team up with liberals.

“We desperately need conservatives at the forefront of the fight,” McKibben says. “The sooner that conservatives are willing to accept the science, the reality, the sooner we can get to work with their very important help in figuring out what set of prescriptions, what combination of market and regulation will be required in order to deal with the most serious problem we’ve ever stumbled into.”

Despite the lack of merit in their own explanations for the nonexistence of climate change, Republicans reject years of peer-reviewed climate research and observations. Apparently, former Vice President Dick Cheney was the catalyst for the widespread climate change denialism within the Republican Party. Via the New York Times:

According to Congressional inquiries, White House officials, encouraged by Mr. Cheney’s office, forced the Environmental Protection Agency to remove sections on climate change from separate reports in 2002 and 2003. (Christine Todd Whitman, then the E.P.A. administrator, has since described the process as “brutal.”)

The administration also sought to control or censor Congressional testimony by federal employees and tampered with other reports in order to inject uncertainty into the climate debate and minimize threats to the environment.

Nothing, it seemed, could crack the administration’s denial — not Tony Blair of Britain and other leaders who took climate change seriously; not Mrs. Whitman (who eventually quit after being undercut by Mr. Cheney, who worked for the energy company Halliburton before he became vice president and received annual checks while in office); and certainly not the scientists.

In 2007, when the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change issued its most definitive statement on the human contribution to climate change, Mr. Cheney insisted that there was not enough evidence to just “sort of run out and try to slap together some policy that’s going to try to solve the problem.” To which Mrs. Whitman, by then in private life, said: “I don’t see how he can say that with a straight face anymore.”

Nowadays, it is almost impossible to recall that in 2000, George W. Bush promised to cap carbon dioxide, encouraging some to believe that he would break through the partisan divide on global warming. Until the end of the 1990s, Republicans could be counted on to join bipartisan solutions to environmental problems. Now they’ve disappeared in a fog of disinformation, an entire political party parroting the Cheney line.

Since the Tea Party movement is rife in climate-change denialism, big polluters, which are corporations that acquire their profits from polluting the environment, are backing the Tea Party. Via the Guardian:

BP and several other big European companies are funding the midterm election campaigns of Tea Party favourites who deny the existence of global warming or oppose Barack Obama’s energy agenda, the Guardian has learned.

An analysis of campaign finance by Climate Action Network Europe (Cane) found nearly 80% of campaign donations from a number of major European firms were directed towards senators who blocked action on climate change. These included incumbents who have been embraced by the Tea Party such as Jim DeMint, a Republican from South Carolina, and the notorious climate change denier James Inhofe, a Republican from Oklahoma.

The report, released tomorrow, used information on the Open Secrets.org database to track what it called a co-ordinated attempt by some of Europe’s biggest polluters to influence the US midterms. It said: “The European companies are funding almost exclusively Senate candidates who have been outspoken in their opposition to comprehensive climate policy in the US and candidates who actively deny the scientific consensus that climate change is happening and is caused by people.”

Obama and Democrats have accused corporate interests and anonymous donors of trying to hijack the midterms by funnelling money to the Chamber of Commerce and to conservative Tea Party groups. The Chamber of Commerce reportedly has raised $75m (£47m) for pro-business, mainly Republican candidates.

“Oil companies and the other special interests are spending millions on a campaign to gut clean-air standards and clean-energy standards, jeopardising the health and prosperity of this state,” Obama told a rally in California on Friday night.

Every cloud has a silver lining, and the silver lining in a big Republican win is the Environmental Protection Agency’s greenhouse gas tailoring rule. Via the Emerging Issues Law Blog:

The Tailoring Rule covers large industrial facilities like power plants and oil refineries that are responsible for 70 percent of the GHGs from stationary sources. The proposals announced are a critical component for implementing the Tailoring Rule and would ensure that GHG emissions from these large facilities are minimized in all 50 states and that local economies can continue to grow.

The Clean Air Act requires states to develop EPA-approved implementation plans that include requirements for issuing air permits. When federal permitting requirements change, as they did after EPA finalized the GHG Tailoring Rule, states may need to modify these plans.

In the first rule, EPA is proposing to require permitting programs in 13 states to make changes to their implementation plans to ensure that GHG emissions will be covered. All other states that implement an EPA-approved air permitting program must review their existing permitting authority and inform EPA if their programs do not address GHG emissions.

