An excerpt from this longer document GTZ
[in pdf format; Note; it takes a bit to download as it is over 60 pages long].

2.5 Lion Hunting

by Rolf Baldus & Andrew Cauldwell

Lion hunting makes an important contribution to the tourist hunting industry in Tanzania, and certainly they are the major draw that attract hunting clients to Tanzania. This is evidenced by the fact that the majority of hunting outfitters include the image of a lion in their company logo. Hunters promotional pamphlets always show a large number of smiling clients with a good lion trophy.

The direct contribution made by lion trophy fees to hunting revenue at first glance appears low at 9.4%, being the third most important species in terms of income generation. Lion are surpassed in income generation by buffalo and leopard contributing 21.5% and 10.4%respectively. The contribution made by lions is however also a reflection of the representation of lions in the ecosystems where they live.

Lion represent the top of the food chain and theirs is the smallest population exceeded by most other animals. It is therefore expected that greater numbers of other animals would be hunted than lion, this is certainly true for buffalo, their main prey species. Lion’s contribution of approximately 10% does therefore indicate that they are highly sought after by tourist hunters.

To hunt a lion, a tourist hunter requires a 21-day hunting permit issued by the hunting office, for which he or she pays US$ 600 for the permit and a further US$ 100 per day. The trophy fee for a lion is US$ 2,000 and to export the trophy the client must purchase a trophy-handling permit for US$ 300. The minimum fee payable to the Government to shoot a lion is therefore US$ 5000.

Many other animals can also be hunted with a 21-day hunting permit and it is therefore difficult to attribute the full amount to lions, but being the major draw, lion hunting does account for a substantial amount of the income generated from tourist hunting.

The tourist will pay a substantially higher amount to the hunting outfitter in whose concession he or she wishes to hunt. The hunting areas of Tanzania (game reserves, game controlled areas and open areas) are divided into hunting concessions that are leased by the Wildlife Division to hunting operators. The outfitters are responsible for marketing and finding clients. They are required to provide the necessary services (camp, vehicles etc) and a licensed professional hunter who will guide the client. The Wildlife Division provides a game scout to supervise the hunt and who may provide additional protection to the client if necessary.

Tourist hunting currently generates approximately US$ 10 million for the Wildlife Division.

Considering the above representation of fees by lions, approximately US$ 1 million is earned
directly from lion trophy fees, but a total of US$ 2.4 million could be attributed to lion hunting generated through permit fees, daily fees etc. A gross amount of approximately US$ 27 million is generated by the hunting industry in Tanzania, which includes income to outfitters, auxiliary services, taxation, Wildlife Division earnings etc. Lion hunting in Tanzania therefore generates a gross amount of US$ 6 - 7 million per annum for the hunting industry. This is a substantial income for a poverty stricken country such as Tanzania. The Kenyan proposal calculates an odd economic comparison whereby the value to tourism of a lion in Amboseli National Park in Kenya is US$128,750 annually while a lion which is shot by a tourist hunter in Tanzania is worth only US$35,000. The scientific basis for this revenue generating capacity of an Amboseli lion remains unclear, but we are doubtful that if Tanzania stopped hunting and offered all its estimated 15,000 lions for photographic tourism, this would bring in annual revenues of nearly US$ two billion. The fact is that hunting and tourism in Tanzania are mostly not competitive but complementary forms of wildlife use. Lions are important for the Tanzanian tourist industry, but most lions will spend their lives and never be seen by a tourist. Hunting takes normally place in areas with no or very limited tourism potential. In most hunting areas the so-called "consumptive" use of wildlife earns comparatively much more than photographic tourism and has a lower impact on the ecology of the area.

Approximately 250 lions are taken annually by tourist hunters in all hunting blocks of Tanzania, which exist in different parts of the country. Analysis of data from the Selous Game Reserve indicates that on average one in five tourist hunters takes a lion trophy. Not every tourist hunter wishes to hunt a lion, but certainly many more hunters wish to shoot a lion than are successful. The number of lion trophies that outfitters are able to sell from their concessions is limited by quota.

Annual quotas and numbers of lion hunted in the Selous Game Reserve are presented in Table 4.

