If you own a Twitter or Facebook account you would have seen the recent anger leveled against Walter Palmer for shooting Cecil, Zimbabwe’s most renowned male lion. You may have also heard the outcries of comedian Ricky Gervais and the general public last year about United States television host, Melissa Bachman, and football cheerleader, Kendall Jones, who both posted pictures of lions they hunted in South Africa. These hunts were labeled unethical, barbaric and cruel. But, as I waded through a plethora of social media posts, I noticed that the criticism never seemed to consider the ecological dangers of trophy hunting or, contrastingly, its use to generate revenue for wildlife management.
The African lion is 220 kilograms – with a muscled physique enabling them to hunt buffalo and giraffe – that possesses a roar that can be heard from five kilometers away. I can understand why people have a problem with the ethics of wealthy hunters killing lions in Africa, but there are deeper issues. With as few as 22,000 lions left in just seven population strongholds on the continent, many of Africa’s lions are in crisis. Furthermore, male lions group together, and depend on the size and protective power of their coalitions to protect their prides from neighboring males who will kill non-related offspring when they attempt to gain control of a pride. Hunting too many male lions destabilizes the defensive power of male coalitions and doesn’t allow adult males to be in an area long enough to protect their sons and daughters.
In Zimbabwe’s Hwange National Park, where Cecil was killed, a team of Oxford University researchers, led by Andy Loveridge, found that between 1999 and 2004, 24 of the 62 radio-collared lions were shot by trophy hunters. Overhunting halved the ratio of males to females and new males killed unrelated cubs. Zoologists, Matt Becker and Elias Rosenblatt, found a similar trend in Zambia’s South Luangwa National Park, where trophy hunting was the leading cause of lion deaths, resulting in fewer cubs, low teenage and adult male survival and lower life expectancies for females. Even the world’s most tenured lion biologist, Craig Packer, showed that Africa’s lion stronghold, Tanzania, was being subjected to overhunting in a lot of the hunting blocks across the country over the past decade.
Trophy hunting of large carnivores affects almost every large mammal, from black rhinoceros to elephant, and even common antelope like impala. The list is endless and so is the need for developing scientifically robust techniques to protect populations against the negative effects of hunting.
But, there are several places in Africa where animal populations are holding steady despite being hunted. The leopard population in the north of South Africa’s KwaZulu-Natal province suffered from unscrupulous hunting, with 40% of the population dying between 2002 and 2004. However, with a series of legislative reforms, a cap in quotas and intensive population monitoring, the population recovered to near capacity. The lion hunting management scheme, pioneered by Colleen Begg, in Niassa National Park, Mozambique, is another place where large carnivores are hunted but are not declining. Niassa employs a reward system with its outfitters, encouraging them to hunt older animals – considered safe for the population because they have sired at least one litter of cubs to independence – then their quota increases for the next season. If the hunter chooses a young individual or a female then their quota will decrease. Even in Zimbabwe, the land of the mythical Cecil, lion hunting is now capped, and lion populations have been stable since the hunting reforms made by Loveridge and his team.
Millions of people in Africa live inside or on the borders of protected wildlife areas and their associated management zones. Many have to protect their livelihoods and sometimes their lives against animals such as lions and elephants. Surprising to most, many of Africa’s parks are linked to trophy hunting and the revenue generated from it. Recent science suggests hunting contributes to local economies and livelihoods. A recent study by Peter Lindsey, a leading wildlife management policy expert, and his colleagues found that approximately $400,000 generated through trophy hunting in Mozambique is ploughed back into the management of Niassa National Park, which amounts to 20% of the parks funding. On a larger scale, the $11 million generated by the Zambia Wildlife Authority, the country’s wildlife management and conservation body, is made up of $5 million from trophy hunting.
In 2000, a study by Michael Humavindu and Jonathan Barnes found that trophy hunting constituted about 14% of Namibia’s annual tourism and $19.6 million in gross output. But what about money going back to local communities? Lindsey found that in Tanzania 60 to 65% of hunting income from wildlife management areas, where wildlife and people live together, goes back to local communities. In Zambia 50% of hunt license fees and 20% of concession fees go back to communities. They also found families in wildlife-rich game management areas get about 17% more income and have a 7.8% better chance of finding a job than those living outside. Similarly, Humavindu and Barnes found about 24% of income earned from Namibian hunting went back to the poorer sector of the population.
Some of these statistics are difficult to ignore, especially if one considers Africa’s population growth will surpass China and India in the next 35 years. Much of this population growth will take place inside or along the borders of some of Africa’s largest wildlife areas.
Two recent studies suggested if lion hunting was banned in several countries, as much as 59,538km2 of wild land could become unviable for hunting. What would happen to that land? Although some operators could opt to try game drives or birding safaris, there is nothing to say that the land won’t be used for agriculture or the lions will not get poached.
Replacing hunting with tourism and photographic safaris might be plausible in some areas, but will be dependent on wildlife sightings in hunting zones being as good as those in national parks and whether the animals are scared of vehicles and people or not. In Zimbabwe’s Matetsi concession, a large hunting zone bordering Hwange National Park, the densities of buffalo, giraffe, kudu and zebra were similar to those of the national park between 1995 and 2010. However, if one looks at Zambia, the majority of game management areas have far fewer numbers of wildlife compared to their neighboring national parks. This would make safaris difficult unless they were geared towards specific species, rare birds or landscape and culture.
The Zimanga Private Game Reserve in South Africa has an intriguing idea of creating an artificial wetland and state-of-the-art bird hide which would allow photographers an eye-level opportunity to photograph animals. If such initiatives were attempted in Botswana, Zimbabwe and Tanzania, and community members were integrated into these ventures, they could become profitable. However, at this stage, there is no legal framework linking community benefits and photographic tourism in national parks. Is it not time to make it easier to pick up a camera than a rifle?