Trophy Hunting

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Re: Trophy Hunting

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Trophy hunting will not save Africa’s lions – so the UK ban on imports is a positive step for wildlife conservation

Over the past 25 years, lion numbers have decreased by 43% throughout Africa, as their range has declined by more than 90%.

Prof. Dr. Hans Bauer
Research fellow: Northern Lion Conservation, University of Oxford


Over the past 25 years, I have spent a lot of time counting lions as part of my job. Only last month, I spent three hours with two males – possibly brothers – right next to my car in Maze National Park, Ethiopia. Lions come in the night, very quietly. Despite weighing well over 20 stone (around 150kg), you do not hear their footsteps. What you hear is their breathing, the turbo of the killing machine.

Had I turned on a light immediately, they would have run away. These lions are skittish, even if they face no threat from trophy hunters in Africa’s national parks. So we spend half an hour in the pitch dark before I finally switch on a small red light to count the eye reflections. Another pause, then a bigger red light enables us to see their sex and age.

We get lucky: with the big spotlight they move to a discrete distance, but we still get to watch them for an hour before retiring to our tents a few hundred metres away. The lions have long lost interest in us but the ranger makes a campfire which smoulders all night, just to be safe. This park has no outposts, no visitors and no emergency services, so we need to stay out of trouble.

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Assisting with translocating a livestock-raiding lion to Waza National Park, Cameroon. Author provided

Maybe you have counted lions in a zoo or wildlife park: “I see three – no wait, there’s a tip of another tail and a flickering ear, so four, or five?” People on safari in popular destinations where lions are habituated to cars may have had the same experience. In the wilderness, however, lions are hard to spot – across much of their range you don’t see them very often at all, especially during the day.

I have spent countless nights sitting on top of my vehicle, playing buffalo or warthog cries with a megaphone, trying to catch a glimpse of lions attracted by these sounds. I have walked for days to find footprints or put up automated camera traps. For every day of fieldwork there is a day of grant writing before and a day of reporting afterwards – but yes, it is a wonderful job.

I once found lions in a part of Ethiopia where they had not been documented and added a blob on the distribution map. Unfortunately, over the last 25 years, it has been much more common to reduce or delete entries from our African Lion Database.

My research shows that during this time, lion numbers have decreased by 43% throughout Africa, and that their range has declined by more than 90%. There are now roughly 25,000 lions in 60 separate population groups, half of which consist of less than 100 lions. Their existence is particularly threatened across West, Central and East Africa.

I first went to Cameroon in 1992 to do my masters project in Waza National Park, and have worked in various parts of Africa ever since (I currently live in Mali). My main research focus with WildCRU – Europe’s first university-based conservation research unit – is the mitigation of human-lion conflicts. I study the difficult balance between people’s livelihoods and the conservation of biodiversity, working close-up at village level but also at national and international perspectives.

This led to me being asked to give evidence to the UK’s All-Party Parliamentary Group (APPG) on Banning Trophy Hunting, which on 29 June 2022 presented its report on the impacts of trophy hunting to the environment secretary, George Eustice. This follows the UK government’s announcement in December 2021 that it would ban the importing of body parts of 7,000 species including lions, rhinos, elephants and polar bears. On average, roughly ten lion “trophies” are imported into the UK each year, among many other threatened species.

There are many ways to look at this issue, and the debate usually ends up in a deadlock between utilitarians and moralists. I won’t hide my sympathy for the latter – I work with organisations such as the Born Free Foundation. But after a week in the field living on pasta and tinned tomato sauce, I will eat bushmeat in a village with no alternatives if it has been harvested legally and sustainably.

The future of trophy hunting in Africa was not on the table during the APPG’s discussions about a UK import ban – and if it was, it would be for African scientists to advise their governments of the pros and cons. In my view, however, the evidence is clear that trophy hunting has not delivered for wildlife in most parts of Africa, and that local communities benefit next to nothing from its continued practice.

How trophy hunting works

Trophy hunting is a controversial topic in conservation circles. In some cases, the fact that lions are doing better in parts of southern Africa has – wrongly, in my view – been attributed to it. But in itself, trophy hunting is not the lions’ biggest threat either; my research shows that more are killed when they attack livestock, or perish when their habitat and prey is diminished by agricultural encroachment or poaching.

In Africa, trophy hunting’s popularity grew during colonial times when all sorts of slain animals were sent back to Europe. Nowadays, antelopes are this industry’s most hunted animals – but the most prestigious targets remain the “big five”: lion, leopard, elephant, rhinoceros and buffalo.

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Lion image from a camera trap in Dinder National Park, Sudan. Author provided

A client might pay a local entrepreneur or hunting guide anywhere between £10,000 and £100,000 for a “bag” that includes a lion – and the super-rich may pay (or donate) even more. It’s a lot of money for a holiday, and trophy hunting mostly attracts rich, white, middle-aged men from western countries.

Hunting guides are businessmen (almost all are male). They generally lease government land that has been designated for conservation through “sustainable use”. Known as trophy hunting “blocks”, these areas vary widely (anywhere between 500km² and 5,000km²) and each has annual quotas for the amounts of different species that may be shot by trophy hunters.

In theory, this restricts the killings to a level the population can sustain. Hunting guides then manage their blocks to maintain these wildlife numbers, including organising anti-poaching patrols. The guides employ staff, pay the land lease, trophy fees and a bunch of other costs – including to a taxidermist and export company to deliver the skin and skull to their client after the kill. It is a big industry that claims to be good for both wildlife and local people, but these guides are not charity workers; they maximise their benefits and minimise their costs.

Trophy hunting also does not focus (as is sometimes suggested) on killing off the older, weaker animals in any block. Wildlife populations grow fastest when their densities are low, so that food and aggression are not limiting factors. In order to minimise any such competition – and to offer the biggest trophies – trophy hunts will target healthy animals, not just the old and infirm.

Lions and livestock

The methodology used for setting trophy hunting quotas varies from country to country. Cameroon, for example, has traditionally had very high quotas for lions, but these were not based on scientific rigour. In 2015 we published our first survey results based on observations done by three teams tracking lions over a vast range.

Each team drove for thousands of kilometres across Cameroon, very slowly, always with two trackers stationed on the bonnet of each 4x4 looking for footprints. We got stuck, camped, waited for trophy hunters to depart before being allowed into a particular area, struggled to get diesel, tolerated the heat and the tsetse flies – it was all part of our daily routine following the lions.

