Africa Wild

Is lion hunting sustainable?

Posted on September 20, 2021 by James Hendry (Africa Geographic editor-in-chief) in the DECODING SCIENCE post series. in the OPINION EDITORIAL post series.


In the wake of the bow-hunting of Mopane the lion, we searched for some literature and expert commentary on the sustainability of the trophy hunting of free-roaming lions in Africa, particularly around Hwange National Park in Zimbabwe. We came across extensive scientific literature on African lion hunting and its effects on population dynamics and numbers.

Around 20 – 30 male lions are shot by trophy hunters every year in Zimbabwe. Some of these are in community-owned conservancies and some private hunting concessions, which may border national parks.

Hwange National Park

We wanted to know if the hunting of lions around Hwange as it is currently practised might drive lions to local extinction. The answer is most likely not. Hwange is part of a massive, open system stretching to Victoria Falls in the northwest and the Okavango Delta (and beyond) in the west. Hwange hunting is like ‘nibbling on the edges’ of the greater transfrontier protected area.

That is not to say the effect of hunting is negligible by any means. Between 1999 and 2012, of 206 recorded lion mortalities in Hwange, human beings caused 88% of male and 67% of female deaths. Trophy hunters caused the vast majority of male deaths while lionesses fell to bycatch snaring, retaliatory killing and hunting 1.

Lion hunting in Hwange has wrought tremendous changes on lion demographics and has certainly reduced lion numbers 2. When male lion offtakes were highest, survival of all age and sex classes were lowest. Over the period 1999 – 2021, reduced hunting quotas coincided with an increase in the overall population (62%) and a male density increase of 200 %! According to the 2016 study (footnote 2), the population started to decline again with increased hunting pressure and higher mortalities. When hunting was most intense in the early 2000s, population ratios were highly skewed towards females.

The Hwange situation has been repeated in various parts of Tanzania, where over-hunting has reduced lion numbers on a national scale 3 and lower population growth rates are expected where trophy hunting persists 4.

It is also important to appreciate that anthropogenic lion deaths around Hwange are not only caused by trophy hunters. Unintentional deaths from snaring and intentional killing due to human-wildlife conflict also reduce lion numbers. All of these causes combined could lead to a population crash – but at the moment, this seems unlikely. In many parts of Africa, it is simply not known how many lions are lost to anthropogenic mortality 5.



Why the six-year-old threshold?

In Zimbabwe, the minimum age for a trophy-sized male lion is six years old. This threshold comes from a mathematical model developed by Anthony Starfield in the early 1980s in the Kruger National Park, South Africa 6. The model was expanded and refined in 2007 by Whitman et al. 7. Further research, however, indicates that harvesting males after they have reared their first cohort of cubs can be sustainable but that in Southern Africa, where lions appear to mature more slowly than in East Africa, the threshold of six years is too low and should be increased to at least seven 8.

However, this assessment of sustainability assumes two things. First, the hunting operator is ethical in so much as he will not allow a client to shoot an animal too young (not always the case9), and second that he can accurately age the lion his client is about to kill. One study shows that hunters achieved a success rate of only 63% when ageing lions, normally overestimating the ages10. The study recommended that to negate the effects of these errors, the minimum threshold for lion hunting should be greater than seven years. Beyond this age, hunters were much more accurate at ageing their targets. This is supported by at least one study 11 that showed lion population numbers to be negatively affected by the hunting of lions under the age of seven years.

Sinks

What killing lions on the edge of Hwange does cause is a change in lion demography and a vacuum or sink effect. It is not impossible for old lions like Cecil (13) and Mopane (12) to be dominant over prides in an area where lion trophy hunting is prohibited, but it is not common. It is possible and even probable that these old lions were still dominant because trophy hunting has created a dearth of male lions in the Hwange area. By continually shooting dominant males on the edge of the reserve, i.e. by creating vacant territories, males looking for territory will naturally move into these areas – often young nomads looking for their first territories or older males who have already been excluded from their first or second territories. This ‘sink’ effect pulls males into the hunting area and denudes other areas 12.

Likewise, trophy hunting on the Hwange boundary seems to exert a measurable edge effect where lions of all ages and genders living close to the boundary exhibit lower survival compared with more distant groups 13.



