Posted on 11/20/2017 3:59:15 AM PST by marktwain
Originally appeared in the Wall Street Journal on August 7, 2015.
An American hunter’s killing of a beloved lion named Cecil in Zimbabwe last month was enough to fuel widespread outrage. But the details of the hunt are even more damning: The lion was allegedly lured out of a national park and then killed illegally.
Unfortunately, this one sorry episode is tarnishing the role that well-managed, legal hunting can play in promoting wildlife conservation. Cecil’s death has inspired passionate calls to ban trophy hunting throughout Africa. Three U.S. airlines have announced that they will no longer transport lions and other big-game African animals killed by trophy hunters.
Not surprisingly, politicians have jumped on the bandwagon. Sen. Robert Menendez (D., N.J.) introduced legislation last week that would ban the import or export of animals being proposed for inclusion under the U.S. Endangered Species Act.
Last October the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service proposed listing the African lion as threatened under the Endangered Species Act, but the agency has yet to complete the listing. Mr. Menendez’s bill would effectively end the trophy hunting of lions by Americans.
But would restricting trophy hunts really save the king of beasts? Not according to the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. “Lions are not in trouble because of responsible sport hunting,” wrote director Dan Ashe after the agency concluded its listing review of the species. “In fact, evidence shows that scientifically sound conservation programs that include limited, well-managed sport hunting can and do contribute to the long-term survival of the species.” The agency determined that the major threats to lions are habitat destruction, declines in the species they prey on, and increased conflicts between humans and lions.
Banning trophy hunting or restricting trophy imports wouldn’t address these challenges. In fact, it could do more to endanger wildlife than save it. Consider what happened in Kenya after it banned all hunting in 1977. Since then, Kenya’s populations of large wild animals have declined 60%-70%, according to wildlife economist Mike Norton-Griffiths. Kenya’s lion populations have fallen to 2,000 from 20,000 a half century ago. Hunting bans in Tanzania and Zambia have produced similar results.
Trophy hunting is one of the main ways local people reap benefits from living in regions with large wildlife. Across Africa, hunting generates more than $200 million in revenue each year, mostly in southern Africa, according to a study in Biological Conservation. A 2012 study in PLOS One, an open-source, peer-reviewed science journal, noted that eliminating revenues from lion hunting could “reduce tolerance for the species among communities where local people benefit from trophy hunting, and may reduce funds available for anti-poaching.”
For Africans who lose crops, livestock and even human lives to dangerous species such as lions, wildlife is often seen as a liability to be avoided or killed rather than an asset to be protected. “Why are the Americans more concerned than us?” one Zimbabwean told Reuters, commenting on the furor over Cecil’s death. “We never hear them speak out when villagers are killed by lions and elephants.”
Citing research by the University of Chicago’s Field Museum and the Kenya Wildlife Service, the New Scientist reported that, on average, in Kenya each lion eats $270 worth of livestock annually. Such losses are catastrophic in a country where per capita income is $1,200. Herders would rather kill lions than conserve them.
Andrew Loveridge, the Oxford researcher who collared and studied Cecil, acknowledges the benefits of big-game hunting. “Hunting, as much as people might detest it, does have a role in conservation,” he told the BBC last week, noting that more land is protected as hunting reserves in Africa than as national parks. “If there was no hunting, what would happen with that land?”
Hunting also provides much-needed funding for Africa’s protected areas. Consider the Zimbabwe Parks and Wildlife Management Authority, responsible for managing the Hwange National Park, where Cecil lived. Panthera, the conservation group, notes that this wildlife agency derives the majority of its funding from trophy hunting. If this revenue goes away, so does the agency’s ability to adequately safeguard wildlife populations from poachers and other illegal hunters.
Lion conservation succeeds when it provides incentives for local people to protect lions and their habitat. In other words, if it pays, it stays. When done responsibly and legally, trophy hunting is a way to ensure African lions are here to stay.
Well then let's get busy and kill more lions.
It is called management. It is why white tail deer and elk have made such a come back in the U.S.A.
East of the Mississippi we killed off all the predator species and hunting is not as prevalent as in times past. Deer etc. are running around with nothing to control the pollution. In the era of the iphone the idea of sitting in the woods for hours on end is too boring.