Ultimately, we counted 250 lions, 316 leopards and 1,376 spotted hyenas. Cameroon does not offer a trophy hunting quota for leopards, and hyenas are not popular with hunters – but as a result of our count, the country’s annual lion quota was reduced from 30 to ten. Today this quota is still applied throughout northern Cameroon’s Bénoué ecosystem, which has 32 trophy hunting blocks in between its three national parks.

Of these 32 blocks, however, more than ten no longer have any resident lions. And when the blocks lose their lions, this also threatens those living in the national parks – as there is a big difference between having 250 lions spread across 30,000km² of contiguous habitat, or three isolated populations of 50 in parks of 3,000km² each.

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Grazing livestock can be easy prey for lions at night. Author provided

When I visited Cameroon again in 2021, I observed cattle everywhere – which is not a good combination with lions. Many of these herds had come from neighbouring countries – pastoralists running from the threat of terrorists in Mali and Niger. As a result, the pressure on these areas, and those who manage them, is intense. It is hard enough to integrate local communities in conservation work, much harder with nomadic people.

Whenever livestock grazes in an area with lions, you inevitably get some depredation. Lions will kill some livestock and, in retaliation, people will kill some lions. This is perhaps the biggest challenge in lion conservation, and all the programmes I know are working to mitigate it. There are tools available to reduce the damage, from flashlights and watchdogs to mobile enclosures and more. But this only works if you know the people living there and can collaborate towards a common goal – not if you have different people passing through every time.

In fact, the pastoralists I have met are usually quite tolerant – they like lions. A herder in Cameroon once told me: “If a lion attacks one cow this year, I will know that God has not forgotten me.” Another in Ethiopia said: “We do not think lions take our livestock to hurt us. As a result, we do not refer to it as an ‘attack’ or ‘killing’ – they are taking what they need.”

Nonetheless, some people – pastoralists and others – inevitably pay a high price for co-existing with lions, and they would prefer them in someone else’s backyard.

https://youtu.be/eP-nV-JSCGg

I have collared lions in several countries. I know the thrill of a hunt, but a dart gun does not kill – and the information you get from a lion’s collar is amazing. In Waza National Park, I followed lions this way and some behaved very well – but the worst offender killed a hundred-thousand dollars’ worth of cattle in our time there. The park’s warden asked me: “How long do you think the local people will pay this price for lion conservation?”

Almost all lion trophy hunting zones in Africa are part of larger ecosystems that include national parks, and in most cases the hunt quotas are based on the entire population of lions, including those living in the parks. An argument used by trophy hunters is that they are protecting extra land with extra lions – but it’s not that simple.

While trophy hunting blocks do add lions and extra habitat, they can still become a drain on the overall population when lions move out of the parks into emptied territories within the blocks. These so-called “source-sink dynamics” became a global news story in July 2015 because of Cecil, the black-maned lion that my WildCRU colleagues were satellite-tracking when he was killed by an American trophy hunter.

Cecil had been lured from Hwange National Park in Zimbabwe and was shot by Walter Palmer, a dentist from the Minneapolis area. It was actually quite a routine occurrence, but the death of Cecil the Lion created a worldwide media storm – feeding into the UK’s proposal for a ban on trophy hunt imports.

The model starts to unravel

Throughout most of Africa, lion numbers are declining. While trophy hunting is far from the only reason for this, the evidence clearly shows it has failed in its promise to provide a significant boost to wildlife conservation. I once thought it might offer benefits too, but studying its impacts and costs has taught me otherwise.

Trophy hunting is allowed in countries throughout East, Central and West Africa including Burkina Faso, Benin, Central African Republic, Cameroon, Ethiopia, Sudan and the Congo – and in all these countries, lion declines have been particularly steep. The Central African Republic is the most extreme example: almost half the country was designated as hunting blocks, yet wildlife there has all but disappeared. In 2012, the late researcher and conservationist Philippe Bouché published Game Over! – the title said it all.

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A male lion in Zakouma National Park, Chad. Photograph: Chiara Fraticelli, Author provided

Trophy hunting has proved increasingly vulnerable to, on one hand, rising management costs due to the increased threats of agricultural encroachment and poaching (of both lions and their prey), and on the other, reduced income from smaller wildlife populations.

Two rules-of-thumb are widely used: a sustainable annual “harvest” is one lion per 2,000km², and the annual management of a trophy hunt block costs around US$1,000 per km² . Together, they suggest it costs around two million dollars to “produce a lion”. These numbers vary hugely between areas and, of course, trophy hunters shoot other species at the same time, but exceptional conditions are needed for the hunt companies to break even. At the same time, local communities living with wildlife are, understandably, demanding their fair share. The model starts to unravel and fall apart.

In Zambia and Tanzania, for example, 40% and 72% respectively of trophy hunting areas have been abandoned. Management costs are rising and private operators do not find it profitable any more, except in a handful of the best areas. This is not due to any outright ban but rather, the inability to balance of costs and benefits.

Across Africa, in the vast majority of cases, trophy hunting has not delivered more lions – whether because of financial imbalances, increased terrorism, land mismanagement or increased livestock mobility (or a combination of these factors). This failure to deliver undermines the already contested justification for the continued killing of lions by trophy hunters. And as the decline continues, many communities stand to lose a wildlife heritage that could, under a different approach to conservation, provide them with employment and stability.

Success stories?

Namibia and Botswana in southern Africa are often cited as models for conservation, which implies their experience could be replicated elsewhere. Trophy hunting has been presented as a success factor in these countries. But in reality, how instructive are the experiences of two large countries with a combined population of less than 5 million people for the other billion-plus Africans living in more densely populated areas?

Certainly, these two countries have a lot of wildlife – but is this due to the effects of trophy hunting, or to very low human population densities, diversified tourism industries and well-resourced wildlife institutions? In Botswana, trophy hunting was banned from 2014 to 2020, but despite abundant polemicising from both pro- and anti-hunting advocacy groups, I’m not aware of any evidence of a significant impact on its national lion and elephant numbers. In short, Botswana’s conservation efforts will succeed with or without trophy hunting.

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Lion numbers are holding up well in Botswana. Shutterstock
While southern Africa has, in general, been quite successful in keeping its wildlife species stable, this is also not always through natural processes. There has been a lot of habitat engineering and captive breeding, so that many of the animals you find in confined nature reserves are, in fact, bred and auctioned.

