Berkeley Professor promotes trophy hunting of Lions!

The lion, once king of vast African savanna, suffers alarming decline in population - Glen Martin, Chronicle Environment Writer - Thursday, October 6, 2005


Lions in East Africa are being killed off wholesale and face elimination from one of their last strongholds, a situation reminiscent of the elephant slaughter during the late 20th century, a UC Berkeley researcher says.
Laurence Frank, an associate of UC Berkeley's Museum of Vertebrate Zoology and an authority on African predators, said recent studies in a vast expanse of savanna -- encompassing parts of Kenya's Masai Mara National Reserve and Tanzania's Serengeti National Park -- indicated that lions soon would become extinct throughout much of the region.
"We're talking about an area of 36,000 square miles," Frank said by cell phone from Kenya last month. "It's a huge piece of real estate, and it should be full of lions -- but they're simply not there. What we're seeing now is comparable to the elephant poaching we saw during the 1970s."
Frank is the prime mover behind a program in northern Kenya that has successfully enlisted cattle ranchers in lion conservation efforts. The program emphasizes animal husbandry methods that involve the intensive monitoring of livestock, payment to owners when their animals are killed, and the shooting of specific predators that develop a taste for beef.
When he recently started a similar program for the Masai tribal holdings in southern Kenya, he said, he was shocked to discover that there wasn't much left to conserve -- the lions have been virtually eliminated by snaring and poisoning.
"I've worked in the Masai Mara off and on for 20 years, and a few years ago lions were all over the place," he said. "Now, they're essentially gone, except for the game parks like Serengeti. As soon as they go outside the parks, they're whacked."
Lions have been declining across Africa for decades. Scientists think they probably numbered more than a million in pre-colonial times. Twenty years ago, said Frank, the continent supported between 100,000 and 200,000. Today, he said, only 16,000 to 40,000 African lions exist.
But their disappearance in the Masai Mara is especially worrisome, he said, because it is -- or was -- one of the last remaining strongholds for the big felines.
Frank noted that the nomadic, cattle-herding Masai had lived side by side with lions for centuries, if not millennia. The tall, spear-wielding Masai are perhaps the most photographed tribe in Africa, as much of a tourist draw as the game parks.
But recent political and social changes enforced on the Masai, coupled with an inexorable demographic trend and access to new technology, have changed the tribe's former relationship with the land and its wildlife, Frank said.
"The Masai are an extremely traditional, extremely conservative people that put a great premium on martial prowess," he said. "Typically, a young male achieves manhood by killing a warrior from another tribe during a cattle raid. Failing that, he'll kill a lion. That's how he proves himself worthy of taking wives."
But in recent years, the Kenyan government has successfully curtailed cattle raiding among the tribes, Frank said. At the same time, the Masai population has skyrocketed, doubling in the Mara during the last decade. Each year, there are increasing numbers of young men roaming the Mara, looking to prove themselves.
"Since they can't face other warriors off in combat anymore, they take it to the lions," Frank said.
The Masai have also been able to obtain large quantities of pesticides in recent years, which they use to poison lions and other predators to protect their cattle herds, Frank said.
A certain amount of strychnine has always been available, Frank said, but what's new is the easy access to agricultural chemicals. Furadan, a chemical used to kill nematodes all across East Africa, seems to be the poison of choice, he said.
The Masai have always had an almost spiritual attachment to their cattle, Frank said, but an increasing intrusion of cash into the tribe's economy is further exacerbating the pressure on lions.
"Cattle used to be the primary barter unit for the tribes, as well as a source of prestige," Frank said. "But the Kenyan shilling is now the main means of exchange, and cattle are increasingly looked at as a source of cash. That is making the typical tribesman even less willing than before to lose a single animal to a lion. A dose of pesticide costs a lot less than a cow."
Eco-tourism has also played a role in the decline of the lions, Frank said.
Game lodges have sprung up all over the Mara, he said, attracting both hordes of tourists and Masai looking for jobs.
"The Masai bring their cattle, settle around the lodges, and the lions disappear," he said.
Richard Estes, a research associate with the Smithsonian Institution, said a recent survey conducted in the Mara indicated that lion populations were down by at least 30 percent from recent numbers and that hyena populations had also dropped precipitously.
"In addition to the reasons cited by (Frank), another factor appears to be the decline in the great migratory wildebeest herds," Estes said. "Their wet season range is being chopped up into ranches, and they've declined by 70 percent."
Wildebeest, or gnu, are a staple prey item for lions, said Estes, and when the big cats can't find the ungainly antelopes, they'll prey on domestic livestock.
"When that happens, the Masai retaliate," he said.
Robert C. Drewes, a curator with the California Academy of Sciences and a herpetologist who has spent several years studying and collecting in the Mara, agrees with Frank that population growth in the area is hurting predators.
"I was just there after an absence of five years, and I was stunned by how much it has grown up," Drewes said. "There are whole settlements of (small farms owned by Masai). We know that the more people there are, the more chances there are of predator interactions with human beings or livestock; it's a phenomenon directly related to population density. And when it happens, the predators lose."
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.
Frank said the reauthorization of hunting had been discussed by the Kenyan government but had made little headway.
He also expressed little hope that the Masai could be turned from their current practices, or that change could be forced on them.
"Candidly, I'm not optimistic about turning the Mara around," he said. "I think we've lost this one."
________________________________________
To hear more
Laurence Frank will make the following Bay Area appearances to present his work in Kenya:
-- Sunday at 10 a.m. at the Conservation Expo at Foothill College, Los Altos Hills.
-- Dec. 20 at 2 p.m. and 7:30 p.m. at the California Academy of Sciences, San Francisco.
E-mail Glen Martin at glenmartin@sfchronicle.com.

Good article. Thanks for posting it.

BTW, here's the URL for the article:

http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/c/a/2005/10/06/MNG1UF392D1.DTL

-Bob F.

That was a very good article. I can't help but wonder how well received Mr. Frank's findings will be received when he presents them at the California Academy of Sciences, San Francisco.

Wow...that from a professor from Berkley? I am impressed but there are probably icicles in Hell right now!

The Devil's definitely wearing a goose down parka.

$50,000, Seems a bit much but the idea is right

50K IS about right these days. jorge

While the trophy fees are a bit less than that, coupled with the minimum number of days at the daily rate, fifty thousand bucks should be in the ballpark. One outfit in RSA charges $28,900 trophy fee for a male lion.

If they were to reopen trophy hunting I think it would be very easy to sell the first twenty five hunts for MGM lions for $100,000 +

Of course, the same logic could be applied to Kruger National Park in RSA. They have a problem with having way too many elephants for the park to support. Instead of letting hunters pay for the culling of three or four thousand elephants, they will probably cull a few thousand with machine guns. Sport hunters would pay through the nose for a chance at some of the 100 pounders that roam there, and would happily pay a bit less to help with the culling. The money made could support the conservation efforts in the park for decades.
I predict that the authorities will not utilize sport hunters for the reduction of the elephant population in Kruger, but will pay someone (perhaps troops) to do the culling. Stupid, isn't it? But then, anti-western sentiment runs deep. Sport hunting is a western (read white) thing.

The fact that this comes from a UC Berkley prof makes me suspicious as hell. Could this be a Trojan horse?
OTOH, if it's for real, then watch for the Bears in the Super Bowl this year!

DAve

I don't think it is a Trojan Horse. I believe I met Dr. Frank 15 years ago when I was teaching Range Officer Training courses for the US Practical Shooting Association. He was then at Berkley and took me on a tour of his pens where he kept a pack of hyenas. Anybody that is into combat pistol shooting will be a straight shooter. Pun intended!

465H&H