Almost gives credence to Mugabe's and other Governments for wanting to silence the media......just a bunch of University licensed Liars.

E mail from a Zim operator



Hi Larry,

I have been up in Tanzania the last couple of weeks and now in Kenya so not very close to everything going on back then.

Jonny Rodrigues is a sensationalist animal rights campaigner who portrays himself as a wildlife conservationist.

He has lost credibility within Zimbabwe long ago as many of his stories are baseless and it amazes me that the mainstream news channels and papers still listen to him. Hopefully they will think twice about this with his statement about Jericho (Cecils brother) being killed as well when the researchers monitoring him have confirmed he is alive and well.

I wouldn’t be at all surprised if Jonny Rodrigues made up the story of Jericho to keep the story at the top of the headlines.

While what happened with Cecil was clearly wrong and illegal and the PH should be prosecuted. I feel sorry for the client as he probably had no idea there was no quota for lion there. If he did then he has to accept responsibility for it as it has further damaged the image of the hunting industry. Some good can maybe come out of this in backing up better regulation of the industry and exposing those who have been breaking the rules.

Social media is pretty scary though and definitely has its down side!

However, I find the amount of exposure this story has got disappointing as it highlights many of the issues that are wrong with conservation efforts coming from a large and influential section of ‘the west’. They have become fixated on individual charismatic animals and animal welfare issues. Issues that have no resonance within Africa where we are fighting the real conservation issues of poverty, increasing human population, human wildlife conflict and the competition for land. Unfortunately they are driving quite a significant amount of the conservation agenda in Africa which is becoming more and more misguided and irrelevant with significant funds being wasted on projects that have little real impact but provide create little articles about saving individual charismatic animals. Unfortunately this story will only go to reinforcing this approach

George Adamson is the hero of many of these people, a man who raised his lion cub ‘Boy’, released him into a wild area and shot wild lion that he thought would threaten the survival of Boy - is this the kind of conservation we want to be promoting because that's were it



Sent from my iPhone