Because some states may not be able to develop and submit revisions to their plans before the Tailoring Rule becomes effective in 2011, in the second rule, EPA is proposing a federal implementation plan, which would allow EPA to issue permits for large GHG emitters located in these states. This would be a temporary measure that is in place until the state can revise its own plan and resume responsibility for GHG permitting.

States are best-suited to issue permits to sources of GHG emissions and have long-standing experience working together with industrial facilities. EPA will work closely and promptly with states to help them develop, submit, and approve necessary revisions to enable the affected states to issue air permits to GHG-emitting sources. Additionally, EPA will continue to provide guidance and act as a resource for the states as they make the various required permitting decisions for GHG emissions.

EPA will accept comment on the first proposal for updated state implementation plans for 30 days after publication in the Federal Register. A hearing on the second proposal for the federal implementation plan was held on August 25, 2010, and the EPA will accept comment for 30 days after that hearing. The agency is working to finalize these rules prior to January 2, 2011, the earliest GHG permitting requirements will be effective.

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POLITICS: The myth of Republican fiscal conservatism

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The Republicans regularly claim that the deficits and the national debt are the handiwork of the Democrats and Democratic policies. However, the Republicans have been and still are the architects behind our fiscal situation. They’re also a major barrier to resolving the country’s current fiscal situation. It’s amazing that Republicans can keep up this fiction. Via Taegan Goddard’s Political Wire:

Federal Budget Reality Check

New York Times: “The parties share blame for the current fiscal situation, but federal budget statistics show that Republican policies over the last decade, and the cost of the two wars, added far more to the deficit than initiatives approved by the Democratic Congress since 2006, giving voters reason to be skeptical of campaign promises.”

“Calculations by the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office and other independent fiscal experts show that the $1.1 trillion cost over the next 10 years of the Medicare prescription drug program, which the Republican-controlled Congress adopted in 2003, by itself would add more to the deficit than the combined costs of the bailout, the stimulus and the health care law.”

What about the bank bailout? It earned “an 8.2 percent return over two years.” Via Taegan Goddard’s Political Wire:

Bank Bailout Earned 8.2% Profit

The federal government’s bailout of financial firms “provided taxpayers with higher returns than they could have made buying 30-year Treasury bonds — enough money to fund the Securities and Exchange Commission for the next two decades,” Bloomberg reports.

“The government has earned $25.2 billion on its investment of $309 billion in banks and insurance companies, an 8.2 percent return over two years, according to data compiled by Bloomberg. That beat U.S. Treasuries, high-yield savings accounts, money-market funds and certificates of deposit. Investing in the stock market or gold would have paid off better.”

Also, Republicans who were opposed to the $787 billion stimulus bill requested funds from it. Via CBS News:

A rallying cry for many Republican candidates this fall is their fierce opposition to the $787 billion stimulus bill.

Texas Rep. Pete Sessions has been ripping the spending package, using such campaign lines as “no to budget-busting stimulus bills.”

Then there is this boast served up by Minnesota Rep. Michele Bachmann in an advertisement: “I fought against the Bush Wall Street bailout, the failed Pelosi trillion dollar stimulus.”

But it turns out no sooner was the ink dry on the stimulus bill than these lawmakers – and dozens of others from both parties – were reaching out behind the scenes for money to fund millions of dollars in local projects.

“When it came time to get a piece of the pie afterwards, people were writing letters by the dozens,” said John Solomon of the Center for Public Integrity.

That group says it collected nearly 2,000 letters from “scores” of Republicans and conservative Democrats requesting funds from a bill they originally opposed and many still criticize.

But that didn’t stop Massachusetts Sen. Scott Brown from asking for $45.4 million in funds or stop Sessions from requesting $81 million in stimulus money for a Texas rail project, a grant he did not win.

CBS News video:

Stimulus Hypocrisy – The Center for Public Integrity says that many Republican and Democratic politicians who were outspoken in their opposition against last year’s stimulus package actually requested funds from that very same project. Armen Keteyian reports.