“Environmentalist” vs. “Conservationist.”
When you have X land and that land can healthily support Y lions and you have Y + 1 lions the pride has to be culled by 1.
Enviro:
Why kill such a magnificent animal. (Meanwhile Y + 1 goes to Y + 20 and then all the lions starve.)
Conservation:
2 Options:
1) Park rangers kill a a lion
2) Hunter pays the $50,000 License fee, hires 20 locals for a couple of weeks for wages exceeding their normal salaries for a year and injects about $150,000 into the local economy.
Killing for food is one thing...but killing for the thrill of killing, I don’t understand.
Big game hunting reminds me of sex tourism.
It is pretty hypocritical for any American to critique wild life management in Africa. Our track record is horrible. We virtually wiped out every grey wolf in the lower 48 and tried to kill every mountain lion and bear but were less successful. It’s not for trying though. If the wolf population was at pre Colombian levels to you think feral pigs would be running loose everywhere?
See #5
Open your mind and understand.
On top of that the license fees pay for anti poaching efforts. Poachers don’t care about the math involved. They can take Y to Y - Y = 0. Conservation means keeping a pride or herd at Y... what the land X can support.
Either a park ranger kills a lion or a hunter. A hunter boost the local economy and pays for conservation measures. Almost all hunters are staunch conservationists. An out of control population decimates the environment or even worse leads to a population crash.
There are organized anti-poacher volunteer groups that come from all over the world into Africa and basically performed paramilitary anti-poaching Patrols.
I kmow a couple of lawyers who do this as their vacation into the bush. Plenty of wildlife to be seen while deterring illegal and harmful poaching activities.
Contrary to your low opinion of my critical thinking skills, I think what you wrote makes perfect sense. My problem is with the person who will pay that much to kill for the sake of killing.
Oh and I know of what I speak. My uncle had a 2000 hectare hunting preserve in South Africa in norther Transvaal just south of Zimbabwe. (I am a RSA expat) He would base hunting fees on which population needed culled. Employed 10 people, one a professor to determine which herds/prides were Y +. If the Rinos were Y - for example, they were not huntable at any price.
I don’t get that either, but people are different. In prehistoric times I would have been the fire maker, the tool maker, the planner and not the hunter. Thank God there are hunters because otherwise you and I would have starved.
For the sake of killing, or for the sake travelling to an exotic location with all the romance associated to pursue a goal that men throughout the ages have pursued, to pit yourself against the instincts of dangerous prey? I’ve never been anything of a hunter and I’ve certainly never gone on safari, but there’s much more to the whole affair than just paying for a killshot.
Personally, I'd rather the hunter paying the bribe take the risk that the bribe taker will also want the reward for identifying a poacher and end up shot by the anti-poaching patrols.
Of course, the prevailing theory is that if people have plenty of money they should also have exceptions without any risks because, well, they have plenty of money. As far as the 50k going to protecting lions, it's Africa and the but that 50k won't almost all vanish into the pockets of politicians and connected folks, yeah, gotcha.
It's a nice theory, but unfortunately, reality doesn't dance to that theoretical tune in Africa.
I was once on a cross-country flight seated next to a South African safari guide. He was quite interesting. I asked about animal populations and he absolutely confirmed that African countries that ban hunting have drastic endangerment while those that has managed hunting have strong and growing populations.
He strongly implies that the safari guides take care of business themselves when they come across poachers.
I was sickened when the former seatwarmer in the White House has $20,000,000 in Ivory crushed into dust. A far smarter decision would have been to release it for sale, thus raising supply and lowering the price of Ivory. All proceeds could have been given directly to anti-poaching efforts in the African countries, but alas, he had a teachable moment and squandered it.
Read my other posts on this issue. As far as the fees go, there isn’t that much corruption in the conservation movement. It isn’t like these people want to kill the goose that lays golden eggs. Not being corrupt is entirely in their self interest. Everything else in Africa is corrupt as hell. Conservation is way at the bottom of the scale.
I’m guessing cutting off their tusks isn’t an option here.
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