Cecil the Lion - Grade: A- PDF

Preview

Summary

Our class had three topics to choose from for a persuasive essay and I chose the topic of Cecil the Lion...

Description

Jess Scott 401.43 Joshua Folmar 9/20/15 Essay #1

Cecil the Lion In the article “Getting past the emotions around Cecil the Lion: Hard truths about conversation and trophy hunting” Vanda Felbab-Brown discusses the harsh topic of the death of Cecil the Lion. Everyone in Zimbabwe was in outrage with the dentist, Dr. Walter Palmer who is responsible for the death of the lion. Through social media everyone is the world knew about the issue and was utterly distressed. Cecil was a symbol in the Hwange national park and was collared being studied by Oxford University. It disturbs me that this beloved lion was killed as a trophy to Palmer, I don’t believe any form of trophy hunting should be legal anywhere it isn’t fair to the animals. Vanda Felbab-Brown is part of the Foreign Policy program at Brookings, along with years of experience on international and internal conflicts. Brookings Institution is a nonprofit organization providing information on topics such as economics and foreign policy. And is said to be ranked as the most authoritative think tank in the world. The fact that Vanda’s work has been posted multiple times through this institution means she has a lot of credibility in what she is saying towards the subject. Furthermore her own personal bias is seen in her writing as well as multiple well backgrounded facts. The audience Felbab-Brown was attempting to reach out to here was most likely the people of Zimbabwe to show how much of a problem trophy hunting is. Soon after the audience became just about everyone is the world, social media was blowing up with Cecil’s story. For

example, “The outpouring of emotions that has surrounded Cecil’s death will hopefully catalyze a strong international determination and policies to combat the escalating poaching around the world.” (Felbab-Brown). She feels strongly towards the fact that Cecil’s death shouldn’t have happened and she uses emotions to force each and every reader to feel the same way. Vanda Felbab-Brown first asserts how managed hunting could actually in fact help preserve the species by managing them. While trophy hunting just gives money to people who are killing symbolled creatures. The author in this paragraph uses logos to grab the attention of the audience. For instance, “Managed hunting could reduce the pressure on land being converted from its natural state to cattle ranching or agricultural cultivation—a driver of some of the greatest environmental destruction around the world.” (Felbab-Brown). She is convincing the readers that managed hunting is in fact use full to the environment. Also demanding how unacceptable it should be to kill a special animal such a Cecil. Felbab-Brown then addresses how legal hunting can actually still put harm on the environment. She made a lot of good points in this paragraph regarding hunting in general. Vanda Felbab-Brown argues “In general, hunting licenses should not be handed out for endangered species and highly restricted for top predators and keystone species on which the health of the ecosystem depends.” The logical facts she states in this paragraph work to grab the attention of the readers and make them realize where the issue is. Another important fact she focuses on is that in some cases hunters will breed the animals making it so there are mass amounts of the animals therefore they can legally hunt them. Felbab-Brown might make a lot of important facts in this paragraph, but she tends to jump around a little bit near the end making it a little unorganized.

She finishes her arguments by stating that there isn’t a clear census to whether there should or shouldn’t be a complete ban against hunting and trophy hunting against lions. FelbabBrown composes multiple interesting thoughts in this paragraph. Such as, “What needs to be taken into account in deciding whether to permit hunting are the conditions of the species and ecosystem in a particular place; their reproductive requirements; law enforcement capacities to enforce compliance with licenses, or conversely with a total ban; and the likelihood that the money obtained from the license will actually end up in conservation and support better environmental conservation or be stolen by a few.” (Felbab-Brown). She believes hunting permits should be mandated on whether or not the conditions of the animals being hunted are adequate. Overall I believe Vanda Felbab-Brown did a reasonable job getting her point across to the readers. There are some parts in her writing where I believe she could’ve improved. For example Vanda should have used her authority of being apart of the biggest think tank in the world a bit more and really forced the issue. Also the information throughout the article was genuinely reliable, but I suppose Felbab-Brown could have covered a few more areas of the argument just to be a bit more convincing. What does act as an aid in favor of the author is at the end of the article more of her writings are posted along with her twitter and a little synopsis of the author. Yet Vanda didn’t choose to add any secondary resources in her writing which would have helped make her seem more authoritative and improve her credibility.

"About Brookings." The Brookings Institution. Brookings, 2015. Web. 21 Sept. 2015. Felbab-Brown, Vanda. "Getting past the Emotions around Cecil the Lion: Hard Truths about

Conservation and Trophy Hunting." The Brookings Institution. Brookings, 30 July 2015. Web. 21 Sept. 2015....