Bans on trophy hunting will do nothing for conservation

by Dan Hannan, Contributor | January 17, 2022

How suddenly and totally people have turned against trophy hunting.

Twenty years ago, it was regarded, even by those who found it distasteful, as a private vice. Now, the image of a man posing with a rifle over a fallen elephant is seen as being almost on par with child pornography.

Fashions can change with astonishing rapidity. Smoking went almost overnight from being universally accepted to being all but excluded from the public square. At around the same time, and with equal rapidity, homosexual relationships went the other way.

You might think that “fashion” is a frivolous word to use for protecting rare mammals. Last week, Britain became the latest country to prohibit the importation of trophies, listing around 7,000 off-limit species, including lions and tigers and bears (oh, my). The Conservative government said it was “protecting endangered animals and helping to strengthen and support long-term conservation.” The United States is now an outlier in allowing people to bring in as many polar bear pelts and leopard hides as they like.
Intuitively, a trophy ban might seem to make sense as a conservationist measure. But how much evidence is there that banning the importation of bits of animals (animals that have, by definition, already been shot) serves to protect their numbers?

It turns out that, in at least some cases, hunting actually boosts conservation by giving local people an incentive to preserve their megafauna. You or I might think of elephants as noble and majestic, but African villagers see them as pests that trample crops and knock over houses. Without a good reason to treat them as a renewable resource, elephants' human neighbors will hunt them to extinction. The same applies to big cats and rhinos.

Consider the contrasting experiences of two African countries. Kenya had around 1.5 million head of big game when it banned trophy hunting in the late 1970s. It promptly saw that number fall by 80% over four decades.

At around the same time, South Africa went the other way, encouraging local communities to husband wildlife for their meat, hides, and tusks. Numbers there have since surged to more than 20 million head, including rare species. White rhinos, for example, are not endangered in South Africa, largely because of demand from overseas hunters.

The Pakistani government, which runs ambitious re-wilding and reintroduction programs, has learned that lesson. It recently sold four licenses to shoot markhor, an endangered mountain goat with gorgeous screwlike horns, raising $575,000, 80% of which went to local communities. These communities now have every reason to ensure that there is always plenty of markhor.

All of which brings us up against an uncomfortable truth. We often back policies for emotional reasons and then cast around for ways to defend them logically. Much of the opposition to trophy hunting was sparked by revulsion at the 2015 image of an overweight dentist from Minnesota posing by the carcass of a Zimbabwean lion called Cecil. An essentially aesthetic dislike was dressed up as concern for lion numbers. But lions are not endangered in Zimbabwe, partly because they can be legally hunted.

The psychologist Jonathan Haidt has looked in detail at how we rationalize our intuitions. He presents people with scenarios in which no one is hurt but that prompt a disgust reflex. For example, a man defrosts a chicken, has sex with it, then cooks and eats it. Haidt found that while working-class respondents have no problem saying that some things were simply unacceptable, college students thrash around trying to find some reasoned objection.

“The Puritan hated bear-baiting,” the great 19th century historian Lord Macaulay wrote, “not because it gave pain to the bear, but because it gave pleasure to the spectator.” Twitter hated trophy hunting, not because lions were close to extinction, but because it loathed the picture of a fat dentist squatting over a fallen beast.

It can be hard to accept that some of the positions we regard as moral, or at least as logical, are nothing more than rationalizations of our gut feelings. But think of all those trolley dilemmas in which psychologists ask people whether they would push someone off a bridge to block a trolley that was going to hit some children. For most respondents, logic doesn’t enter into the question.

That doesn’t make our intuitions wrong, of course. It may be aesthetics rather than ethics that elevates baby seals over, say, baby cockroaches, but that doesn’t make our feelings any less valid.

We should, however, be honest enough to face one question. If we knew that the trophy ban would drive some species closer to extinction, would we still back it?

Found this the other day and thought I would share it with the group.

Was this in a mainstream publication, or a pro hunting location?

It looks like a person that doesn’t care for hunting, but understands conservation somewhat wrote it.

quote:

If we knew that the trophy ban would drive some species closer to extinction, would we still back it?

That answer is yes for many true animal rights groups. I have personally heard them say: "We would rather see elephant (lion, rhino, etc etc) go extinct than to ever see a hunter take pleasure in killing one."

quote:

Originally posted by ledvm:

quote:

If we knew that the trophy ban would drive some species closer to extinction, would we still back it?

That answer is yes for many true animal rights groups. I have personally heard them say: "We would rather see elephant (lion, rhino, etc etc) go extinct than to ever see a hunter take pleasure in killing one."

I’ve heard people say the same. This is why logic is not a tool against the rabid anti-hunter. They don’t use it.

quote:

Originally posted by crbutler:
Was this in a mainstream publication, or a pro hunting location?

It looks like a person that doesn’t care for hunting, but understands conservation somewhat wrote it.

Daniel Hannan is a member of the House of Lords, and is a former Conservative MEP. (Member of European Parliament - United Kingdom)

The Rigby guys at SCI commented that they expect Parliament to pass the Ban on trophy shipments into UK!!
GO FIGURE!!

Interesting essay, thanks for sharing it.

quote:

Originally posted by DLS:
Interesting essay, thanks for sharing it.

My wife is the one that came across the article and shared it with me.

And yes it was interesting to read it. I am sure that there is back room discussions on trophy importation. The thing is, is the UK has a lot of foreign hunters who travel and hunt in the UK and that is incoming money that is generating part of the income for estates.

Interestingly, from the conversations I heard, a Parliamentary Ban on Imports, may not affect the in Country hunting, and export of trophies by foreign hunters??!!

quote:

Originally posted by ledvm:

quote:

If we knew that the trophy ban would drive some species closer to extinction, would we still back it?

That answer is yes for many true animal rights groups. I have personally heard them say: "We would rather see elephant (lion, rhino, etc etc) go extinct than to ever see a hunter take pleasure in killing one."

When I was in high school 60 Minutes for a piece on Trophy Hunting. The host asked in the form of s proposition that Hunting exotics in Texas kept species from going extinct.

The Eco said she would rather see those species go extinct than be raised to die in Texas.

I saw a robotic bartender in Las Vegas last week. I hate this world.