Should lions be hunted on the Hwange boundaries?

From a PR perspective, hunting male lions on the boundary of one of Africa’s most famous, most visited photographic safari destinations makes absolutely no sense. In the case of named lions, tourists come to see specific animals and take photographs of them. This is a sustainable, largely non-consumptive practice that lasts for the lifetime of the lion concerned. Famous, named lions attract tourist dollars and act as ambassadors for conservation 14. Shooting a named lion ends this long-term conservation and tourism reward.

Less directly, the negative publicity associated with killing lions – especially when bowhunters are involved in maiming them – could easily result in a booking reduction for photo tourism operators in Hwange. Why would a safari-goer travel to a destination where the latest headlines lament the maiming and killing of a famous lion? Tourists can choose from hundreds of safari locations where the killing of lions is not allowed, thus many, with cash to burn and a dislike of sport killing, will simply spend their money elsewhere. It is possible that for the hunting operators, the adage ‘no publicity is bad publicity’ applies, but it seldom applies to tourism marketing.

Sources in the Hwange area say that local safari guides who ply their trade in the National Park (and other high-profile hunting areas) where hunting on the boundaries is allowed also resent the hunting of iconic animals. Not only do they face the risk of cancelled bookings at their lodges and a reduction in occupancy, but they’re also unable to show their guests the iconic animals that have made their areas famous. This could directly impact their ability to make a living.

Conclusion

So is lion hunting driving lions to extinction, or is it contributing to their conservation counter-intuitively as it may sound? One model suggests that there are no continuous harvesting strategies that do not result in population declines15. The model suggests that hunting periods should be interspersed with periods of no hunting and that the cost of lion hunting should increase due to diminished supply.

While the argument that keeping areas for trophy hunting (which includes lions) keeps that land under wildlife seems to be anecdotally supported, there is a dearth of research confirming this16.

More worrying is the difficulty of following the money trail. In the end, it doesn’t seem to make a great deal of sense for a private landowner and hunting operator on the borders of a national park to benefit from shooting lions that contribute so much to the incomes of so many involved in photo-tourism. If lion hunting takes place in community-owned conservation areas that lack income from photo tourism and the money flow is transparent and equitable (for land, people and lions), then it makes more sense. This is not always the case. In some Zimbabwean CAMPFIRE areas (community-run conservation zones set up to benefit local people and promote positive attitudes to wildlife conservation), residents bemoan the fact that they earn very little from hunting and that wildlife continues to menace their lives17.

Other than in Namibia, it is extremely difficult to determine exactly what proportions of hunting revenue are directed to local communities18.

The sport hunting of lions to satisfy human needs is repellant to many of us (me and many of the scientists referenced here). What many of these scientists desperately want, however, is to find the best possible way of conserving lions into the future while taking into account myriad complexities (the needs of local people, habitat protection, economic necessity). As Macdonald et al. (2017) suggest, lion hunting should be strictly regulated to ensure that it contributes to conservation (people, land and lions). Where hunting is banned, suitable alternatives need to be found for the economic shortfall. It is also worth bearing in mind that overall, the cost of biodiversity loss exceeds income from both photo tourism and hunting.

References (this is a tiny fraction of the available academic literature on trophy hunting)

1 Loveridge A.J., Valeix, M. Elliot, N.B., & Macdonald, D.W. 2017. The landscape of anthropogenic mortality: how African lions respond to spatial variation in risk. Journal of Applied Ecology 2017, 54, 815–825.

2 Loveridge A.J., Valeix, M., Chapron, G., Davidson, Z., Mtare G., Macdonald, D.W. 2016. Conservation of large predator populations: Demographic and spatialresponses of African lions to the intensity of trophy hunting. Biological Conservation 204 (2016) 247–254.

3 Packer, C., Brink, H., Kissui, B.M., Maliti, H., Kushnir, H. & Caro, T. 2011. Effects of trophy hunting on lion and leopard populations in Tanzania. Conservation Biology 25:142–153. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1523-1739.2010.01576.x.

4 Packer, C., Loveridge, A., Canney, S., Caro, T., Garnett, S.T. & Pfeifer M et al. 2013 Conserving large carnivores: dollars and fence. Ecology Letters 16: 635–641. https://doi.org/10.1111/ele.12091.