In South Africa, for example, around 8,000 lions live in captivity for the benefit of a small number of rich owners, having been bred like livestock. This model does nothing to improve habitat or biodiversity levels, nor does it support rural socio-economic development. The country’s overall trophy hunting quota is around five wild lions and 500 captive lions each year, and while the US banned trophy imports from South Africa in 2016, most imported lion trophies into the UK have been killed there.

Another issue for Africa as a whole is that biologists have flocked to southern Africa’s conservation hotspots such as the Okavango Delta in Botswana and Kruger National Park in South Africa, which possess good infrastructure and lots of wildlife. As a result, there is an over-representation of people who have worked there among Africa’s community of conservation science, advocacy and practice. Many may never have worked outside southern Africa, and may not be aware of what is happening in the rest of the continent.

I’m not denying that some countries have been successful in their conservation efforts, and that trophy hunting has, in isolated cases, been part of that success. But the “if it pays, it stays” approach which seems to underpin many arguments in favour of trophy hunting has much more often led to the loss of natural ecosystems. This decay affects the vast majority of lion ranges, and an even greater majority of African citizens.

The banning of trophy hunt imports in the UK and elsewhere can, I believe, help to reduce or even reverse this decline. The UK ban is supported by a large majority of British voters. France, the Netherlands and Australia have already banned lion trophy imports, and the EU and US have restricted their imports. Since most clients want their trophy, that means significantly fewer potential clients overall, indirectly affecting Africa’s policy options.

The way forward

Throughout the continent, most policymakers stick to the prevailing narrative that trophy hunting supports conservation. In this way, a small white elite continues to have exclusive access to conservation areas that are off-limits for the average citizen to visit, or for public agencies to invest in. Trophy hunting is getting in the way of much-needed innovation and investment.

I agree with trophy hunters that the land they use is important habitat for lions and their prey. No one wants these areas to spiral down. However, the current situation feels like that famous frog in boiling water story – countries in Africa are afraid to jump out until they no longer can.

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Hans Bauer assisting authorities to move a confiscated lion cub in Ethiopia. Photograph: Aziz Ahmed. Author provided

The largest and most important conservation area in West Africa is the 25,000km² W-Arly-Pendjari (WAP) region, on the boundary between Benin, Burkina Faso and Niger. With around 400 lions, it is the only three-digit lion population in West Africa, and it also possesses the largest West African populations of elephant and buffalo.

Half of WAP’s land is managed for trophy hunting. Yet over 20 years, these blocks have contributed less than 1% of the region’s total conservation budget. Much of the area is now increasingly threatened by terrorist incursions and large parts have been abandoned, including the hunting blocks.

In Benin, however, the situation is changing. Lion trophy hunting has been ditched and a trust fund established that promises to fund the country’s conservation activities in perpetuity. While mainly funded by Benin and German government agencies, the fund has an independent international structure and several other donors have contributed. The park’s management, now delegated to a non-profit organisation, is striving to improve local livelihoods by generating employment and offering support for community initiatives that do not harm the local wildlife.

Of course, we should not expect wildlife to fix poverty and instability where 50 years of development work have been unsuccessful. But I visit Benin every year and where I used to find a dozen friendly but unorganised staff, I now see hundreds of local people trained, employed and proud. In the past, some children might have gone to school reluctant to learn things they would not need as subsistence farmers. After visiting the park, however, I see signs that they want to learn skills and compete for career options their parents did not have.

Another glimpse of a better future can be seen in Akagera National Park, Rwanda, which was completely depleted in the 1980s and 1990s. Rwanda is the only country in Africa with a population density higher than India’s. It is a country facing a huge number of challenges, yet Akagera is a conservation success story. Following an initial investment in the area’s recovery, it is now breaking even through ecotourism with primarily Rwandan visitors. While this cannot be expected to work everywhere, it has worked in this most unlikely of places.

The true cost of saving African lions, and their prey and habitats, is estimated to be around US$1billion per year. With such funding, Africa could quadruple its lion numbers up to 100,000 without creating any new protected areas. At the moment, lions exist at only about a quarter of their ranges’ full capacities. Funding and community engagement are both critical to increasing this figure.

Ultimately, international solidarity is a much more substantial, and sustainable, source of funding than trophy hunting. Our approach to the extinction crisis should be similar to the one for climate: biodiversity justice as well as climate justice. The 2021 COP26 climate summit in Glasgow discussed the proposed annual fund of US$100 billion to help less wealthy nations adapt to climate change and mitigate further rises in temperature. A similar fund for supporting global biodiversity will be proposed at the COP15 summit in Montreal in December 2023. A billion dollars for Africa’s lions and other wildlife may sound unrealistic, but in the arena of international policy, it should not really be a problem.

African nations are sovereign, and hold the key to the future of the lion. Some may be keen to retain trophy hunting – but they know that demand is shrinking as UK politicians are the latest to respond to the concerns of their constituents.

Above all, the trophy hunting debate is divisive, draining energy from conservationists in Africa and around the world who agree on most other issues. Now is surely the time to focus our efforts on far better alternatives for the conservation of lions and other endangered species.

Remember those two lions in Maze National Park? They are part of a small population which has the park as its core area, but which roam the entire landscape in that part of southern Ethiopia. Sometimes a few lions make it across to the next park for some welcome genetic exchange. Maze’s head warden has lots of rangers to assist in monitoring them, but only one motorbike. There is no hotel for hours around, no fuel station, no media. He does not need trophy hunters, he needs a car.


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Re: Trophy Hunting

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End trophy hunting in South Africa, or we won’t visit your country, say tourists

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A four-lion taxidermy at the Safari Club International's 2020 annual convention in Reno, Nevada. (Photo: Humane Society International United States)

By Don Pinnock | 31 Aug 2022

Trophy hunters run loud, expensive campaigns to convince the public they kill for conservation and the good of poor communities. Two recent authoritative surveys revealed that the public disagrees and that hunting is a threat to tourism in South Africa.
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Two surveys conducted this year, both within South Africa and internationally, show widespread rejection of trophy hunting. The global survey comes with a warning that hunting is damaging the country as a wildlife tourist destination.

Despite the growing opposition to trophy hunting, foreign hunters — mainly American — still stream in to shoot and kill every imaginable species of animal from squirrels, African wild cats and blue duikers to the rarest, such as Lichtenstein’s hartebeest and the largest, such as elephants and hippos. They even target endangered aardvarks.

Between 2016 and 2020, hunters killed a staggering 174,000 animals in SA.

