Tuesday, July 21, 2015

How Conservation By Hunting Is Only A Myth




Trophy Hunting : A Myth of Conservation



My introduction to the controversial business of trophy hunting began in 2010 during the 2010 FIFA World Cup held in South Africa where thousands of football fans were allured towards the lucrative game of trophy hunting by the members of the hunting trade. I wrote an article on the adverse effects of trophy hunting in an online news portal which received quite a few supportive comments and surprisingly an equal number of comments glorifying the game. This led me to question the “behind the scenes truth” of this popular practice.

With the growing anthropogenic pressures, lion numbers have plummeted in all parts of the world where they existed. In the past, these magnificent creatures roared across the countries of the African continent towards Central Asia and far east into north-western India. Now, the lions have disappeared over 80% of their historic range. Only a few African countries and India has managed to hold on to the last surviving populations of the lion. Still, in Africa where an estimated 250,000 lions existed in 1975, a staggering decline to a meagre 25-30,000 lions have occurred in a short span of time.

At such a crucial time, the methods used to implement conservation of lions in many of the African countries appears quite questionable. Trophy hunting (the selective hunting of wild game animals) is a practiced conservation policy in many African regions. There are both supporters and critics of this policy.

The former propagate the fact that controlled trophy hunting provides the economic incentive to the locals and the government to conserve the wildlife and increase the number of species to maintain a sizeable population for hunting. They believe it diverts people from indulging in poaching and agricultural activites since the economies there thrive on trophy hunting. The figures look quite promising too. According to studies by the pro-hunting lobby, in 2008, hunting tourism in 23 African countries together yielded a whopping 200 million USD. This huge revenue is the basic fact on which wildlife conservation and trophy hunting have been linked to each other in a beneficial manner.

The anti-hunting lobby believes the situation is not as ideal as it looks.
Considering anti-trophy hunting reports, I will enumerate the possible adverse effects of trophy hunting on conservation based on three major critical aspects :



The biological aspect : A lobby of scientists consider trophy hunting is genetically draining. Several scientific reports claim that this practice of hunting is encouraging reverse evolution. It is easy to comprehend. Nature always selects for the strongest and fittest. The weaker individuals in a species are eliminated by natural selection. However, humans are interfering with the laws of nature. Trophy hunters always cherish a dream of displaying the best possible trophy in their living room. That means the strongest and the most magnificent animal needs to be hunted. Thus, they are eliminating the best genes of the population by killing the fittest animals. The gene pool is now comprised of the weaker genes and contrary to nature’s ways the weakest animals are surviving. In the long term a population susceptible to various stress factors are produced resulting in gradual annihilation of the species.

The practice of trophy hunting is also disturbing the entire social structure of lion families. The trophy hunters often kill the dominant male of a pride leaving the cubs susceptible to be killed by invading younger males. This happens in nature at low frequencies but trophy hunters probably speed up the process and this leads to lowering of lion populations.

Unregulated canned hunting is worse. Here animals are allowed to run in large enclosures and tracked down and shot by hunters. These animals are usually bred in captivity. Reports indicate that wild cubs are often kidnapped from their mothers and brought to breeding centres from where starts their continuous exploitation till death. When young, these fluffy, sweet looking cubs are used to allure tourists to play with them. Little do the tourists understand their activities are only bringing intense suffering to the lions. When juvenile or sub-adults, the cubs are stowed away in crampy cages and sold to the canned hunting market for killing.

Economic aspect : We all aware of economic status of Africa. According to the United Nations Human Development Report in 2003, the bottom 25 ranked nations (151st to 175th) were all African. The African natives are largely illiterate, poverty-stricken and extremely vulnerable to exploitation. Trophy hunt businessmen propagate the fact that the revenue generated from this industry is supporting the down-trodden in the economically poor countries of Africa. However, there seems to be no concrete evidence attesting to this fact.

On the contrary, a new study commissioned by The Humane Society of the United States, Humane Society International and Born Free USA/Born Free Foundation, reveals that rural African communities derive negligible benefit from trophy hunting. Only 3% of the money generated from this industry actually reaches the natives in whose homeland the trophy hunting business thrives. So, the argument that trophy hunting sustains the native people and encourages them to conserve animals seems to hold no ground in the presence of current statistics.

Moral aspects : “Killing is conserving “ is the message we will be handing over to our future generations if we support trophy hunting. First we kill and endanger wildlife and then we kill again to conserve them. Do we really not have any alternatives? There are people in the field  sacrificing their own lives to save the animals from poachers. Is it necessary to kill lions for conservation?

In India, where trophy hunting is not encouraged, conservation efforts have yielded favorible results. A 27% increase in the Asiatic Lion population has occurred in the last five years in the Gir forest of Gujarat. Here local economy thrives on wildlife tourism and lions are shot by cameras and not guns.

 I would like to end with this quote

Hunting is not a sport. In a sport, both sides should know they're in the game. ~Paul Rodriguez -

Writer :
Dr. Oishimaya Sen Nag

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