The Heart is a Lonely Hunter By John Steele

     The politically correct are upset because a big game hunter has been appointed to be a state conservationist. Killing, or culling animals, is apparently inconsistent with the Green ideology:
  https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-8485259/Western-Australian-conservationist-Esperance-fire-South-Africa-game-hunt-photos.html

“A big game shooter who proudly posed with the dead carcasses of giraffes, elephants and rhinos has been hired to be a state government conservationist. Jewell Crossberg was recently appointed acting district manager of the Western Australian Department of Biodiversity, Conservation and Attractions in Esperance, on the state's south coast. A Facebook album titled 'business and pleasure' has surfaced showing Mr Crossberg standing over dead giraffes, rhinos and zebras he's shot at South African game reserve in 2010. In one photo, Mr Crossberg kneels down next to the corpse of a giraffe with a rifle in one hand. The head of the dead animal rests over his knee while Mr Crossberg smiles for the camera. Mr Crossberg is also seen posing with a dead zebra in one photo, and grinning behind a felled elephant in another one. The album has since sparked outrage and calls have been made for Mr Crossberg to be removed from his role in the conservation department. Mr Crossberg will be acting as the Parks and Wildlife manager in Esperance where he will be responsible for looking after the wildlife and natural assets in the district. Though an online petition has called for him to be removed from the position. 'A man for sees [sic] no issue with hunting endangered and threatened species should not be in a role protecting Australia's native flora and fauna, as he clearly lacks the judgement to do so, despite the photos being taken at a South African Hunting lodge, where such hunts are legal,' the petition reads. The petition quotes a letter from concerned citizens of Esperance, calling for immediate action against Mr Crossberg. 'We the citizens of Esperance are very concerned about the recent appointment of Jewell Crossberg,' the letter reads. 'We think the director Jason Foster has made a very bad judgement call. 'We are so disappointed to see Mr Crossberg is not a true conservationist and shouldn't be in a position of this standing.' The department said in a statement Mr Crossberg had gone through a competitive recruitment process and that it was committed to wildlife conservation. 'The Department of Biodiversity, Conservation and Attractions is committed to wildlife conservation and ensuring world’s best animal welfare practices. 'Jewell Crossberg went through a competitive recruitment process and demonstrated he had the appropriate skills for the acting district manager role.' Mr Crossberg has since deleted his Facebook page.”

     Well, he should have kept his Facebook page, and stood proudly tall with his gun in hands. Hunting has been defended by the Spanish philosopher Jose Ortega y Gasset, in Meditations on Hunting (1942), as well as by ecologist, Aldo Leopold in A Sand County Almanac (1949). In a nutshell, man is an organism too, as much as a wolf, and it is unnatural to supress the desire for hunting as with that of any other carnivore. Hunting though, adds to ecological balance by keeping population numbers in check. So, a hunter can be a conservationist; for after all, one needs to keep the animals from going extinct, so future generations can be gunned down, I mean, sustainably hunted.
  https://www.amazon.com.au/Meditations-Hunting-Jose-Ortega-Gasset/dp/1932098534 
  https://www.amazon.com/County-Almanac-Outdoor-Essays-Reflections/dp/0345345053

     Jose would not be accepted by the cool pc woke kids ruling us today:

“One does not hunt in order to kill; on the contrary, one kills in order to have hunted. If one were to present the sportsman with the death of the animal as a gift he would refuse it. What he is after is having to win it, to conquer the surly brute through his own effort and skill with all the extras that this carries with it: the immersion in the countryside, the healthfulness of the exercise, the distraction from his job. In all of this, the moral problem of hunting has not been resolved. We have not reached ethical perfection in hunting. One never achieves perfection in anything, and perhaps it exists precisely so that one can never achieve it. Its purpose is to orient our conduct and to allow us to measure the progress accomplished. In this sense, the advancement achieved in the ethics of hunting is undeniable. Therefore it is necessary to oppose photographic hunting, which is not progress but rather a digression and a prudery of hideous moral style. Every authentic refinement must leave intact the authenticity of the hunt, its essential structure, which is a matter of a confrontation between two unequal species. The real care that man must exercise is not in pretending to make the beast equal to him, because that is a stupid utopian, beatific farce, but rather in avoiding more and more the excess of his superiority. Hunting is the free play of an inferior species in the face of a superior species. That is where one must make some refinement. Man must give the animal a "handicap," in order to place him as close as possible to his own level. The essence of sportive hunting is not raising the animal to the level of man, but something much more spiritual than that: a conscious and almost religious humbling of man which limits his superiority and lowers him toward the animal. I have said "religious," and the word does not seem excessive to me. A fascinating mystery of nature is manifested in the universal fact of hunting: the inexorable hierarchy among living beings. Every animal is in a relationship of superiority or inferiority with regard to every other. Strict equality is exceedingly improbable and anomalous. Life is a terrible conflict, a grandiose and atrocious confluence. Hunting submerges man deliberately in that formidable mystery and therefore contains something of religious rite and emotion in which homage is paid to what is divine, transcendent, in the laws of nature.”

     Just imagine his book being published today. It would not get past the feminist editor.