On the Net:

  1. The Tea Party Timeline …
  2. Critics Still Wrong on What’s Driving Deficits in Coming Years: Economic Downturn, Financial Rescues, and Bush-Era Policies Drive the Numbers
  3. POLITICS: Tea Party hypocrisy and the myth of Republican fiscal conservatism

FISHERIES: Fishers claim crabs contaminated by oil pollution

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Video: Seafood dealer says load of crabs “contaminated with oil”

In addition to claims that their crab catch was contaminated from oil pollution, fishers claim that government scientists failed to collect samples of their catch. More via WALB-TV:

Fishermen in coastal Louisiana say hundreds of crabs caught near Saint Bernard Parish were full of oil, rendering their day’s catch useless. Now they’re calling for testing to see if those crabs were contaminated from BP oil.

Tuesday was supposed to be a very productive day for B&K Crabbing, but when one of the fishermen brought his catch back to the dock, seafood dealer Kevin Heier says he knew something wasn’t right.

“We dumped them in ice water, picked the box up, dumped them on the table, and the smell like to knocked us down,” Heier said. “[We] emptied the box of crabs and the water that was coming off the crabs on the table was just like a sheen.”

Heier believes the crabs were contaminated with oil.

“It’s something I’ve never seen before in my life,” Heier said. “I was in total shock. Mr. Bruce, he’s 70 years old, he’s been doing this for 60 years, something he’s never seen either.”

Dealers Bruce Guerra and Heier immediately realized no one would want to buy their catch. Their next move was trying to contact Wildlife and Fisheries.

“We got a biologist that was supposed to come here, about an hour passed and he never showed up,” Heier said. “So we called the biologist and said ‘What happened?’ and he said ‘My superior stopped me from coming.’”

More than 24 hours later, Heier says the catch can’t be tested because the crabs have all died. Crabbers will have to return and try for another harvest from the same area. Ideally, some of the crabs will live long enough to serve as viable samples.

“We’ve got to get to the bottom line and find out the root cause of this, what’s the problem,” Heier said. “It’s like we can’t get help from nobody.”

Guerra added, “It ain’t over with. Just like BP, Alaska, 17 years this went on. They’re here four and a half months and want to pull out, you know, like nothing’s wrong.”

The oil spill isn’t finished, and it’s effects will continue for years. The image below shows one of three fish kills reported from Plaquemines Parish. At first glance, the image looks like an old road, but “it’s a Louisiana waterway, [and] its surface [is] completely covered with dead sea life — a mishmash of species of fish, crabs, stingray and eel.” Some claim that the fish kill isn’t connected to the oil spill, but fishers argue that these type of fish kills are unprecedented.

Video: Thousands More Dead Fish Turn Up in La. Waters

CONSERVATION: Hunters, rich conservationists, and local farmers can help protect Africa’s wildlife

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[N]o matter how fecund nature is, humans are more so. With Africa’s human population set to double to 2 billion by 2050, new thinking is needed to preserve the continent’s remaining biodiversity.

Image: In order to protect the last remaining northern white rhinos (Ceratotherium simum cottoni) from poachers, conservationists must keep their horns filed down. Although “a slight recovery was recorded in 2003[,] when 30 [northern white rhinos] were counted[,] . . . by 2006 only four were left.” After the rhino’s last known stronghold—the Garamba National Park in the Democratic Republic of Congo—succumb to war and civil unrest, the remaining northern white rhinos haven’t been seen since. The individual below represents captive individuals that were translocated to Ol Pejeta in order to improve their fecundity. Image via Wikipedia

The Economist has an interesting piece on how economics can be a major driver of species extinctions—particularly when demand and value are high for animals or certain type of animal parts (e.g., poaching for medicinal purposes or poaching live specimens for the pet trade). The article begins by giving a somber assessment of the northern white rhino.
Certainly, if economics can destroy nature, then economics can also be used to save nature. For example, hunting is “a potential bonanza for local communities.” Therefore, as a product of that idea, the authors mention that anti-hunting efforts may hurt conservation efforts. The article also highlights another problem facing conservation efforts—human expansion—and briefly mentions how culture can be a factor in accelerating biodiversity loss, which is an interesting idea.

