Lloyd - the article I read was about the mass extinctions humans have caused since becoming effective hunters, not about modern sport hunters. North America, Europe and Asia used to have large mammal faunas as diverse as what remains in Africa today - many species of elephants, rhinos, bison, camels, horses, giant ground sloths, etc. etc. And all the great predators that ate them. The coming of humans wiped these out very quickly in the Old World, and in the blink of an eye in the New World. When humans arrived in North America roughly fifteen thousand years ago, there were 34 genera of very large mammals; five thousand years later they were all gone. Same thing happened earlier when humans arrived in New Guinea and Australia, and later with industrial whaling in the 19th Century, with most of the world's fisheries, and is happening with elephants and rhinos today.
That article was not condemning sport hunters. It was pointing out that humans are incredibly efficient predators that take the mature reproducing adults out of a population, unlike natural predators that focus on young and aged animals that are less important for reproduction. Modern wildlife management avoids these extinctions, but we lost nearly all the big stuff before anyone even noticed what was happening.
