I stumbled upon the following article while accessing the AllAfrica website earlier today. Very interesting and thought provocative article. Much to my surprise, it actually makes a case for trophy hunting. Sorry for the copy and paste, but I haven't mastered the art of developing links.

Zimbabwe: R.I.P Cecil the Lion. What Will Be His Legacy? and Who Decides?

OPINION

By Dr. Rosie Clooney

London — Cecil the lion, a magnificent senior male, much loved and part of a long-term research project, was lured out of a safe haven in Zimbabwe's Hwange National Park last week and apparently illegally shot, to endure a protracted death.

As the global outrage pours out, consider for a moment that trophy hunting has now been banned across Africa. Trophy hunting is the limited "high value" end of hunting, where people (often the wealthy and mainly Westerners) pay top dollar to kill an animal. In southern Africa it takes place across an area close on twice the sum total of National Parks in the region.

Hwange Park staff numbers have been radically cut, and there is little money for cars or equipment for protection. Bushmeat poaching is on the rise and the rangers are ill equipped to cope.

It arouses disgust and revulsion - animals are killed for sport - in some cases (such as lions) the meat not even eaten. Even the millions of weekend recreational hunters filling their freezers are uncertain about trophy hunting.

It seems to have little place in the modern world, where humanity is moving toward an ethical position that increasingly grants animals more of the moral rights that humanity grants (in principle at least) to each other.

So let us move now through the thought bubble where the EU and North America ban import of trophies, Namibia, South Africa, Zimbabwe and others ban trophy hunting, the airlines and shipping lines refuse to carry trophies, and the industry dies a slow (or fast) death, ridding the world of this toxic stain on our collective conscience

We turn to survey southern Africa, proud of what we have achieved by our signing of online petitions, our lobbying of politicians, our Facebook shares and comments.

Did we save lions? Have we safeguarded wildlife areas? Have we dealt the death blow to trafficking of wildlife? Have we liberated local communities from imperialistic foreign hunters?

Let's go back to Hwange National Park, the scene of Cecil's demise. The Zimbabwe Parks and Wildlife Management Authority, responsible for managing this and other National Parks, is now in trouble.

It derived most of its income for protection, conservation and management of wildlife across the country from trophy hunting, with minimal revenue from central government (not well known for its good governance and transparent resource allocation).

Hwange Park staff numbers have been radically cut, and there is little money for cars or equipment for protection. Bushmeat poaching is on the rise and the rangers are ill equipped to cope. The commonly used wire snares are indiscriminate, and capture many lions and other predators who die agonizing and pointless deaths.

In Namibia, more than half of the communal conservancies (covering 20 percent of the country) have collapsed, because the revenue from non-hunting sources (such as tourism) is not enough to keep them viable and they have not been able to find alternative sources of income.

Namibia's communal conservancies are an innovation of the 1990s, and have been responsible for dramatic increases in a wide range of wildlife species outside of national parks including elephant, lion, and black rhino. Income from trophy hunting and tourism has encouraged communities to turn their land over to conservation.

Communities retain 100 percent of benefits from sustainable use of wildlife, including hunting - almost 18 million Namibian dollars in 2013. This money was spent by communities on schools, healthcare, roads, training, and the employment of 530 game guards to protect their wildlife.

Almost two million high protein meals a year were a by-product of the hunting. Now this is all gone. A few conservancies managed to find wealthy philanthropic donors to prevent them going under - but they cross their fingers that the generosity will continue to flow for decades to come.

Game guards are unemployed, unable to feed their families, looking for any opportunity to obtain some income. Communities are angry - they were never asked by the world what they thought about this. Few journalists or social media activists ever reflected their side of the story. Conservation authorities and communities are again becoming enemies.

Where the conservancies have collapsed, the wildlife is largely wiped out. The bad old days pre-reform have returned, and wildlife is worth more dead than alive.

Hungry bellies are fed with poached bushmeat and the armed poaching gangs have moved in - communities are no longer interested in feeding information to police to help protect wildlife, game guard programmes have collapsed for lack of funds and have spare targeted to supply the criminal syndicates, and rhino horns, lion bone, and ivory are being shipped out illicitly to East Asia.

In South Africa, trophy hunting has stopped, including the small proportion that was "canned". On the private game ranches that covered some 20 million hectares of the country, though, revenues from wildlife have effectively collapsed.

Those properties with scenic landscapes that are close to major tourist routes or attractions and have good tourism infrastructure are surviving on revenues from phototourism, but gone are the days of expanding their wildlife asset base by buying land and restocking this with additional wildlife. Most of the other landowners have returned to cattle, goats and crop farming in order to educate their children, run a car, pay their mortgages.

Wildlife on these lands has largely gone along with its habitat - back to the degraded agriculture landscapes that prevailed before the 1970s when wildlife use by landholders (including hunting) became legal here.

