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Johannesburg - Hunters who travel to Africa to shoot big game had been keeping a low profile in the aftermath of global outrage provoked by the killing of Cecil the lion in Zimbabwe last year. Now they’re fighting back.
The conservation arm of Safari Club International (SCI), which suspended the membership of US dentist Walter Palmer for shooting Cecil, has published research that says trophy hunting contributes R6.4bn to eight sub-Saharan African countries and employs 53 000 people.
United Airlines and Delta Air Lines banned transporting animal trophies, and tighter hunting rules were introduced after Palmer shot the 13-year-old male lion, who was part of an Oxford University conservation project, after he wandered out of Zimbabwe’s Hwange National Park in July.
Such restrictions threaten a vital source of income for one of the world’s poorest regions, according to SCI, home to the world’s largest collection of hunting records.
“There’s certainly some negative impacts that have been realised in the aftermath of that incident,” said Matthew Eckert, director of conservation at the Safari Club Foundation, SCI’s conservation arm, which funded the report.
“It’s drawing more attention from the public to one side of the perspective, that’s the animal activist, the animal-rights movement. They’re being blinded and not seeing the importance of hunting to conservation and the people.”
Each year between 2012 and 2014 almost 19 000 international hunters, mostly from the US, visited the eight African countries studied in the report, spending on average two weeks and R390 000. Most of that spending is in remote rural areas where people have limited economic opportunities, it said.
US dentist Walter Palmer with Cecil the lion. (Photo: File)
By providing jobs and income to local communities, hunting conveys a positive value to wildlife which incentivises communities to protect game species and the land they, and all wildlife species, depend upon,” the report said.
That’s not an argument that sits well with animal-rights organisations, which say hunting is too lightly controlled and in South Africa, the most popular destination, land owners are driven to breed animals with the biggest horns or unusual coat colors that do little for conservation.
In the rest of Africa, it’s mainly wild animals on government or community land that are hunted. Botswana, Mozambique, Namibia, Tanzania, Zambia, Zimbabwe and Ethiopia were included in the study along with South Africa, where trophy hunting accounts for about 3% of the tourism industry.
“When you hunt it’s supposed to be selective but trophy hunters tend to just want the biggest trophies,” said Isabel Wentzel, a spokesperson for the South Africa’s National Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals. “It’s a free-for-all.”
Black mane
Hunting groups are coming under pressure from animal-rights activists to reform their practices after the slaying of Cecil, whose striking black mane was a popular tourist attraction, exposed the scale of Africa’s hunting industry.
Thank you Zimbabwe for recognizing the legality of my hunt and the fault of my guides and the game park owner.
— Walter Palmer (@DentistPalmer) October 13, 2015
Palmer was forced to temporarily close his dental practice in Minnesota as demonstrators and news crews congregated at the clinic. Toy, stuffed animals were left in the doorway.
After Cecil was killed, United and Delta joined a number of airlines including Emirates and Deutsche Lufthansa from stopping customers from transporting big-game hunting trophies as cargo. To import lion carcasses to the US, hunters must prove to the US Fish and Wildlife Service that hunting in the country of origin enhances populations.
“I hope that a single incident which was an international sensation and phenomenon driven by an emotional response doesn’t impact negatively a conservation mechanism of sustainable use,” Eckert said.