World Animal Protection (WAP) commissioned research surveying 10,900 people from around the world, including international tourists from countries who most frequently visit South Africa, as well as South African citizens. It found universal opposition to blood sports and a strong desire to finance the protection of wildlife through non-lethal alternatives such as responsible tourism.

Key findings from the research showed:
  • At least 84% of international tourists agree that the South African government should prioritise wildlife-friendly tourism over trophy hunting.
  • At least 74% agreed that making trophy hunting a key pillar of policy will damage South Africa’s reputation and 72% would be put off from visiting the country altogether.
  • Seven in 10 South African citizens agreed their country would be a more attractive tourist destination if trophy hunting was banned.
  • Three-quarters of South African citizens agreed that trophy hunting was unacceptable when wildlife-friendly tourism alternatives have not been fully utilised.
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A survey of 599 people by Humane Society International/Africa, conducted across all provinces, also found considerable objection to trophy hunting among all race and gender groups, six language groups and a range of ages and household incomes, both urban and rural.

Opposition to trophy hunting continued to grow from their (2020) survey, with a 4% increase in opposition to trophy hunting overall, taking opposition levels among the South African adult population to 68%.

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World Animal Protection welcomed the May 2021 recommendations from South Africa’s Department of Forestry, Fisheries and the Environment (DFFE) to halt the domestication of captive lions, as well as the phasing out of the commercial captive lion industry. But it said progressive steps had seemingly stalled, with little progress taking place in the year that followed.

The HSI/Africa poll was extremely fine-grained, drilling down into views on the hunting of a number of iconic animals. The percentages of people objecting to trophy hunts were:

All trophy hunting — 68%
Canned lion hunting — 65%
Elephants — 64%
Rhinos — 64%
Leopards — 64%
Lions — 63%
Hippos — 66%
Giraffes — 67%

Objections to foreign hunters exporting trophies for elephants, black rhinos and leopards were all above 60%.

In terms of race, the highest objection to trophy hunting came from Indians (91%), followed by whites (73%), coloureds (70%) and blacks (66%). There was roughly a 50-50 parity between genders.

The survey noted that opposition to trophy hunting is more marked among the younger age group (15-17) at 79%, compared with 68% of those between 25 and 34. This trend was consistent across all results.

There were clear regional differences when it came to opposition to canned lion hunting, being lowest by far among residents of the Free State (36%), possibly because of the high level of hunting and captive breeding of wild animals in the region.

“Our new survey shows without a doubt,” said HSI/Africa wildlife specialist Dr Matthew Schurch, “that most South Africans reject the unjustifiable practice of trophy hunting, including canned lion hunting, and opposition to trophy hunting continues to grow.

SA government ‘out of step’

“The South African government is out of step with public opinion because it allows people to hunt wild animals for the purpose of collecting their remains to adorn their homes. Trophy hunting does not significantly contribute to conservation.

“In South Africa, one-third of hunting trophies of CITES-listed mammals are from captive bred animals. This senseless killing of wild animals is not only unethical and cruel, but a disgrace to brand South Africa.”

Commenting on the results of the World Animal Protection survey, its wildlife campaign manager, Edith Kabesiime, said it was clear the public understood that “life of a wild animal is worth so much more than the trophy it is too often reduced to”.

This view was shared by tourists, who come to see wildlife alive and thriving, as well as South Africans who “want to see the incredible wildlife on their doorstep, protected properly, in a humane and ethical manner”.

Bipolar policy

The surveys coincide with South Africa’s White Paper on animal welfare and sustainable use of biodiversity and a call for a committee to discuss the shutting down of lion farms. But in the bipolar way that environmental policy in South Africa seems to specialise, this coincided with the issue of the Environment Department’s Draft Game Meat Strategy aiming to double the consumption of meat from wildlife by 2030. This is seen as a threat to wildlife genetic health and the possibility of wildlife feedlot farming.

According to the Professional Hunters Registers supplied by DFFE, the annual number of foreign trophy hunters entering South Africa averaged around 8,000 (apart from 2020, because of the pandemic).

Between 2016 and 2020 they shot 173,822 wild animals from 83 species. Most hunters came from the United States (4,614 in 2019); the rest, in descending order, from Denmark, Germany, Spain, Canada, Sweden, Mexico and Russia.

A sample of their trophies now mounted or hanging on walls include:

Aardvark — 21
Baboon — 1,655
Bat-eared fox — 56
Buffalo — 4,258
Dassie — 84
Gemsbok — 9,600
Giraffe — 1,340
Ground squirrel — 37
Hippo — 285
Honey badger — 194
Impala — 24,591
Jackal — 1,185
Kudu — 12,637
Lion — 1,636
Polecat — 17
Rhino — 275
Samango monkey — 29
Sable antelope — 4,885
Springbok — 10,587
Suni — 53
Vervet monkey — 913
Warthog — 17,749
Wildebeest — 12,282
Zebra — 10,223

Daily Maverick obtained a 2019 average price list per species, indicating what foreigners are prepared to pay to hunt in South Africa. Here are a few examples:

Baboon — $248
Cheetah — $5,000
Elephant — $26,500
Giraffe — $3,000
Hyena — $3,500
Leopard — $7,830
Lion — $10,000
Cape clawless otter — $100
Sable antelope — $5,414
Ground squirrel — $50
Warthog — $448
Hartman’s zebra — $2,260
Ostrich — $766
Crocodile — $5,700
Emu — $500
Camel — $500

“The government needs to listen to South African voices who clearly don’t want their wildlife heritage plundered any further and want to see change,” said Kabesiime.

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A trophy hunter. (Photo: Humane Society International United States)

“Continuing to make wild animals shoot-to-kill targets at the mercy of wealthy westerners is outdated in a world where public attitudes are swiftly shifting.”

She said that without taking a firm stand, South Africa was starving the oxygen from creative thinking to identify, incentivise and implement non-lethal alternatives to conserve wildlife.

“Wildlife has the right to a wild life free from cruel commercial exploitation. We need to respect and protect them.” DM/OBP


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Re: Trophy Hunting

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They interviewed 599 people and now want to tell us this nonsense, they really are wasting valuable resorses.