5 Macdonald, D.W., Loveridge, A.J., Dickman, A., Johnson, P.J., Jacobsen, K.S. & Du Preez, B. (2017) Lions, trophy hunting and beyond: knowledge gaps and why they matter. Mammal Review, 47(4) 247 – 253.

6 Starfield, A.M, Shiell, J.D. & Smuts, G.L. 1981. Simulations of lion control strategies in a large game reserve. Ecol. Modelling, 13: 17-28.

7 Whitman, K.L., Starfield, A.M., Quadling, H., Packer, C., 2007. Modelling the effects of trophy selection and environmental disturbance on a simulated population of African lions. Conserv. Biol. 21, 591–601. http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/j.1523-1739.2007.00700.x.

8 Miller. J. R. B., Balme, G., Lindsey, P.A., Loveridge, A.J., Becker, M.S., Begg, C., Brink, H., Dolrenry, S., Hunt, J.E., Janssoni, I., Macdonald, D.W., Mandisodza-Chikerema, R.L., Cotterill A.O., Packer, C., Rosengren, D., Stratford, K., Trinkel, M., White, P.A.,Winterbach, C., Winterbach, C.EK., & Funston, P. 2016. Ageing traits and sustainable trophy hunting of African lions. Biological Conservation 201 (2016) 160–168.

9 Loveridge, A.J., Searleb, A.W., Murindagomo, F., Macdonald, D.W. 2007. The impact of sport-hunting on the population dynamicsof an African lion population in a protected area. Biological Conservation 134 (2007) 548 – 558.

10 Miller et al. 2016

11 Creel, S., M’soka,J., Dröge, E., Rosenblatt, E., Becker, M.S., Matandiko, W. & Twakundine, S. 2016. Assessing the sustainability of African lion trophy hunting, with recommendations for policy. Ecological Applications, 26(7), 2016, pp. 2347–2357.

12 Loveridge A.J. et al. 2017.

13 Loveridge, A.J. et al. 2016.

14 https://www.discoverwildlife.com/animal ... of-a-lion/

15 Creel, S. et al. 2016.

16 Macdonald D. W et al. 2017

17 Dube, N. 2019. Voices from the village on trophy hunting in Hwange district, Zimbabwe. Ecological Economics. Vol 159, May 2019, Pages 335-343.

18 Di Minin, E., Leader-Williams, N., Bradshaw, C.J.A., 2016. Banning trophy hunting will exacerbate biodiversity loss. Trends Ecol. Evol. 31, 99–102. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.tree.2015.12.006.

This chap should watch Richard Sowry's video from earlier, many more answers given!

Richprins wrote: ↑Fri Sep 24, 2021 6:29 pm This chap should watch Richard Sowry's video from earlier, many more answers given!

Very different from Hwange.

A question of bias: Trophy hunting is a contentious industry and shaping research to get a desired outcome doesn’t help


A visitor walks past a rifle brand advert during the annual Huntex held in Johannesburg, South Africa, 25 April 2019. (Photo: EPA-EFE / Kim Ludbrook)

By Don Pinnock | 18 Oct 2021

In the complex and urgent crises of climate change, biodiversity collapse and pandemics, it makes good sense to heed science and specialists. But what happens when scientists intentionally load the dice?
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The inquiry explored below began after a simple question by the editor of the highly respected journal Science to five researchers who submitted a letter opposing import bans on trophy hunting. Could they, asked the editor, declare any potential conflict of interests?

It turned out that four out of five had financial links to trophy hunting groups, including the Dallas Safari Club and Safari Club International.

They also worked for global conservation organisations that received funding from hunting-related sources as well as Africa-based organisations like the Namibian Community-based Natural Resource Management (CBNRM) that actively promote trophy hunting as a source of income.

Science has now altered its policy for letters, requiring disclosure of interests. But three sociologists — Stasja Koot, Paul Hebinck and Sian Sullivan — decided to take the inquiry further. Just how common is inbuilt bias in the conservation field? And who benefits? They chose research narratives around a single organisation: Namibia’s CBNRM.