Table 4: Off-take and annual quota for lions in the Selous Game Reserve

[First column is the Year]
[Second column is the Number Hunted]
[Third column is the Annual Hunting Quota]

1988 23 103
1989 50 148
1990 55 168
1991 40 184
1992 47 178
1993 61 ?
1994 41 ?
1995 49 ?
1996 86 148
1997 98 140
1998 115 187
1999 81 179
2000 63 170
2001 83 177
2002 81 167
2003 78 167

The hunting system in Tanzania has evolved over a hundred years. The industry has become an
important source of foreign exchange to the country and is one of the few industries that brings economic incentives to the remote rural areas of the country. It is the major source of revenue that sustains the game reserves and game controlled area network in the country. As shown earlier, these represent 70% of the protected area network with an area of 200,000 km².

Despite its importance, the hunting industry has suffered from stagnation in its management in recent years. Management of the industry has not adapted in response to developments in the
economy of Tanzania or international developments. The current system used by the Wildlife Division to generate income is heavily dependant on game fees, which make up 60% of the total fees generated. Lease of concessions make up only 10% while permit and daily fees make up the remainder. The result of this system is that the only feasible means for the Wildlife Division to raise income is to increase the number of animals hunted through raising quotas. The current system requires that operators must utilize 40% of their annual quota.

Hunting concessions are leased at nominal rates (US$ 7,500 each) to a select group of hunting
outfitters. There is no market-based competition, and many concessions are leased to persons or companies without the necessary business skills and without the capacity to market their hunting opportunities. The result is that much of the hunting is now subleased to wandering professional hunters who shift from one concession to another taking their clients to different areas to hunt.

These people have minimal long-term interest in any one area, and will naturally consider the
interests of their clients before the long-term interests of nurturing a concession. They are mostly foreigners who operate on a cash basis with the companies leasing blocks, but the bulk of the income they earn neither enters Tanzania nor is it taxed here.

The Wildlife Division is developing new management procedures for lion hunting. From 2004 onwards it is planned that only lions of 6 years or older may be hunted. Age will be assessed from tooth wear and skull dimensions when export permits are requested. The precise criteria that will be used are not yet certain, but this will be an important step towards protecting the integrity of lion populations and ensuring a more sustainable off-take. Studies conducted in Maswa Game Reserve where lions are hunted together with extensive computer modelling (Whitman et. al. 2004) suggests that if only lions over a minimum age are hunted, then the off-take is sustainable regardless of the number of animals hunted. The critical issue is to be able to determine the age of lions before shooting them. The authors of that study found that there is a high correlation between age and nose colour, with older animals having darker noses. The authors of this chapter and many professional hunters feel that nose colour is not or not always a sufficiently reliable means for ageing lions in the field. Some old lions (6+ years) have pale noses, and some young lions have dark noses. This is evident for the lions in the Tarangire ecosystem (L. Lichtenfeld, pers. comm.).

Mature lions, and even some cubs in the Moyowosi ecosystem of north-western Tanzania tend to be of a darker colour than those in the Selous ecosystem, and this may affect pigmentation of their noses. A baseline study is required therefore to determine correlations between nose pigmentation and age for important hunting areas of the country.

There is also an economic incentive to the hunting outfitters to take only older animals, as these represent better trophies, lion populations will be more stable and the off-take will possibly be higher in the long run. The problem of subleasing however destroys the theory of an economic incentive, as it is the professional hunter who makes the decision on the ground which animal will be taken by his client. When the interests of his client over-ride all else, a lion is a lion and imposing restrictions as being developed by the Wildlife Division will be extremely difficult.

There is already a restriction in the case of elephants (20 kg or 1.7 m length for the larger tusk) and leopards (minimum of body length of 1.3 m excluding the tail). Both minima are easier to enforce, although we lack data how the system works. Quite a few elephants are shot which are below minimum. We also doubt that the knowledge exists to age lions after the hunt on the basis of their teeth. This would consequently need training. We are even not sure whether exact age determination is possible at all at this stage, apart from ageing lions into broad age groups, like subadult, young, middle aged and old adults. Our experiences show that many professional sport hunters are relatively unsure of their abilities to age lions beyond these categories.

Using nose colour to age lions is also difficult as many lions are shot off baits where the nose is often darkened by feeding or they are shot in bad light at sunset or sunrise. In any case and apart from lion hunting a total reform of the management of the hunting industry is required in Tanzania to overcome the problems that are now inherent. The important step will be to offer the hunting concessions to outfitters based on market value, i.e. outfitters must bid competitively against each other for concessions with a sufficiently long-term security of tenure. This single step will overcome much of the subleasing problem and greatly increase the revenue generated from hunting. The species that will benefit the most from this reform will be the lion.

