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Frank said the best way to ensure the lion's survival would be to allow a few of them to be shot for money. Big game hunters will pay $50,000 or more to bag a single, mature male, he said, making lions far more valuable to the local economy than cattle or even tourism.

Big game hunting, however, has been banned in Kenya for more than 20 years.

"It is not widely recognized by the American public, but since trophy hunting was banned in Kenya, game populations have declined by 80 percent," he said. "In Botswana, Namibia, South Africa, Tanzania, all places where controlled hunting is still allowed, the game has increased exponentially, and the local people have profited."

Drewes concurred that hunting can be an effective conservation tool in East Africa.

Professional hunters typically lease large blocks of land, then patrol them constantly, tightly controlling the number and variety of animals taken, he said. When hunters were banned in Kenya, Drewes said, this meticulous stewardship of the game lands ended, and widespread poaching ensued.

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Restoring Kenya’s Squan-dered Heritage
By Dr Laurence Frank, Laikipia Predator Project, Kenya
Editor’s Note: Dr. Laurence Frank, from the Wildlife Conser-vation Society and the University of California, Berkeley, has studied predators in Kenya for 37 years. He runs the Living With Lions project, working on lion conservation in Laikipia and Loitokitok Districts. He is not a big game hunter.
An edited version of this article was published in March by The Daily Nation, Nairobi – Here is Dr Frank’s original text:
Kenya has squandered its most important resource: seventy percent of our wildlife has disappeared in the last thirty years. They have been strangled in snares by the millions, to be sold as ‘nyama’ in rural and urban butcheries. Even in our national parks, many species are in serious decline due to poaching and habitat destruction on their boundaries; even the lions and other large predators which attract tourists to our parks are being speared and poisoned into extinction.
In that same thirty years, South Africa, Namibia, and Zim-babwe have seen an immense increase in wildlife numbers, as thousands of cattle ranches have been turned back to wildlife production (sadly, much of Zimbabwe’s regained wildlife was snared after ‘land reform’). Wildlife continues to do very well in Tanzania and Botswana. What accounts for the collapse of wildlife in of Kenya while it has increased enormously in the southern countries? Human populations have grown in most countries, so that does not explain the difference.
One difference is that in those countries wildlife outside of parks has great value for sport hunting, whereas in Kenya wild animals are just a costly and expensive nuisance to the rural people who share the land with them. Kenya shut down trophy hunting in 1977, just as landowners and communities in south-ern Africa found that their land was worth far more when produc-ing wildlife for high paying foreign hunters than it was for cattle. Landowners carefully manage their land to produce wild game, and carefully regulate hunting to ensure a lasting crop of trophy animals. With 250,000 square kilometers outside of parks main-tained for hunting, Tanzania has more wildlife than any country in Africa and income from trophy hunting is a mainstay of the national economy. Kenya’s policy, which denies rural people any benefit from wildlife, ensures that people resent animals for destroying their crops, eating their livestock, and occasionally killing people. To a rural Kenyan, it makes absolute sense to eat the game and kill the predators, because they gain nothing from, and lose a lot to wild animals. In other countries, well managed hunting brings money and development to rural areas. How can a country without legal hunting see its wildlife spiral into extinction? The answer is bad policy – our policy ensures that rural people resent wildlife, instead of profiting from it. This tragic state of affairs has been maintained by foreign animal rights groups which spend millions of pounds and dollars annu-ally influencing Kenyan policy makers and the media to ensure that their destructive policies are maintained. These overseas groups apparently do not seem to care that millions of our ani-mals strangle miserably in snares, so long as none are shot for profit. They boast to their American and British supporters that there is no hunting in Kenya, not admitting that as a result there is little wildlife left in Kenya, either. They rent mobs to demon-strate against any improvement in policy, and fill the Kenyan press with nonsensical claims that hunters want to indiscrimi-nately slaughter game, even in national parks, and stir racial strife by claiming that hunting would benefit only “rich wazungu†rather than impoverished pastoralist communities.
In North America, Europe, and southern Africa, properly managed hunting has greatly increased wildlife populations, because people value it – no species has ever gone extinct due to sport hunting, because it is in the hunters’ interest to ensure large populations. In fact, trophy hunters want only large old males, with impressive horns, tusks or manes, animals that are no longer needed to produce offspring. Unlike bushmeat poachers, they do not take females and young, ensuring an abundance of wildlife.
In Botswana today, a very few male lions are shot every year, at a price of nearly ten million Kenya shillings each. Fully half of that fee goes to the rural community in which the lion was taken, and another quarter goes to the Wildlife Department for conservation. Five million shillings would repay a community for 400 cattle taken by lions. Or support dozens of teachers or trained nurses. In Botswana, that lion, and all the associated wildlife, are a source of immense income, to be valued and en-couraged. In Kenya, that lion is only an expensive, cattle-killing nuisance, to be poisoned or speared and left to rot in the sun.
Of course, many people object that serious money brings se-rious corruption, and claim that Kenya could not possibly regu-late hunting properly. However, the old East African Professional Hunters Association took great pride in the ethical behavior of its members, and policed itself far more rigorously than the Game Department ever could. I believe that professional ethic is still strong in Kenya, and that properly managed hunting would benefit rural communities and landowners while increasing wild-life populations. If the rest of the world can manage wildlife for conservation and rural peoples’ well-being, so can Kenya. What we do know is that the old policy, bought by foreign pres-sure groups, has been a disaster for our wildlife heritage.

