Trophy Hunting

[Lisbeth]

It is criminal to shoot the big tuskers

[Lisbeth]

FIVE. The death toll of giant Amboseli elephants by trophy hunting in recent months has risen to 5. These icons are protected against hunting in Kenya but not when they wander across the border into Tanzania.

In what can best be described as eco-sabotage, a small but influential cabal of Tanzanian trophy-hunting operators are driving their industry over a cliff. These morally bankrupt individuals have one goal in mind – loads of cash – and have enough clients slobbering at the mouth to bag one of the last 100-pounders before they are either protected or extinct.

Numerous trophy hunters have contacted us to express their concerns, but few have spoken out with any conviction against the rotten eggs in their industry. And there are enough ethical hunters in the online forums we monitor to stop the rot. But none of them go beyond a few words of concern.

The tourism industry, too, remains largely silent. A leading entity representing many of us – tour operators and lodges – refused to publish to their members our concern about the situation. Are we the only high-profile tourism brand prepared to speak out publicly?

Obviously, boycotting Tanzania’s tourism industry would be disastrous. That route would weaken tourism and make trophy hunting more important as a revenue generator. What we need is for more members of the tourism and broader hunting industries to stick their necks out and demand an end to this attack by a few delinquent trophy-hunting operators on the remaining tusker population across Africa.

History will judge our generation for not taking decisive action against the evil ones.

Simon Espley – CEO

[Richprins]

[Lisbeth]

REFLECTION

A disturbing journey into the human psyche and trophy hunting


Role reversal: a lioness stands over the hunter. (Photo: Stephanie Klarmann)

By Stephanie Klarmann | 03 Jun 2024

Photographer and artist Roger Ballen’s latest exhibition The End of the Game is an immensely disturbing and provocative examination of the subjugation and commodification of wild animals through trophy hunting and captivity.
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Mexican poet and academic Cesar Cruz said that “art should comfort the disturbed and disturb the comfortable”.

As I step inside American artist Roger Ballen’s latest exhibition at the Inside Out Centre for the Arts in Rosebank, Johannesburg, a lion holding two human heads roars at me. I’m a little taken aback by the role reversal and remind myself that any critical examination of the human psyche and our relationship to the natural world is likely to elicit some uncomfortable feelings.

“A central challenge in my career has been to locate the animal in the human being and the human being in the animal” says Ballen.

I tell myself that stepping into this absurd world of grotesque taxidermied animals serves a necessary purpose: a critical reflection of the damage we cause to the natural environment and its inhabitants.

Installations like these poignantly elicit discomfort at the very notion of such role reversal and force viewers to question the wanton killing of animals for sport and fun. Just maybe, it might evoke questions of what it’s like on the other end of a hunting rifle.

Ballen’s aim, inspired by Peter Beard’s The End of the Game, is to question and to reflect on the destructive forces that have decimated wildlife populations across Africa through excessive consumptive use, poaching and trophy hunting since the advent of Western civilisation on the continent.


A step up at whose cost? (Photo: Stephanie Klarmann)


A sense of needless domination permeates this installation as a serval lies with a gin trap around its leg and rope
around its neck. (Photo: Stephanie Klarmann)

Looking at the ragged, lifeless trophies on display made me realise what a futile and egotistical activity trophy hunting is – the animals look stricken, shrunken and less than majestic. Why would anyone want that on display as a showcase of some “conquest” into Africa? In what ways are the dead creatures a sight to behold compared with the beauty of their living beings?

Each installation elicits a visceral reaction as the intensity of the displayed animals increases with each step through the gallery.

Ballen’s depictions of wild animals with rope haphazardly wrapped around their necks is a metaphorical deep dive into our human need to control, tame and break nature in our favour.

The commercial captive wildlife industry, encompassing captive facilities, live trade and trade in body parts and derivatives, is a very literal example of how we chain and subjugate wildlife for gain and vanity.

And while the installations offer a critique of hunting during bygone colonial times, trophy hunting and consumptive use still abounds today.

While venturing through the gallery, Ballen spoke openly about the continued excessive consumption we all engage in – from trophy hunting to the very small ways in which we engage with the world.


A portrayal of vanity as a gnarled leopard drapes the shoulders of a mannequin. (Photo: Stephanie Klarmann)


A cub and serval lay caged and tied down by rope next to a resting man. The cage and thick rope wrapped
around their necks create a disturbing scene of subjugation. (Photo: Stephanie Klarmann)

It was a stark reminder of how urgently we need to consciously and compassionately live within this world.

Depictions of dominance, like rope wrapped around the neck, skins, horns and heads adorning walls. What are the solutions to the destruction we have wrought?

