When funding is required to enable 'good' work to be done does it matter where the money has come from?
Many would agree that using the proceeds of a competition to help save the endangered black rhino would be considered a 'good' thing?
What about if the competition's prize is a rare opportunity to hunt that very same species?
Does that change our thinking?
Should it?
'A Texas hunting club says it will cancel an endangered black rhinoceros hunting trip if the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service denies a request to bring the dead animal back to the U.S. as a trophy.
Corey Knowlton bid $350,000 at a January Dallas Safari Club auction for a rare permit to hunt the animal in Namibia. Decimated by poaching, there are less than 5,000 black rhinos worldwide.
The club billed it as a fundraiser to save the endangered species. Executive director Ben Carter says the money would go to a special fund administered by the Namibian government for habitat restoration and game scouting.
The federal agency says it's evaluating whether the hunt will achieve the goal of 'enhancing the survival of the species.' http://www.nzherald.co.nz/world/news/article.cfm?c_id=2&objectid=11359689
At first read the story seems to be irrational. Why kill one of the few remaining rhinos left while at the same time raising money to save them?
But does the means matter if the end is positive? The money raised from the competition may well be sufficient to help prevent more being hunted or help with a breeding or education programme. And during the process of running the competition has awareness of endangered species been raised which may have further positive effects? On the other hand should money only come from 'acceptable' means?
What matters most - the means or the end?
What do you think?
Image source
It is proposed that if money can be used to do good it should not matter how that money was made