Lions that were on these farmlands are long gone, and the few that remain in national parks are shot as problem animals as soon as they leave the park. The great conservation success story of South Africa is rapidly unraveling.

Speculative? Yes, but a reasonable prediction, because this has happened before. Bans on trophy hunting in Tanzania 1973-1978, Kenya in 1977 and in Zambia from 2000-2003 accelerated a rapid loss of wildlife due to the removal of incentives for conservation. Early anecdotal reports suggest similar patterns are already happening in Botswana, which banned all hunting last year.

Let us mourn Cecil, but be careful what we wish for.

Well done. Thank you for posting this. I will pass it on to my uneducated family, friends and acquaintances.

Hit the nail on the head.

Very balanced and thoughtful piece.

"Excellent!"

Fit for "facebook" i'd say. Thanks for sharing

Well written piece.

This is why the silence of DSC and SCI annoys the hell out of me. There is so much good information out there that could be mustered, organized and presented in such a way to make the case for sporting hunting, why the silence. At a minimum arm the members with facts that can be used to get the right information out! In the absence of SCI and DSC doing a damn thing, I printed this article and gave it to my wife to read. I could tell that it made her think about the issue in a little different context. People will listen if given the chance.

Dr. Rosie Clooney is Chair of the Sustainable Use and Livelihoods Specialist Group at the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN).

quote:

This is why the silence of DSC and SCI annoys the hell out of me. There is so much good information out there that could be mustered, organized and presented in such a way to make the case for sporting hunting, why the silence. At a minimum arm the members with facts that can be used to get the right information out! In the absence of SCI and DSC doing a damn thing

I think it is simply the "keep you're head down" syndrome... let it blow over a little bit, then make an informative statement using the latest information.

NOT VERY PROACTIVE TACTICS!

Do you have a link to the story?

quote:

Originally posted by MJines:
This is why the silence of DSC and SCI annoys the hell out of me. There is so much good information out there that could be mustered, organized and presented in such a way to make the case for sporting hunting, why the silence. At a minimum arm the members with facts that can be used to get the right information out! In the absence of SCI and DSC doing a damn thing, I printed this article and gave it to my wife to read. I could tell that it made her think about the issue in a little different context. People will listen if given the chance.

I couldn't agree more. Pathetic that one of the more thoughtful articles on the subject comes from what appears to be London - not DSC or SCI ....

quote:

Originally posted by ghostbird:

quote:

This is why the silence of DSC and SCI annoys the hell out of me. There is so much good information out there that could be mustered, organized and presented in such a way to make the case for sporting hunting, why the silence. At a minimum arm the members with facts that can be used to get the right information out! In the absence of SCI and DSC doing a damn thing

I think it is simply the "keep you're head down" syndrome... let it blow over a little bit, then make an informative statement using the latest information.

NOT VERY PROACTIVE TACTICS!

Sort of like, let's wait until the fire has just about completely burned down the house and then try to put it out.

Just a guess on my part. I would venture that neither organization was prepared to address a significant crisis of any sort. They function in a completely reactive mode and just do think think about issues like this proactively. Combine that with my belief that neither organization is very nimble or facile in dealing with issues (and probably has to have everyone and their brother sign off on anything), and you are left with a flat footed, slow punching boxer. Or to stick with the boxing analogy, maybe this is their version of the "rope a dope". They are going to let the other side exhaust themselves kicking our ass and then strike back.

quote:

Originally posted by SteveGl:
Dr. Rosie Clooney is Chair of the Sustainable Use and Livelihoods Specialist Group at the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN).

Hmm! Apparently the IUCN isn't some minor/insignificant conservation organization.

As per IUCN's website:

What is IUCN?

IUCN, International Union for Conservation of Nature, helps the world find pragmatic solutions to our most pressing environment and development challenges.

IUCN’s work focuses on valuing and conserving nature, ensuring effective and equitable governance of its use, and deploying nature-based solutions to global challenges in climate, food and development. IUCN supports scientific research, manages field projects all over the world, and brings governments, NGOs, the UN and companies together to develop policy, laws and best practice.

IUCN is the world’s oldest and largest global environmental organisation, with more than 1,200 government and NGO Members and almost 11,000 volunteer experts in some 160 countries. IUCN’s work is supported by over 1,000 staff in 45 offices and hundreds of partners in public, NGO and private sectors around the world.

What is SULi?

The IUCN Sustainable Use and Livelihoods Specialist Group (SULi) is a global expert network formed by IUCN as a joint initiative of the Species Survival Commission (SSC) and the Commission on Environmental, Economic and Social Policy (CEESP). Our mission is to promote both conservation and livelihoods through enhancing equitable and sustainable use of wild species and their associated ecosystems.

Link to article,
http://allafrica.com/stories/201508010213.html