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A ROLE FOR TROPHY HUNTING?
The selous game reserve in southeast Tanzania is the largest in Africa. Established in 1905 and stretching over 21,000 sq. mi., it is bigger than Switzerland and chock-full of wildlife: 4,000 lions, 110,000 buffalo, 50,000 elephants. But because it is hard to access, covered with dense scrub and lacking in the spectacular vistas found in the Serengeti to the north, it draws fewer than 5,000 visitors annually—less than 1% of tourists who visit Tanzania. To pay for the upkeep of the Selous and for antipoaching patrols over its vast area, the reserve's managers rely on another source of funding: big-game hunters. In Tanzania, hunters will pay up to $80,000 to shoot a lion. In 2002, 226 trophy lions were shot in Tanzania, many in the Selous reserve.

Conservationists used to choke on the topic of hunting, but increasingly they are prepared to accept some limited and tightly controlled hunts when they generate revenue for locals who might otherwise kill off the predators. "It seems counterintuitive that killing animals can be good for conservation," says Frank. "But trophy hunting is extremely lucrative, and in order to produce a few trophy males, it is a necessity to preserve vast ecosystems."

Lion hunting also provides revenue in Zambia, Zimbabwe and South Africa, though Kenya banned the practice in 1975. Most countries operate on a quota system. They estimate the lion population and set a sustainable quota for hunting. A study published this year by wildlife experts at the University of Minnesota has raised new interest in trophy hunting. Based on 40 years of data from northern Tanzania, the study showed that if hunters confined themselves to shooting male lions at least 5 years old, after they have bred and their cubs have matured, there's no noticeable long-term effect on the overall population. Researchers attribute this to the fact that male lions, while necessary for reproduction, do little to help raise their cubs. (Indeed, males typically kill the youngest cubs when they take over a pride.) Mature males also happen to be what trophy hunters prize, since a male's mane reaches its full glory after age 4. Lions 5 years or older can be identified by their noses, which are at least 50% black. Already the Tanzanian Wildlife Division and some professional hunters are advising clients to take aim at the older lions.

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Originally posted by smarterthanu:
I know I am being negative and I encourage everyone to keep writing, but what are the odds newsweek will even print the letter, and secondly whether it will be printed with the evidence that is provided. My other question is what do they require from thier other letter contributors?

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Originally posted by smarterthanu:
I am not sure it will add up to billions of dollars.

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Originally posted by Wink:


The importance of the game industry to the economies of some countries is phenomenal, particularly when non- consumptive (i.e. wildlife viewing) and consumptive (sport hunting, licensed resident hunting) are taken into account. For example, in the latter 1990s, Zimbabwe raised some USD254 million through sport hunting, followed by South Africa at USD140 million and Tanzania at USD100 million (Barnes, 1996; ZTA, 2001). In some instances, this contributed significantly to the GDP of certain countries, for example, sport hunting revenue in Zimbabwe contributed some 8% to the country’s GDP (ZCSO, 2000). In some countries, this income is expected to increase in the near future, possibly even double, even in the absence of government grants (Bond, 1997).

With annual revenues of USD29.9 million in Tanzania, USD28.4 million in South Africa, USD23.9 million in Zimbabwe, USD12.6 million in Botswana and USD11.5 million in Namibia during the late 1990s, sport hunting is responsible for a large component of economic growth. Initially, most sport hunting revenue accrued to government and private landowners, however, more recently, an increasing proportion of such revenues has been apportioned between these two sectors and local communities.

__________________________

John H.

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NitroExpress.com - the net's double rifle forum

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According to a recent study, in the 23 African countries that allow sport hunting, 18,500 tourists pay over $200 million (U.S.) a year to hunt lions, leopards, elephants, warthogs, water buffalo, impala, and rhinos.

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Originally posted by Jim Manion:
So, they fact check their letters to the editor but not their articles?????

Free 500grains

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Originally posted by MJines:
My understanding is that he did call SCI and they did not call him back. Not sure what to make of that.

Member NRA, SCI- Life #358 28+ years now!
DRSS, double owner-shooter since 1983, O/U .30-06 Browning Continental set.