Their paper in the journal Society & Natural Resources is couched in careful, complex language in order not to be misinterpreted in ways they criticise. But the message is clear: in conservation science, the organisation that pays the piper very often calls the tune. Or to put it in their terminology: “researcher positionality shapes research finding when scholars also work for conservation organisations with material interests in the finding of their research.” When that happens, objectivity goes out the window.

Far from being neutral, they say, “the science of nature is loaded with power that permeates scientific inquiry, research agendas and practices on the ground”. And that’s a big problem, because academics bring “truths” into being and enable their circulation.

In a world where science is increasingly being called on to solve complex problems, this is politically charged, as issues around the Covid pandemic have shown.

Science ought to be objective and value-free, but on the ground, it’s not so clear cut. Organisations like the World Wildlife Fund for Nature (WWF), the International Union for the Conservation of Nature (IUCN), Safari Club International and the CBNRM rely on success stories to ensure continued funding. For this reason, say the authors of the paper, their survival can depend on masking failures. Opposing narratives are discounted or ridiculed.

So where do success stories come from? In the case of the CBNRM, they were found to have been written by professionals in organisations whose work is to promote and implement the CBNRM model. It’s often written by employees of organisations whose existence is linked with the success of that model, such as WWF Namibia. For this reason, these ‘scientific’ reports disregard different perspectives and disconfirm evidence.

The CBNRM model, says the paper, is based on the commodification of nature, predominantly through ecotourism and trophy hunting initiatives from which local people are supposed to benefit.

“Independent” reports speak of impressive returns of CBNRM “unprecedented in Namibia or perhaps elsewhere in Africa”. Hunting and ecotourism show “that biodiversity in a large socio-ecological system in Namibia has a positive effect on the generation of benefits”.

These studies (listed in the paper) argue that income from trophy hunting is critical. They claim that in communities surveyed, 90% are happy with trophy hunting, with 91% not in favour of a trophy hunting ban. Anti-trophy hunting sentiments are neutralised in these texts as simply “Western opposition”.

These studies not only support the funding initiatives of the CBNRM, but are taken up by those with an interest in that narrative.

A newsletter by the Namibian Professional Hunting Association (NAPHA), which represents the interests of the trophy hunting industry, is an example:

“I shall leave it to an internationally respected conservation organisation, the WWF, to point out the benefits that trophy hunting brings to communal conservancies in Namibia… Unlike many of the pseudo-studies available on the internet, [its study] Complimentary benefits of tourism and hunting to communal conservancies in Namibia has been peer reviewed and independently verified.”

Views supporting trophy hunting were “good science” presenting “the objective truth”. All other, unspecified studies opposed to NAPHA’s position were “bad science” conducted by “pseudo-scientists”.

This is one of the many examples, say Koot, Hebinck and Sullivan, where professionally affiliated scientists have become important political actors with effects in the public sphere. Their views are foregrounded in terms of whose knowledge is able to count in public discourse regarding conservation.

“Instead of engaging with critique and providing a nuanced picture, they create an abstract group of people (‘Westerners’) as ‘ignorant’. In doing so, they simultaneously strengthen their existing belief and their own position as experts, thereby ignoring important arguments expressing diverse concerns about trophy hunting.”

They exhibit “imperialist amnesia” and ignore the fact that activities such as trophy hunting and ecotourism have a strong neo-colonial character and that the world is experiencing a biodiversity collapse. Animals favoured by trophy hunters are particularly at risk.

The writers cite one WWF paper which “proves” that hunting benefits communities by providing meat and income. It fails to mention that:

• Both meat and income are unequally distributed to conservancy members;

• The calculations of income flowing to conservancies are constructed in ways that may unrealistically inflate the amounts received; and

• Large proportions of the overall revenues created through tourism and trophy hunting are directed by non-conservancy members using cheap conservancy labour.

“While a variety of private tourism and hunting companies have made good profits in wildlife-rich communal area conservancies,” says the paper, “cash handouts to conservancy members have been poor and cannot be relied on.”

It was found that a large number of respondents to surveys were employed by the conservancy, a significant predictor of responses on benefits generated from and satisfaction towards trophy hunting. Bias was therefore built into the research design.

“This situation gives the percentages of 90% (in favour of hunting) and 91% (against a hunting ban) a completely different meaning. It begs the question why the authors, all WWF employees, wanted to study and publish these results in the first place.”

