GoDaddy.com founder, Bob Parsons, is under fire for posting a video onto his Twitter page of him shooting an elephant. The video was filmed March 8th and shows him hunting an elephant on a farm and then after shooting it he is standing next to it and posing. The locals then crowd around the dead elephant and start cutting off pieces of its meat.
Now the PETA (People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals) has begun an online protest against GoDaddy.com and its services until Parsons “stops shooting animals,” according to their website. Parson’s own website has been constantly bombarded with negative comments and protest against his cruel and inhumane video.
Parsons claim that the only people that are upset by this video are animal lovers. That their hearts are in the right place, but that they just do not understand what it is that he is doing. Parsons claimed that he killed the animal for the good of the local farmers whose crops were and are getting destroyed by the elephants. The field that he is walking through in the video is flattened sorghum plants, which he said had been crushed by wondering elephants.
Parsons says that what he is doing is helping out the local farmers. If their crop is not harvested, they do not eat. He said that the he put the video up to show people “what goes on over there.” “There were people who walked 25 miles to get to that elephant,” Parsons said, referring to the food crisis that has often occurred in developing countries.
He said that the fact that the elephant provided meat for the people to be “a bonus.”
“They literally have nothing and they’re on the brink of starvation,” Parsons claims.
He has been traveling to Zimbabwe for several years, but only last year began actually hunting elephants “at the request of local farmers,” he said. And it is completely legal for him to kill them too. Also adding to the issue, Parsons has admitted to killing five other elephants.
Killing these elephants can be seen as a “helpful” thing to the villagers who see it has a way to help save their farms and crops. But, if he really wanted to help these people, why did he not just give the people some money or supplies? Or why could he not just set up a fundraiser for the people and used to money to set up a nonlethal and completely humane method of keeping the elephants away from their crops?
PETA says that Parsons could have used these methods instead of acting “like a little boy with a gun.”
In a press release, PETA said it was pulling its business from GoDaddy.com and their group even went as far as to label Parsons as “Scummiest CEO of the Year.”
Company spokeswoman of GoDaddy.com was asked if PETA’s boycott had affected their business to which she responded, “There has been no significant change in business.”
Parsons thinks that it takes guys like him to protect villagers from rouge elephants. But, it is not just the villagers who need the protection. Elephants cannot just be shot off or killed, whether or not it’s illegal. These beautiful animals need protection too. There has to be a humane way that Parsons could have taken in order to help the villagers with their crops and kept those elephants alive. A fence, a barricade, or even giving the elephants a safe location to roam free, but far enough away from the villagers crops that they would not have caused a problem. There are multiple solutions to every problem, and Parsons is under inspection as to whether or not he took the right one. And according to PETA and others, he did not.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OcX-2sgw070 (this is the video)
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