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Re: Trophy Hunting

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Agreed, Harry! :yes:


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Re: Trophy Hunting

Post by Lisbeth »

Trophy hunting, game viewing both have ecological and economic pros and cons

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A salesman looks past a poster of a bow hunter during the annual Huntex held in Johannesburg, South Africa, 25 April 2019. (Photo: EPA-EFE / Kim Ludbrook)

By Ed Stoddard | 07 Sep 2022

The anti-trophy hunting campaign is in high gear, employing questionable ‘surveys’ while playing on the emotions of affluent suburbanites whose views of Africa are often shaped by Disney and Tarzan. Both hunting and game viewing have ecological pros and cons — and both have colonial and racist roots — points often lost in the fog of an emotive and agenda-driven debate.
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The cow elephant was shot dead in September last year at close range in the Kruger National Park. She was of breeding age and her sudden death would have been a traumatic experience for a calf in her care, as well as the entire herd. One presumes that animal welfare NGOs campaigning to end trophy hunting would also mourn her passing.

But this cow was not the quarry of a trophy hunter. She was shot dead while charging a group of ecotourists on foot, whose armed guides had unwittingly, in thick bush, blundered into the middle of a herd. Our Burning Planet has spoken to a number of the people who were part of the group — they wish to remain anonymous — and they were also traumatised by the incident.

“It was quite upsetting. One member of our group immediately said ‘we should not have been here’,” said one person from the group.

The point here is that game viewing or similar bush experiences — part of the wider ecotourism sector — can also trigger the death of a large animal, including those of breeding age. This clearly has conservation and animal welfare consequences.

Campaigns to end trophy hunting, which got a massive lift with the killing of a lion named Cecil in Zimbabwe seven years ago, have gained new traction of late. Animal rights organisations owe a huge debt of gratitude to Walter Palmer, the US dentist who shot Cecil with a bow and arrow. His actions provided them with an endless vein of outrage to tap for cash.

And affluent people up north, whose own children are almost never exposed to the risk of megafauna attack, always know what’s best for African wildlife.

In June, more than 100 celebrities and heavy hitters signed a letter to former British Prime Minister Boris Johnson urging him to make good on his populist pledge to ban UK hunters from importing legally hunted trophies taken abroad.

Pro tip: If Boris Johnson embraces your cause, it’s probably not that noble.

“The killing of animals for entertainment is totally contrary to British values,” fumed signatory Dame Judi Dench. What, one wonders, does she think the Royal Family — surely a symbol of “British values” — gets up to at Balmoral?

Different branches of the conservation tree

The fact of the matter is that trophy hunting, or recreational hunting for meat, and game viewing or “photographic safaris”, all have their conservation and economic pros and cons.

This can be lost in the haze of terminology employed by animal welfare and anti-hunting activists. For example, hunting, fishing, game viewing, scuba diving, whale watching, bird watching — all of these and many other outdoor pursuits are “eco-tourist” activities. But hunting is often portrayed outside “ecotourism” even though it involves tourists pursuing an activity in the bush.

Full disclosure: this correspondent is a keen angler who sometimes hunts, but not for trophies. I like to eat what I shoot. As someone who does not hunt for trophies, I can understand to an extent the discomfort with it. And as a journalist, I feel the subject needs to be scrutinised from all angles.

The issue is also often misleadingly framed as a debate between “hunters” and “conservationists”, as if the animal welfare brigade alone is worthy of the “conservationist” tag — or as if hunters were also not concerned with animal welfare.

Both groups are in fact conservationists who happen to take polar approaches to the shared goal of preservation of wildlife and habitat, and there are many shades in between.

The “pro-hunting” and “anti-hunting” clusters both have legitimate voices in the conservation debate. They just happen to be very vocal — especially the anti-hunters — drowning out the many nuanced perspectives in between.

And they have similar roots which have branched off from a shared trunk. Taking a chainsaw and trying to cut one off from the conservation tree does nothing to spread the canopy of truth.

These twin roots are also largely Western and since Africa is the focus — for example, there is no musk ox named “Cecil” in Greenland where legal trophy hunting of the species takes place — they both, it must be said, spring from a racist and a colonial past.

The image of the “Great White Hunter” was clearly emblematic of Europe’s conquest of Africa which, among other things, ignored the many “Great Black Hunters” revered in African hunting cultures. The words “Great” and “White” speak to a stark perception of racial superiority.

On the other hand, the preservation of African wildlife in reserves where hunting was banned stemmed from a Eurocentric view that has often seemed to value the continent’s animals and landscapes more than its people, who in many instances have been forcibly removed to make way for wild flora and fauna.

Pioneers of the current rewilding movement included odious characters such as Joy Adamson of Born Free fame, who treated Africans with disdain. More recently, conservationists have celebrated the rewilding of Rwanda with rhinos translocated from South Africa and Kigali’s leading role in the global anti-plastic campaign, preferring to turn a blind eye to its horrific human rights record.

This perpetuates the damming perception that environmental agendas and Africa’s animals are regarded as more worthy than the region’s people by some wildlife and green NGOs.

That does not mean that both perspectives are irredeemably racist or remain caught in the colonial past. Hunting is deeply embedded in many rural cultures worldwide, including in Europe and North America. The autumn rituals of partridge and deer hunting are among the backbones of my own rural and working-class background in Nova Scotia, and they are no longer as gendered as they once were. My mother was an able salmon angler by fly in her day and one of my nephew’s female partners hunts and has bagged bear and deer.

Many people — mostly those from urban backgrounds in the affluent North — simply cannot relate to this or see anything positive in such pursuits as they are not part of their experience. This can make vocal anti-hunters seem like out-of-touch hectoring urban elites. For their part, they would say they are opposed to cruelty to animals and see no need for hunting in the 21st century.

Such animal welfare concerns have Enlightenment roots from the 18th and 19th centuries, including the growing realisation that animals also experience pain, and Darwin’s revolutionary insight that humans are part of a shared tree of animal life.

Opposition to hunting from this perspective has its virtues. It is a legitimate point of view with merit.

Pros, cons and the hunt for public support

In the hunt for public support, both sides tend to inflate the economic and ecological benefits of their respective positions while ignoring or downplaying the bad. But animal welfare NGOs stand out for their whoppers.

A lot of debate is centred on the economic impact of hunting versus game viewing, or so-called “non-consumptive” approach to ecotourism and their respective roles in wildlife conservation.

There have been lots of studies alleging that the “non-consumptive” approach has far more benefits than hunting, and they are usually commissioned by animal welfare NGOs. One example is this 2017 study prepared for Humane Society International: The lion’s share? On the economic benefits of trophy hunting.

It found that a study commissioned by Safari Club International (SCI) had exaggerated hunting’s economic and job creation contribution.