Independent research, say the authors of the paper, suggests that CBNRM programmes may in fact be falling short of their high expectations. But when failures are not “permitted”, bias towards success stories prevents professionals from improving their outcomes.

Generating so-called “value-free” and “objective” research that aligns with specific institutional ideologies is not research at all unless those biases are stated up front, say the authors. Only then can the public assess its value. The alternative is propaganda.

Bloodsport

American hunter uses bow and arrow to claim yet another magnificent African lion as his trophy


The majestic pride male Mopane, who was left by his killer, Phillip Smith, to suffer in appalling agony for 24 hours. (Photo: Supplied)

By Don Pinnock | 19 Oct 2021

A Daily Mirror journalist has tracked down the trophy hunter who shot an arrow into a pride male lion on the border of Hwange National Park and left it to suffer for 24 hours.
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The man who killed Mopane, the majestic pride male, is Phillip Smith, a physiotherapist who lives in Columbia, Missouri, where he co-owns PEAK Sport and Spine. He was tracked down by Daily Mirror journalist Christopher Bucktin.


The pride male Mopane was killed by Phillip Smith, a physiotherapist who lives in Missouri. (Photo: Supplied)


Mopane, killed by Phillip Smith, in the dust after suffering for 24 hours. (Photo: Supplied)

Asked whether the lion died a slow death, as reported after his poor shot with a bow and arrow, the physio said: “I don’t want to talk about it. How did you find me?” Smith reportedly paid more than R600,000 to kill Mopane in Zimbabwe. Locals told Bucktin he had been lying low since the August trip.

Eduardo Gonçalves, founder of the Campaign to Ban Trophy Hunting and author of several books on the industry, said: “The killing of Mopane is even worse than the shooting of Cecil that shocked the world in 2015.

“Cecil was lured with bait out of the safety of the national park, shot with a bow and left overnight to drown in his blood. Mopane was lured out of the very same park, killed in the very same location, by the very same hunting company. But whereas Cecil’s killer Walter Palmer left him to wallow in agony for 11 hours, reports state Mopane was left by his killer to suffer in appalling agony for… 24 hours.”

Smith and a guide are said to have used an elephant carcass to lure Mopane out of the Hwange National Park — where hunting is illegal — into Antoinette farm. Locals claim the cat had to be finished off the next day by a bullet. The lion was tracked down with the help of Dinguzulu Safaris, the group used by millionaire Palmer in 2015.

As Our Burning Planet reported at the time of the hunt, Cecil, a 12-year-old male, left behind the Somadada pride which consisted of two adult females and six sub-adults of about 16 to 18 months old. Without his protection, the survival chance of his cubs was significantly reduced as the pride was left open for a takeover by other male lions. Once this happens, the cubs of the predecessor are likely to be killed by the new males to force the females back into oestrus.


The majestic pride male Mopane, who was left by his killer, Phillip Smith, to suffer in appalling agony for 24 hours. (Photo: Supplied)

Mopane was in a coalition with another male lion, Sidhule, with both lions frequently seen by photographic safari lodges in and around Hwange National Park. The coalition had been successful, the two having sired offspring with the Nyamandhlovu pride, the Nora pride and the Guvulala pride. One of the best-looking lions of the park, Netsayi, who is in charge of Cecil’s pride, was sired by Sidhule.

Then, in August 2019, Sidhule was lured from Hwange and allegedly killed with a bow by Colton Payne from Houston, Texas, in a hunt organised by Chattaronga.

According to Drew Abrahamson of Captured in Africa Foundation, in December 2020 an outfit called Big Game Safaris International was advertising and targeting Mopane, who was described as one of the “oldest and most aggressive lions in their hunting block. Do you want the chance to take a big free roaming lion?” said the advert. “Book a hunt with us!” The advert has since been removed.


The Daily Mirror report on Phillip Smith after he shot majestic pride male Mopane using a bow and arrow. (Photo: Supplied)

According to Mark and Pamela Robinson of the Cecil the Lion group, the National Parks Service has confirmed the hunt for Mopane was authorised and that the mandatory permits were in place.

