Why would we care about “neocolonialism”?

From The Guardian:

On the trail with the hunters who believe shooting big game can save Africa’s wildlife

One way to pay for wildlife conservation is to allow the rich to bag a few animals for high prices. But critics see this approach as an exercise in neocolonialism

Whether big game shooting conserves wildlife or not is an empirical question. One to be decided by studying what happens when animals have a value for their shooting or not. The passenger pigeon, the dodo, the giant sloth, moa, Haast’s eagle and so on and on might actually have preferred a thinning with preservation after all.

We tend to think that things with value do get preserved, those without do not but we’re willing to discuss that point. The proof is in the empirics of what does actually happen.

Rather than this shriek of “Neocolonialism!”. Who cares? Or, more importantly, why should we care? The aim is to preserve the species, if the species gets preserved by this activity then that’s good right? Whatever the grievance studies departments of however many universities have to say about it.

As Madsen Pirie of this parish has been insisting for many decades now we are utilitarians, determinedly so. What works, what achieves the desired goal, is what works and thus, if we wish to achieve the goal, is the thing we should be doing.

We’re entirely open to a discussion of those empirics - does trophy hunting actually preserve species? But the discussion of -isms is entirely orthogonal to this only important question.

Tim Worstall