But there have been more objective studies on the matter. A 2018 study in the peer-reviewed journal Global Ecology and Conservation – The economic impact of trophy hunting in the South African wildlife industry – found that “trophy hunting annually contributes more than $341-million to the South African economy and that it supports more than 17,000 employment opportunities. The agricultural sector benefits the most, holding important implications for rural development and poverty alleviation in the country”.

There is a reason why the South African government has not emulated Kenya in banning hunting — a move that has yielded questionable conservation outcomes — even as Pretoria has moved against egregious practices such as canned lion hunting, which has little support among the hunting fraternity.

Animal welfare activists must be applauded for their work in exposing the sham that is canned lion hunting, which pro-hunting groups — including those who felt it went against the grain of the sport — failed for the most part to take decisive action against years ago.

Several studies have also noted that trophy hunting is sometimes the only economically viable option in remote areas lacking amenities that photographic tourists may shy away from.

At the end of the day, photographic or game viewing safaris certainly do generate more income than hunting, simply because far more people are involved — though to dismiss hunting as having almost no economic value, as some critics have, is clearly not true. It has its own economic value chain including taxidermy, butcheries, guiding fees, accommodation and so on.

Tourism in all of its forms is generally seen as an economic good. Foreign tourists bring in hard currency and the sector is labour intensive, so it creates jobs. It also provides opportunities for businesses big and small.

The flip side in the African context in the wildlife sphere is that most of the jobs — though not all — that are generated are low skilled and low wage. One need only look at the poaching crisis in places such as the Kruger, which goes well beyond the slaying of rhinos for their horns. Countless animals are also being caught in snares there to feed the bushmeat trade.

The Kruger is simply not creating enough jobs and generating enough income in its neighbouring communities to make more than a small dent in poverty and unemployment. The same can be said with parks across the country and throughout Africa. Some employment and some opportunities are created, but hardly enough to lift rural communities out of poverty.

And what about the environment? The Custodians for Professional Hunting and Conservation (CPHC) estimates that 17.1 million hectares of privately owned land in South Africa is maintained through hunting and hunting-related activities. On the game viewing side of the equation, habitat on private land has also certainly been preserved, or transformed from farmland and other uses, for tourists who prefer a camera over a rifle in their pursuit of game.

Critics might say in both cases that this is mostly white-owned, perpetuating apartheid disparities in wealth. But the failure of almost three decades of land reform largely rests with the ANC and its shambolic approach to the issue.

And the non-hunting arm of ecotourism is hardly without an environmental impact — the carbon footprint of travellers by air is just one of many examples.

Non-hunting wildlife reserves tend to have more camps, roads and amenities, which also raise questions about the term “non-consumptive”.

“These photographic safari camps… there is nothing ‘non-consumptive’ about them,” Paul Stones, a professional hunter who is on the executive committee of the CPHC, said in an interview. “If you look at the eco footprint of hunting and the eco footprint of game viewing safari lodges, they are frighteningly different.”

“When you look at the Sabi Sands Game Reserve… when you look at Madikwe… it’s like there are islands of animals living among people. The volume of lodges is obscene. And then you look at water usage. Then you think of all the lodges with plunge pools, jacuzzis, outdoor showers, indoor showers… and we pump this water out of the ground.”

Then there is the off-roading in massive 4x4s to get the photo or the sighting.

“They find a kill and they bomb off through the bush in vehicles and the destruction to fauna and flora is immense,” Stones said.

“Look at the surrounding of predators with game viewing vehicles, cheetah especially. They are a very sensitive animal, a very shy animal. How many animals have died at the hands of photographic tourists from being chased away from their kills?”

Or, for that matter, how many have died because they presented a danger to tourists, like the incident outlined at the start of this article?

It is perhaps revealing to note that no tourist from the suburbs will go on foot in Big Five country without armed protection. This correspondent certainly would not — are you crazy! Yet, when Cecil the lion strayed outside the boundaries of a national park — there is no evidence that he was “lured”, as some anti-hunting activists contend — he was a potential danger to poor, rural villagers in the vicinity.

Such people dwell below what I have dubbed the “faunal poverty line” and yet their plight is seldom worthy of mention in accounts about Cecil. Being both poor and African, it is almost as if such circumstances are regarded as the natural order of things.

A Tale of Two Cats, Cecil and Sylvester

The Department of Forestry, Fisheries and the Environment said in an emailed response to queries that it did not keep data on incidents in which animals are killed when they threaten tourists — which is a pity.

“Let’s go one step further… forget about the walking safaris. How many animals are dispatched annually in what we call ‘problem animal control’,” Stones said.

“An elephant bull messing with the fences around the camp, hyenas coming into camp, hippos coming out of rivers onto lawns which are deemed to be dangerous. God help us if photographic safaris are the silver bullet.”

Demographics

And such animals are killed regardless of their demographic profile. Trophy hunting targets older, non-breeding-age males — in the case of elephants, if done properly, animals who are on their last set of teeth that will starve to death in their old age.

This is sadly not always the case because of greed, corruption, human error and a lack of enforcement.

Objective scientific studies present a nuanced view on the matter. A 2016 study on “biological conservation” focused on the trophy hunting of lions in Africa — a study conducted against the background of the Cecil uproar — and found the practice had some conservation utility, but was also contributing to population declines.

“Trophy hunting plays a significant role in wildlife conservation in some contexts in various parts of the world. Yet excessive hunting is contributing to species declines, especially for large carnivores. Simulation models suggest that sustainable hunting of African lions may be achieved by restricting off-takes to males old enough to have reared a cohort of offspring,” the authors wrote.

“… we recommend seven years as a practical minimum age for hunting male lions. Results indicate that age-based hunting is feasible for sustainably managing threatened and economically significant species such as the lion, but must be guided by rigorous training, strict monitoring of compliance and error, and conservative quotas.”

I asked one of the authors of the study, Craig Packer of the University of Minnesota, who is widely regarded as the world’s foremost expert on lions and an objective voice on the trophy hunting issue.

He said it depended in part on the country or region.

“If lion hunting were restricted to males over six or seven years of age in Zambia, there’d be virtually no risk of over-hunting. The age-based system seems to be working in Mozambique’s Niassa Reserve where the rule is strictly enforced,” he said in an emailed response.

“However, there is little transparency in other countries. Age assessments are straightforward as lions are almost always shot at a bait, so it is possible to obtain visual cues before shooting the animal; and ages can be confirmed postmortem from tooth wear.