“We are devastated by the loss of another apex alpha male with a pride,” they posted on Facebook. “Mopane marks the 4th black-maned lion with a pride that has been killed in that area outside the park in the past several years. The biggest breeding males are being snuffed for rug material.”

The death of Mopane won’t be the last.

Of the 62 lions (18 adult males, 10 sub-adult males, 34 adult females) tagged during a Hwange study over seven years by the Wildlife Conservation Research Unit at the University of Oxford beginning in 1999, 24 died through trophy hunting. Of these, 13 were adult males and six were sub-adult males.

*By the time of going to press there had been no reply from Dingazulu Hunting Safaris to our request for information concerning whether they had organised the hunt.DM/OBP

So? It is not against the law?

Another headline could be

American Hunters Sustainably Provide Billions of Dollars for Poor Communities

Do you seriously think that the poor communities get any of that money? And the bait? Not to talk about the poor lion in the apex time of his life and with a big family He even let him suffer for 24 hours before somebody with a bit of humanity put him out of his misery

This has nothing to do with the law, it has to do with sentiments and compassion!

Environmentalists and hunters slam government over proposals for the trophy hunting of elephants, leopards and rhinos



By Don Pinnock | 16 Nov 2021

Last month, with little publicity, the Department of Environmental Affairs gave the public 30 days to object to or comment on its proposed hunting and export quotas for elephant, black rhino and leopard hunting trophies. It turns out to be the mere tip of a hunting iceberg.
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Proposals to licence the hunting of 150 elephants, 10 black rhinos and 10 leopards have raised objections from environmental NGOs who slammed the environment department (DFFE) for expecting public comment on the basis of a two-page notice with no supporting information.

Elephants are listed by the IUCN Red Data Book as endangered, black rhinos as critically endangered and leopards as vulnerable.

“The Draft Quota,” says the EMS Foundation, “contains no information in relation to how the quotas have been determined, other than stating the quotas for leopard and black rhino are proposed ‘as per the recommendations of the Scientific Authority’. [It] cannot be finalised and any final decision made in the absence of providing the public with the information on which the proposed quotas are based is flawed.”

The call for public discussion on the hunting quotas of three iconic species ignores the recommendations of a High-Level Panel policy paper which is currently under review on the welfare and use of those three species, as well as lions. Setting quotas before the High-Level Panel process is finalised not only preempts, but actually undermines the ultimate recommendations of the DFFE’s own Draft Policy position.

“The quotas are arbitrary and not rationally connected to the information before the department,” said Michele Pickover of EMS.

Humane Society International-Africa and EMS have called on the DFFE to withdraw the draft quota until it can put in place a procedurally fair process which includes publication of all the scientific and policy information on which the quotas were determined.

The quota, says EMS, appears to have been determined without taking relevant information into account and is “irrational and arbitrary”.

The setting of trophy hunting quotas for leopard, black rhino or elephant are therefore unsupportable, it argues. The NGOs also noted a number of fundamental procedural and legal flaws in the process for proposing the quotas.

Here’s the puzzle. The proposed quotas are specifically for the calendar year 2021, which is nearly over. And public inputs still have to be assessed. But throughout this year, elephants have already been extensively hunted. So we’re effectively talking about a quota set in, at best, December, for December. Will the decision be retrospective in order to regularise hunts that have already taken place, or are quotas going to be rolled forward into 2022?


Proposed trophy hunting quotas. (Graphic: Government Gazette)

This is also a problem for hunters. Stewart Dorrington of Custodians of Professional Hunting and Conservation — South Africa says the problem his organisation has with the quota process is the timing.

“It will come too late in the year. It’s illegal to market a leopard hunt without a permit, so there’s no way to market beforehand. This makes it difficult to find clients and match them to a leopard at such short notice,” said Dorrington.

The proposed quotas, however, are merely small windows into a vast business of wildlife destruction which is generally unknown to the public.

Each year, professional hunters have to submit kill statistics to provincial departments which are then collated by the DFFE. This excludes hunting for the pot, biltong and, of course, poaching. It also, for some reason, excludes certain enclosed properties.

The Professional Hunters Association of SA submits the statistics to the department — which doesn’t publish them. They are, however, available on request if you’re persistent enough.