If Ballen’s End of the Game is anything to go by, the first and most important step we can each take is to look inwards and reassess the ways in which we contribute to the exploitation of the natural world.

We cannot recoil any longer at the discomfort this confrontation evokes within us.

Without it this writer worries that we will continue along a path of destroying what we ultimately need for our well-being and survival. In many ways it is also not about the impact on us alone, but asking the uncomfortable question if we are at ease with destroying the natural world, something inherently beautiful, invaluable and unique in its own right.


Chained: in many ways this image captures the commercial captive predator industry’s exploitation of wildlife. (Photo: Stephanie Klarmann)

The human psyche is filled with complexities we can barely begin to quantify and understand in depth, but there is something in trophy hunting that continues to leave this writer personally perplexed, an enjoyment or sense of pleasure I can’t seem to grasp.

The diminished presence of each animal on display deeply troubles me still – in what ways did they offer sportsmanship and pleasure to the shooters? Their empty glass eyes will remain with me long after viewing the exhibition.

But that’s the impact of striking art.

An inescapable feeling of having your mind exposed, evoking emotions we try so hard to keep in check. End of the Game is a striking exhibition and one well worth attending.

“Good art affects the psyche faster than you can blink”. DM

Roger Ballen’s End of the Game exhibition is on at the Inside Out Centre for the Arts in Rosebank, Johannesburg from 28 March 2024 and will run for the remainder of the year.

Comments:

John Nash
3 June 2024 at 09:18
A fascinating modern version of the old fairground freak show, described with an arty, post-rational narrative. Great fun.
As humans, we have always used animals as a commodity – either directly or by removing them as a threat or because we use their land. We cannot live without consuming animals, even if it upsets trendy urban artists.
In South Africa, hunting, trophy hunting, live sales and meat production (HLM) support 40 million acres of privately owned, almost natural habitat, upon which many millions of wild animals and billions of non-hunted plants and animals are conserved. It is an excellent use for SA’s dry land and a useful model for Africa.
Consumption is inevitable either way – without the HLM, the land would be used for farming and ALL the wildlife would be cleared. Even Jo’burg was built where animals once roamed. Rosebank ate animals, too.
In the meantime, please enjoy this exhibition of modern taxidermy, another way of consuming animals usefully. Artists need support, too.

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Luke S
3 June 2024 at 09:46
It’s a sad reality that our species constantly tries to justify it’s ever-increasing abuse of this finite planet’s resources, which inevitably leads to wild animal habitat loss and species extinction, more and more animals farmed for food, and worse (for example climate change).
There are only 2 ways forward that I can see. Either we seriously change the way we do things, and make those big changes very quickly, or we stop and ask ourselves whether we all really need to create our own children, especially when there are millions of children without parents. It’s pretty selfish and egotistical really. But nobody ever tells this story, because capitalism is based on population growth, and reproduction is such a deep-seated instinct, manifested as emotion, that speaking of such things immediately triggers most of us. Most of the approximately 8 100 000 000 of us so far…

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Norman Sander
3 June 2024 at 09:56
I see the article also rails against hunting for consumptive use and the entire article suggests that humans basic instincts should be changed.
I hope the anti hunting lobby realises if humans stop consuming meat, that cattle, sheep, pigs and chickens would become endangered species, as they would serve no useful purpose. In the world of “survival of the fittest” they would be predated to extinction.
Also, in what way is an abattoir a more humane way of killing animals than hunting in the veldt. Anyone who has ever been to an abattoir would agree with me.
As for the stuffed lion and the dead human posing, why did he come to a lion hunt with a pellet gun (I trust you will all realise this comment is tongue in cheek). I shoot 2 or 3 Springbok a year which supplies, our very healthy, meat needs for the year.
While I personally do not understand trophy hunting, I do understand the revenue it brings to SA, which benefits taxes and in most cases, local poor communities with direct cash.
While I agree humans need to take a quantum leap in how they care for the planet, nature and the beings living here, I realise in this crowded world every sentient being needs to make a contribution. So, I support hunting. People in modern society do not understand the natural world any longer.

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Michele Rivarola
3 June 2024 at 15:10
I don’t hunt but I eat meat so I do understand hunting for food i.e. you east what you kill. That is what I do except that someone else does the killing. As regards to trophy hunting it is nothing less than the lowest of low ways of humans satisfying their blood lust in the absence of a war zone. I beg to ask what is the benefit of killing a rhino or an elephant or a lion or any other creature for no other purpose than satisfying personal basic instincts. I don’t buy into the excuses that it provides a living, many other things do yet we don’t willfully obliterate them. Life is precious, any life, and all life is precious if nothing else simply because we cannot recreate what we are so intent on destroying.