“But if the population has been habitually over-hunted, fully adult males may be rare in the population, so there may be a reluctance by the hunting companies to verify the ages of their ‘trophies’,” he said.

Ultimately, what is his view of trophy hunting’s contribution to African conservation?

“Hunting is increasingly irrelevant to wildlife conservation in Africa. There are a handful of places where hunting really does pay the bills, but for the most part, it has failed to protect those vast tracts of land that hunting was meant to conserve.

“The problem now is to find alternative sources of revenue, such as carbon credits or even biodiversity credits that would provide incentives to local communities to conserve them,” he said.

That will require money at a time when the global economy is fragile, to say the least. But it provides a sensible framework for allowing hunting where it still pays the bills, while looking at other measures beyond both hunting and game viewing to address the conservation of African wildlife, especially megafauna which poses a direct danger to humans that live in its proximity.

Propaganda

None of this excuses the blatant propaganda campaigns launched by animal welfare activists, and a couple of recent examples among many stand out.

One was an HSI-commissioned survey of 3,599 people from a range of racial, class, gender and regional backgrounds in South Africa about perceptions of trophy hunting.

The other by World Animal Protection reached the questionable finding that trophy hunting somehow put South Africa’s tourism industry “in peril”.

The HSI survey found that 68% of respondents were “fully opposed” or “opposed to some extent” to trophy hunting.

Both surveys have been panned by experts who regard their findings as anything but authoritative.

“I have three related concerns about these survey results. First, the surveys were commissioned by animal protection groups that are strongly ideologically opposed to trophy hunting, raising strong suspicions that they were seeking a particular outcome,” Michael ’t Sas-Rolfes, a research fellow at the African Wildlife Economy Institute at Stellenbosch University, said in response to queries about the surveys.

“Second, it is very easy to frame questionnaires in such a way as to steer respondents toward responding in a certain way, especially if they are somewhat ignorant about the issue. I have observed the Humane Society do this quite blatantly with at least one past survey on trophy hunting.”

His third concern stemmed from the weighting given to respondents.

“Should the opinion of a 17-year-old teenager living in a sheltered urban environment far removed from the realities of rural life (and who isn’t even entitled to vote) carry as much weight as the opinion of a local rural person who understands the realities of living with and managing populations of large wild mammals?”

I asked HSI about its survey, which used global polling firm Ipsos, and if it was a large enough sample to draw the conclusions that were reached.

“In general, many political polls conducted to gauge the feeling in a country have smaller sample sizes. These types of polls are widely accepted,” spokesperson Leozette Roode said in response.

Fair enough, but ‘t Sas-Rolfes’ second point about the framing of questions gets to the heart of the matter. Let’s take a political poll, for example, which asked South Africans to name their 10 most pressing concerns during an election.

In a country with an unemployment rate of over 30%, rising hunger, surging inflation, glaring income disparities, rampant crime, corruption, rolling blackouts and a failing state, would opposition to trophy hunting make the list? If it did among a handful of respondents, you can bet your bottom dollar that it would be “Karens” in the suburbs — it’s a “First World” problem driven by the angst of the affluent. It’s clearly not a priority for shack dwellers or subsistence farmers in the former homelands.

In the late 1990s, I recall covering a “protest” in Pretoria organised by an animal rights NGO about elephants being sent to the Tuli Block in Botswana that were being mistreated — I can’t recall the exact details of the issue or the NGO, but I vividly recall trying to interview one of the “protesters” holding a sign, a black man in blue overalls, and the poor guy had no clue why he was there. Then, a white, middle-aged woman intervened in a scolding manner — she was clearly the madam and he likely worked in her garden — and insisted I interview her.

It was a transparent rent-a-crowd, and such surveys are equally transparent in their agenda.

The survey about tourists not coming to South Africa if it continues to allow trophy hunting is clearly risible, framed to reach a desired outcome.

Perhaps a question could be framed this way: would you rather go and view wildlife in Rwanda despite the fact that its government kills dissidents, or in South Africa, as a tourist, which has trophy hunting?

An anecdote: this correspondent has a very good childhood friend in Canada who is totally opposed to hunting — trust me on that score! — and yet she has visited South Africa three times and plans to do so again. The fact that South Africa allows trophy hunting is hardly going to stop her from coming back. That is not a survey and I make no such claims, but my gut feeling is that she is hardly an outlier.

As a final point, it is surely worth noting the lopsided nature of this debate. No hunter that I am aware of is opposed to non-hunting ecotourism. Indeed, they acknowledge its value as well as its drawbacks. Hunters are not taking a chainsaw to other branches of the conservation tree in a bid to stifle debate.

In their use of misleading terminology, questionable surveys and a failure to often address the plight of the African poor who are exposed to megafauna attack, animal welfare activists may advance their own agenda.

This does little to advance the facts, the truth or the wider cause of conservation, which we all share. DM/OBP/BM


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Re: Trophy Hunting

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Trophy Hunting in Botswana's NG13: We follow the money

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We followed the money to reveal how this trophy hunter makes huge profits by not adequately compensating the NG13 communities in Botswana.

To read the story click on the title.


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Re: Trophy Hunting

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Hopefully you read our exposé on trophy hunting in Botswana’s NG13 a few weeks ago ( see above). Well, the plot thickens.

After this post went live, we received the results of an audit of the Tcheku Community Trust, reflecting significant financial irregularities. The most serious involves the trophy hunter featured in our exposé. According to the audit report, the 2022 trophy hunting fee of US$100,000 paid by the hunter was about half of the stipulated reserve price. The audit report reveals that the Trust general manager accepted the lower offer from the trophy hunter without the required approval of the Trust Board. One wonders why he would do that. No wonder the trophy hunter’s gross profit we reported is so obscenely high!

The discussions in our app reveal a few pro-hunters attempting to whitewash this situation. One gent accused me/AG of a “hit job on the hunting industry ameteurshly (sic) disguised as a social injustice crusade“. The argument put forward by another is that this is the only alternative to no revenue at all. My my, what low standards the trophy hunting industry demands we all accept.

Keep the passion
Simon Espley – CEO
AFRICA GEOGRAPHY


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Re: Trophy Hunting

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BLURRED BOUNDARIES – CAN TROPHY HUNTING AND TOURISM COEXIST IN THE GREATER KRUGER?

Dawn Jorgenson -- Tourism Update
26.09.2023.


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Archimedes in Samburu National Reserve. Credit: Jane Wynyard / Save the Elephants

On September 3, an incident within the Greater Kruger reignited the debate around the co-occurrence of tourism and trophy hunting in this iconic wildlife region, with Balule Nature Reserve again making headlines through a problematic elephant hunt.

