His "crime"??? Good Lord. Going to be interesting to see what happens when the now-uncontested snow leopard population grows beyond this insurance plan's capacity to support it.

Yes, when your country declares an animal as protected and passes a law banning you from shooting it and you shoot it, then it is a crime. It doesn't matter if a law is just or unjust, or if you agree or not. It's still a law and breaking it is still a crime.

As for his insurance company, if he's smart enough to set it up, then he's smart enough to realize he should diversify its coverage offerings to shore up potential shortfalls in fee collections should the Snow Leopard population grow too large.

Yes, when your country declares an animal as protected and passes a law banning you from shooting it and you shoot it, then it is a crime. It doesn't matter if a law is just or unjust, or if you agree or not. It's still a law and breaking it is still a crime.


Correction on my part: technically he didn't shoot the cubs, but drowned them. The law bans the killing of the animal anyways, but I felt the inaccuracy of my post might lead one to believe I hadn't bothered to read the article and merely reacted to the post.

Furthermore, subsequent readings indicate the tone might come off as insulting (especially when read in the light of the incorrect information) and for that I apologize. The tone I was going for was aloof, unsympathetic, and factual.

Going to be interesting to see what happens when the now-uncontested snow leopard population grows beyond this insurance plan's capacity to support it.

Snow leopards have been around before humans started killing them - and they (and their prey species) survived. Don't worry about nature so much. It can handle itself very well even when left 'unchecked'. And the guy will simply stop having this insurance scheme when the endangered species is no longer endangerd.
Everybody wins.

@Antialias physorg
I took his post to be more about the farmers than the animals. That is to say, I believe they are suggesting we consider the case of farmer's claims outpacing the collection of the insurance fees.

Given that the number of farmers is relatively fixed (and assuming the number of fee-paying participants remains fixed or reaches a maximum) and the population of animals continues to grow (assuming the number of kills rises at an equal to or greater rate) then there may come a time when the animal population rises sufficiently that the kills (and subsequent claims) may outpace fee collection.

Of course, this ignores that the environment's capacity to support the Snow Leopards. It may be that the capacity population is falls short of this critical fee-collection-to-claim-payment ratio and can never be reached. On the other hand, even if the capacity is beyond the critical value, my diversification scheme would still address the short fall.

The sad thing is that there are so few snow leopards that those 3 cubs he killed may be the ones that tip the species onto the road to inevitable extinction. It's too bad they can't be introduced elsewhere where they would be safe, like maybe the rockies.

His "crime"??? Good Lord. Going to be interesting to see what happens when the now-uncontested snow leopard population grows beyond this insurance plan's capacity to support it.


It will also be interesting see what will happen when our population and habits finally outgrow the earth's ability to support them.

It will also be interesting see what will happen when our population and habits finally outgrow the earth's ability to support them.


It already has, by several orders of magnitude. Do you suppose the Earth could support seven billion paleolithic nomads?

But every new human brings with him a new mind, capable of language, problem-solving, and invention, as well as a pair of hands with which to give those ideas the weight of reality. This is what distinguishes humans from other animals: we can combine intelligence and labor to convert low-value stuff into high-value stuff.

For all of human history our capacity to provide for ourselves grows more than linearly with our population. So long as we remain free, there are NO limits to our growth. To the extent that Earth imposes them, we will simply move beyond her.

I took his post to be more about the farmers than the animals. That is to say, I believe they are suggesting we consider the case of farmer's claims outpacing the collection of the insurance fees.

Since the elucidate the point why the guy set up the insurance (in order to make up for the wrong he felt he had done) I'm reading this differently.

And I'm sure that by the time snow leopard will have increased to sufficient numbers to be a real problem that scheme will be dropped again. But for now it's a good way of making sure that an endangered species does not become a terminated one.

There are other factors that limit a species' spread. Territoriality may be one (though snow leopards do not seem to be too aggressive towards others in their territory)

Several community owned insurance programs such as this one run successfully in many parts of the Himalayas in India, Mongolia and Pakistan. These programs have been on going in some places for more than 10 years without any instances of snow leopards outpacing the insurance, other than a handful of stray incidences of surplus killings, which are natural.

Conflict is inevitable as long as people and wildlife overlap. The trick is to let the occasional depredated livestock be eaten up by the wild animal whilst the insurance claim by the owner is paid up to prevent retaliation; keeping corruption at bay by limiting the scheme at small decentralized scales and within hamlets/communities (each hamlet with its own insurance fund); and reduce depredation by helping improve wild prey populations and better guarding of livestock.

jscroft - "So long as we remain free, there are NO limits to our growth. To the extent that Earth imposes them, we will simply move beyond her"

Ya? Your dreaming. We already have to drag the unproductive and lazy with us, whose numbers grow much faster than those productive and truly intelligent. Hell hath no fury like mother nature scorned.