What's the best way to protect wildlife?

Killing animals for animals' good. Not many will buy the explanation given by Nature Conservancy to defend Chinese e-commerce tycoon Jack Ma's hunting spree in Britain. Ma, who is also a director on the board of the animal protection group, hunted 11 stags in Britain two years ago. In a recent report on Chinese nouveaux riches, The Sunday Times describes their newfound "wild" hobbies and says that Ma, founder of e-commerce giant Alibaba Group, and his 11 traveling companies spent ￡36,000 pounds to rent a castle and hire a helicopter for their hunting trip.

The hunting story has all the elements of an extravagant potboiler. It describes the naked display of wealth by China's nouveaux riches both at home and abroad, their luxurious lifestyle that is in sharp contrast to the poverty that many people live in, the pleasure they derive from "slaughtering" wild animals and the bad reputation they have earned.

Ma has admitted on his online page that the trip was "quite expensive" but insists that he did so for "environmental protection".