The incident involved a client on a supposedly legal elephant hunt in the Maseke Game Reserve, a region within the Balule Nature Reserve (BNR). Accompanied by a professional hunter (PH) and reserve representative (RR), the hunting client missed his aim, wounding the animal, whereafter the PH and RR fired further shots attempting to bring down the animal. The injured elephant was pursued onto Grietjie (a neighbouring property that does not allow hunting) and a helicopter was used to drive it back to Maseke where a total of eight shots ended his life.
A torturous death and distressing event that has stirred emotions among Balule’s land and lodge owners, many of whom strongly oppose trophy hunting within the reserve. Grietjie landowners and residents expressed their grave concerns about the number of shots fired and the use of a helicopter to drive the elephant back to Maseke, suggesting it brings into question the professionalism of the PH and even possible protocol violations.

The event is reminiscent of one in December 2018 that saw a similar pursuit of an injured elephant bull after the client missed his shot, following it from Maseke onto a neighbouring concession and seeing 13 shots required to end its last agonising hours. Some of these shots were fired in front of leisure tourists who went on to testify publicly about the traumatic event that saw two worlds collide – that of the photographic safari client and the trophy hunter. An angry altercation between Sean Nielsen, the Maseke hunting concessionaire, and one of the tourists after the hunt added fuel to the fire.

A further incident within Balule was the illegal hunt of a collared elephant on 13 August 2018. The young bull was part of an ongoing Elephants Alive research project sponsored by Youth 4 African Wildlife. Affectionately named ‘George’ by the research team, his death was unnecessary and the warden involved was convicted and charged for it.

Yet another elephant hunt in December 2019 in Balule was caught on camera and picked up by PETA. It shows a trophy hunter from California taking an unhurried five or more shots at an elephant in Balule’s York concession, an incident noted by PETA as a violation of the Animal Protection Act, the Elephant Norms and Standards and the National Scientific Assessment of Elephant Management.

What are the Greater Kruger Hunting Protocols?

The Greater Kruger Hunting Protocols, endorsed by all signatories within the Greater Limpopo Transfrontier Conservation Area (GLTFCA), including the South African National Parks (SANParks) and Limpopo Economic Development, Environment, and Tourism (LEDET), manage all hunting activities in the region.

Within the APNR, only Balule Nature Reserve is allowing elephant trophy hunting in 2023. Balule’s hunting quota is currently set at 22 elephants, which appears disproportionate to its land percentage of the APNR. Of these 22, Maseke has been allocated 12 elephants for hunting despite covering only 14% of Balule.

The Balule quota is calculated on the entire area’s animal population, yet only 50% of the reserve allows hunting, which requires explanation. Also in light of the four questionable hunts detailed above, it is curious that Maseke is awarded a quarter of the 50 elephants allocated for hunting in the APNR.

SANParks would not provide 2022/23 or 2023/24 hunting offtake figures when asked by an MP in a parliamentary question and does not appear to be fulfilling its oversight obligations regarding the GLTFCA agreement, citing funding constraints in an answer.

What are ‘Open Systems’, and why do they make way for grey areas?

An integral issue is that of the practice of hunting in open systems which extend beyond the boundaries of private game reserves into the Kruger National Park. While in fenced private game farms animals are bred specifically for hunting, open systems – where all fences have been dropped, present a different set of challenges.

In the Greater Kruger, the ‘Tragedy of the Commons’ prevails. This concept describes a scenario where a group shares a common, limited resource and is left to use it as they will. The ‘tragedy’ in question is that individuals act in their interest and, in doing so, potentially affect the rights of other forms of tourism. In open ecosystems, such as the Greater Kruger, the industry’s sustainability and conflict with ethical tourism, therefore, remain a pressing concern.

Why is this hunt raising questions?

It again raises concerns about whether hunting is being properly regulated within the Greater Kruger National Park area, particularly in the APNR. Balule Nature Reserve shares an unfenced border with the Kruger and landownership is widely spread from private ownership to the Maseke tribal land where the recent incident occurred, and where PH Nielsen holds hunting rights.

Most importantly, this tragic episode contradicts the prevailing High Court interim interdict issued after a successful legal challenge brought by Humane Society International/Africa in 2022 against the Department of Forestry, Fisheries and the Environment and others. The interdict explicitly prohibits the allocation of permits for trophy hunting of African elephants, leopards and Black rhinos in South Africa. Tony Gerrans, Executive Director of HSI said of the event, “We are horrified by this unnecessary tragedy. Given the High Court’s interdict prohibiting the permitting of elephant hunts, the reserve’s conclusion that this hunt was lawful is incorrect.”

Conservation funding. Who does it best?

These are cruel reminders of the complexities surrounding this issue and the need for a broader conversation about trophy hunting and conservation funding in the region. Unfortunately, the receipt and allocation of proceeds within Balule is opaque with no recent public accountability. 2019 was the last year that BNR figures were available and indicated a sum of R2.8 million (€139 204) generated from hunting, however, this figure doesn’t match the R10.8 million (€536 945) estimate calculated using professional hunters’ rates and the allocated ‘offtake’ numbers.

Looking towards joint-hunting/eco-tourism reserves, those that have upped their conservation levy, as was seen in the Timbavati for example, are raising enough funds to cover anti-poaching, community upliftment and conservation efforts – so showing less reliance on hunting. With the growing global sentiment around big game hunting, particularly for sport, the funding through the trophy hunting model should possibly come under more scrutiny. Ignoring the growing public anti-hunting backlash poses a risk to the reputation and sustainability of the Greater Kruger – especially with the increased understanding that said hunts will take place in the same area as the tourists’ game viewing.

The blurred boundaries between tourism and trophy hunting

This unfortunate incident calls into question whether travel agents and tour operators know that with no fences and animals roaming from protected areas to nearby hunting concessions, the very elephants their conservation-conscious clients are seeing and appreciating on a game drive today – may be shot by a trophy hunter tomorrow. Possibly even within earshot.

In summary, if tourists knew their photographic safari was conducted on the same reserve as trophy hunting, would they prefer to take their high-value spend elsewhere?

Original article: https://www.tourismupdate.co.za/article ... t-greater-


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Re: Trophy Hunting

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I wish these complainants would have the same outrage about the hippo and buffalo culling in Kruger.


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Re: Trophy Hunting

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They might not even know about it -O-


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