To save species, particularly in Africa, the authors don’t necessarily promote the fortress model towards conservation, but they offer several alternative ideas that seem to have success or potential for success. For example, (1) conservationists should place value on biodiversity; (2) the management of Africa’s national parks should be modernized; (3) the privatization of land through wealthy conservationists, local communities (i.e., community-based conservation), or organizations, with access to adequate resources (e.g., monetary, indigenous knowledge, international donors), may be successful at conserving wildlife and landscapes; (4) employing “‘non-use’ earnings, where large numbers of people around the world pay small sums to buy shares in African biodiversity not to use it, but simply because they believe its protection is important to the planet, may achieve conservation goals; (5) addressing social issues such as poverty, illiteracy, and alcoholism can reduce pressure on natural resources; and (6) “looking at wildlife, rather than shooting it” can be a model for successful conservation. Of course, the idea of sustainability looms over all of these ideas.

There’s another issue at play, and it’s more of a philosophical consideration, but it raises important questions nonetheless. Even if hunting, or any other type of wildlife management scheme can successfully boost wildlife numbers or achieve conservation goals, then humans are undoubtedly creating nature or merely socially constructing nature. Consequently, we’re not saving the wilderness as it’s typically idealized in our minds or the first nature before humans (it’s impossible to know what that exactly looks like). We’re either saving what we think nature and wilderness should be or we’re shaping nature, wilderness, landscapes, or ecosystems to better fit our agenda. Essentially, the ideas we determine are fit to achieve conservation goals will paint the picture of nature or have a direct impact on the “natural” landscape. Perhaps, chewing over the idea of a socially constructed nature when considering conservation goals is meaningless, since nature has been, and will continue to be, socially constructed. Via The Economist (emphasis added):

ONLY eight specimens of the northern white rhino are left alive on the planet, and they are all in captivity. The handful that remained in the wild in Congo have not been seen in years; they are almost certainly dead. A final effort to save the sub-species earlier this year saw four northern whites shipped from a zoo in the Czech Republic to the Ol Pejeta conservancy on the Laikipia reserve in Kenya.

.       .       .

[T]he chances of saving the northern white are remote. Short of re-engineering it from frozen samples in the future, the best hope of preserving its genetic stock is to breed the last individuals with southern whites. That means the end of a creature that has probably been distinct for a million years. Indeed, the decline of the African rhino—which includes the black rhino as well as the white—is among the sorriest and most instructive tales in conservation.

When President Theodore Roosevelt came to east Africa in 1909 an estimated 300,000 rhinos roamed the region. Now there are perhaps 2,000. The problem is not that the rhinos are half-blind, lumbering, and often infertile—which they are. It is economic: the ornamental and medicinal value of rhino horn makes it hard for the rhino to pay its way alive.

The value of rhino horn in China, ounce for ounce, is higher than gold. It is likely to keep rising with an ageing population; in Chinese medicine the horn is ground into a powder to alleviate fevers and pain, particularly for terminally ill patients. With more Chinese contractors working in Africa, the risk of poaching seems to have increased. Market forces are insistent. Even at Ol Pejeta, which is protected by electric fences and armed guards, the horns of the four northern whites have had to be filed down to limit the risk of poaching. An inside job at one private ranch in Kenya last Christmas saw a rhino killed and its horns hacked off. The Kenya Wildlife Service later tracked down the culprits and recovered the horns, along with $8,500 in cash the poachers had been paid, with the balance payable on delivery. Sold in 10g increments in Guangzhou, the seven kilos of horn would be worth $250,000.

.       .       .

Some countries have had success with hunting. Namibia, for instance, has increased the absolute numbers of its game animals by allowing oryx, hartebeest, kudu and springbok to be hunted and harvested as high-protein low-fat meat for regional supermarkets. Peter Lindsey of the University of Pretoria argues that animal-rights groups are denying Africa the wise use of its elephants—whose ivory is a resource, in his view, because elephants’ fertility suggests it could be harvested sustainably. He reckons trophy-hunting in Africa is worth $200m a year: a potential bonanza for local communities.

But animal-rights organisations like the Born Free Foundation object to hunting on ethical grounds. They argue that many hunters who start with gazelles end up going after predators, often illegally. And the money does not reach the locals: much of what is generated is taken offshore. The debate is bitter. The pro-hunting lobby complains that animal-righters have a lot of money to splash around, and are even writing legislation in several African countries in return for donations to government wildlife services. Hunters say their activities complement tourism: their clients are happy to stay in shabby, dusty places as long as they get their kill. But the bloodthirsty history of big-game hunting in Africa means that hunters still need to show that they have an economic value.