Those for 2020 were not available, but hunt stats from 2016 to 2019 tell a startling story. During those years, 190,468 wild creatures were “bagged” as trophies — that’s 171,748 wild mammals, 15,233 birds, 742 reptiles and 2,745 non-indigenous animals. It works out to 130 kills a day. Add hunting for meat plus poaching and the number could be double that, but these aren’t listed anywhere.

Impala top the animal list, closely followed by warthogs, kudu and zebra (pretty mats?). Turtle doves, speckled doves, laughing doves and ring-necked pigeons are the most hunted birds (are they mounted above the fireplace or just eaten?). Then there are some extremely odd trophies such as snakes, llamas, mouflon sheep and emus. Of concern are a number of endangered species, some critically, including those for which the DFFE proposes to provide quotas.

The EMS Foundation, which put in a 51-page objection to the rhino, elephant and leopard quotas, provides a grisly list of animal part “mementos” for which export licences were requested.


Who hunts. (Graphic: Professional Hunting Association)

For leopards, these included floating bones (?), rug mounts, skull shields and claws. For elephants it was more varied: scapula bowl, leather skin panels, mounted tails, ears, footstools, part or whole trunks, foot umbrella, blood plasma, bagpipes (?), bracelets, skin duffle bags, feet ice buckets, ivory keys, a penis, teeth, belts and, of course, tusks and mounted heads.

Setting hunting quotas for rhinos risks an international perception problem, says the EMS report. “While the illegal hunting of rhino continues unabated, men and women are risking their lives trying to protect this species. It will be embarrassing to try to persuade an international audience to fund emergency rhino protection funding while at the same time promoting the legal killing of rhino on private land.”

Hunting licences are issued by the various provinces and are subject to certain restrictions and seasons. But when DFFE officials sit around a table to discuss the public inputs on the hunting of black rhino, leopards and elephants, there will necessarily be different criteria.

Elephant populations have crashed throughout Africa; black rhinos have hovered on the brink of extinction for many years, and there’s no formal census or adequate information on leopards, so it’s not known what impact hunting will have on their future. They are all in decline, facing increasingly disappearing and fragmented habitats.

Hunting also poses problems of genetic weakening, says HSI-Africa.

“Hunters generally target the biggest and strongest males, meaning that trophy hunting removes these animals from the breeding pool, leaving smaller or weaker animals for mate selection.”

Black rhinos are in even greater danger, says the NGO. The species declined by 85% between 1973 and 2017. In 1960, there were an estimated 100,000 black rhino; by 1973, there were 37,807, and at the end of 2017 there were only 5,495.

Recent census figures for Kruger National Park reveal an alarming decrease, with only an estimated 268 black rhino remaining, down from 415 in 2011.

Leopard populations are thought to be declining at around 11% a year, but this is based on inconclusive and fundamentally inadequate information. Estimates of the size of the national population vary widely from 2,185 to 3,400.

The DFFE’s proposal to set the age at which a leopard can be hunted from seven years upward is also flawed. According to HSI-Africa, “it is highly unlikely that ages can be reliably estimated by hunters, especially as rapid and rash decision-making in poor light conditions is a hallmark of leopard trophy hunting”.

So if hunting elephants, leopards and rhinos will be permitted, the decisions cannot be made on the grounds of conservation. Will they be influenced by hunting organisations, gun traders, commercial game farmers, political pressure or concerns about litigation if permits are blocked?

According to HSI-Africa, even the economic argument does not stand up to scrutiny. “Trophy hunting brings in just 0.78% or less of the overall tourism spending and has only a marginal impact on employment in those countries, providing approximately 0.76% or less of overall tourism jobs. As little as 3% of trophy hunting income trickles down to local communities.”

According to EMS, leopards, black rhinos and elephants are not resilient to trophy hunting because they have lower reproductive rates, more complex social organisations and their body parts are illegally traded in international criminal markets.

“These species, because they are the most charismatic, rare and sought after by trophy hunters, means that the issuing of hunting permits for them could lead to market speculation, creating the conditions for extinction.” DM/OBP

Luckily there are journalists who dig, discover and tell us

10 Black Rhinos

Who is able to tell if a leopard is seven years old?

Hunting also poses problems of genetic weakening, says HSI-Africa.

That is something that bothers me a lot, especially when it comes to elephants and lions