Trophy hunting

‘Trophy hunting is utterly hypocritical,’ says Dr

Paula Kahumbu, chief executive of Wildlife Direct, a conservation non-profit based in the US and Kenya. ‘It’s steeped in colonial history. If local people hunt animals they do it for food, not for pleasure.’

Nevertheless, advocates of trophy hunting say it can be a legitimate form of wildlife management.

‘I know there are always examples of totally unacceptable hunting, and people quite rightly think that a trophy hunter standing on top of a kill is gruesome, but it is a really complex story,’ says Dr Dilys Roe, chair of the Species Survival Commission of the World Conservation Union (IUCN). She points to the Bubye Valley Conservancy in Zimbabwe, as an example of trophy hunting that makes a positive long-term difference. The conservancy covers 375,000 hectares and 25 years ago it was home to cattle and working farms. Then it was bought out and converted into a private reservation funded entirely by trophy hunting. Wildlife including lions, cheetah, elephants and giraffe were introduced and rhino translocated. Visitors pay US$3,000 to shoot a strictly controlled number of lions. The lion population in Bubye valley has risen from 17 to 500. The black rhinos generate no income – they are not hunted and there is no photographic tourism – and yet cost well over $1million a year to protect from poachers. ‘Where does that money come from? Trophy hunting. Not many tourists would cough up that kind of money,’ says Roe.

‘If decisions to ban or restrict trophy hunting are taken, there is a need to identify and implement in advance viable alternative long-term sources of livelihood.’

Roe acknowledges the inherent practical problems that bedevil hunting. ‘More needs to be done to professionalise hunting – professional hunters recognise this and they despair when they see trophy hunters standing on top of their kill.’

Yet the charity Born Free counters that trophy hunters rarely target problem, infirm or old animals. ‘Hunters want the most charismatic stag as a trophy, the supertusker elephant, the lion with the most striking mane. Important individuals get taken out. That can then lead to altered behaviour among the animals and to more conflict with humans,’ says Mark Jones, head of policy at the charity. ‘Often local people oppose it but are unable to prevent it because of vested local interests – because some people get a cut of the trophy fee.’