A system of recording trophy quality has been implemented by the Selous Game Reserve
administration since 1995. Initial lessons were learned and a substantial volume of data is now
available from 1999 to 2003. Lion trophy quality measurements are based on skull dimensions, i.e. skull length and skull width. A careful analysis of the lion trophy data, based on 212 records using various statistical packages has revealed no significant trend in trophy quality over the period from 1995 to 2003. This provides empirical evidence that lion off-take in the Selous Game Reserve is at
a level that does not cause a decline in trophy quality and is therefore sustainable. Results are presented in Annex 6.

Some minor trends can however be detected and provide some insights into the dynamics of the
Selous lion population over this time. Hunting has increased and the area used expanded in the
period up to 1997. This may account for an initial increase in lion trophy quality up to 1997, as some lion prides were being hunted for the first time after a period of rest at that stage. 1998 was a year of heavy hunting and the number of lions hunted reached a maximum level that year. Trophy quality dropped as a result in 1999 but has stabilized and improved thereafter with a reduced lion off-take. The data does suggest that lion trophy quality responds rapidly to hunting intensity and lion populations are able to recover easily. It is assumed from this data that lion populations in the Selous have been heavily hunted, but their rapid recovery in response to reduced hunting pressure indicates that off-take levels are sustainable.

Lion populations elsewhere have shown capacity to recover rapidly from a drop in numbers, as has been the case of the Serengeti lion recovery following the outbreak of disease.
The system of recording trophy quality in the Selous Game Reserve has also noted the geographic coordinates of where hunts have taken place. The distribution of lion hunts in the Selous Game Reserve during 2003 based on GPS coordinates are illustrated in Annex 4.

This shows that the offtake is evenly distributed over much of the reserve. The Selous Game Reserve covers an area of 48,000 km². The 78 lions hunted in 2003 represents an off-take of one lion per 615 km². It is difficult, without further analysis to say whether the higher, but unused quota in the Selous is sustainable or not. Creel & Creel (1997) concluded that "current off-take of lions is sustainable, but current quotas are probably too high." In the absence of other publications in scientific journals this
paper is widely quoted, including in the Kenyan uplisting proposal. It should be pointed out that it was based on field research in an area not larger than 2,600 km² in the Northern Selous. The Creels had no empirical insight into populations on 95 % of the Selous' area nor on the outside bufferzones with the exception of Gonabis (300 km²) north of the reserve. The actual lion counting was limited to an area of 90 km² (0,188 % of the Selous) where the authors claimed to have known
all lions. This was doubted by the Reserve management. Furthermore an estimated fixed ratio
between hyenas and lions was used to determine lion numbers. The paper is no more than applying
supposedly sustainable off-take rates (2,7 to 4,3 % of adult male population) to an estimated lion population figure (0,08 to 0,13 adult lions/km² of which 36 % to 41 % are male). Both estimates may be right or may be not. In any case the quota is not utilized, therefore it is rather hypothetical whether it is too high or not. Many professional hunters in the Selous say that they voluntarily do not shoot their full quota, as it is too high for their particular area. We advise therefore the Wildlife Division to reduce the quota of mostly 4 lions per block as a precautionary measure closer to what is presently shot, say two lions per block, until more empirical data are available. Several blocks in the Western Selous need additional attention, and too many lions might be shot there.

In the literature off-take rates between 2 % of the adult male lions and 10 % of the whole
population are given for lions (Chardonnet, p. 124), some of which sound rather unrealistic. We
conservatively assume that in the case of Tanzania only the lower percentages are sustainable (around 2 % of the population) and even this level brings a noticeable, but not unsustainable impact on the populations. If one assumes that Tanzania has 14,000 lions a 2 % off-take as trophy males would be 280 lions and 4 % would be 560. If Tanzania would have only 10,500 lions then the comparable figures would be 210 and 420. The actual number of lions taken and exported between 1992 and 2002 was 2,791 lions or 254 lions per year. The Kenyan proposal alleges that quotas are too high and it implies that these represent the numbers shot, but this is not correct in the case of Tanzania and will mislead the reader.

"...a total reform of the management of the hunting industry is required in Tanzania... The important step will be to offer the hunting concessions to outfitters based on market value, i.e. outfitters must bid competitively against each other for concessions with a sufficiently long-term security of tenure." Interesting. Folks, it looks like prices are going to be going up and up. And for those of you who want lion, well. . .

Terry,

Very good article, interesting reading...Going to read the whole article later....


Mike