Hunting season hit by Cecil the Lion’s death
ZIMBABWE’S hunters have lost at least 70 percent of their business since Cecil the Lion was shot last year. According to some wildlife operators, bookings for this year’s season, which closes in a few weeks, were “pathetic” as hunters, mainly from the US, UK and EU, stayed away.
They blame the media storm which erupted after Cecil the Lion was wounded with an arrow and killed by an American dentist. Revenue from hunting provides Zimbabwe’s Parks and Wildlife Management Authority with 80 percent of its funds to protect wildlife and run the parks. The country has more wildlife then most African countries.
Hunter Langton Masunda from the Gwayi area, southern Zimbabwe, said the season which began in March was the worst ever.
“A lot of falsehoods were peddled in the aftermath of the death of Cecil and animal activists put a lot of effort into trying to put a stop to hunting.
“The negative publicity and the unfair treatment of the dentist in the whole saga led other international clients to adopt a wait-and-see attitude,” he told journalists in Zimbabwe’s second city, Bulawayo.
An old but magnificent looking black-maned lion named after Cecil Rhodes was shot at night with a bow and arrow by Minnesota dentist Walter Palmer in July last year.
Palmer and the Zimbabweans who arranged the hunt returned early the next morning morning as they suspected Cecil was wounded, and Palmer then shot him dead outside the boundary of the Hwange National Park.
Cecil was wearing a blue GPS tracking collar as he and other lions in the park are monitored by an Oxford University team of researchers. The loss of contact with Cecil sparked alarm among the researchers and safari operators who said Cecil was a popular lion who was also more friendly then many others in the area.
Oxford’s researchers released magnificent photographs of Cecil which went around the world for weeks with one beamed on to the Empire State Building in New York.
When the news of Cecil’s death broke, animal activists camped outside Palmer’s surgery and he could not go to work for several weeks.
Eventually, Zimbabwe said Palmer had broken no law when he shot Cecil, for which he paid more than R900 000.
The state said last week it is not contesting evidence from Theo Bronkhorst, the Zimbabwe hunter who was arrested and then charged with arranging an “illegal” hunt for Palmer.
Emmanuel Fundira, chair- person of the Safari Operators Association of Zimbabwe, said the Cecil “incident” had “pro and negative” consequences.
“It is true that potential clients are taking a more conservative approach as they do not want to get into any of that publicity which emerged around Cecil, and memories of that are still too fresh for some to come and hunt in Zimbabwe. So, yes, the hunters are having a difficult time.
“But there was one client who has offered us a ridiculous amount of money to come and shoot Jericho, Cecil’s brother.”
Fundira said he was worried about the loss of income from hunting: “We can do almost nothing to protect wildlife without revenue from hunting,” he said.
Another hunter from Bulawayo, who asked not to be named, said: “Cecil was a curse on us. We have had a pathetic year. I wonder if we will ever recover, and the shrinking wildlife areas are so overpopulated with lions and elephants.”
He said that on one conservancy lions recently captured and ate two baby rhinos, an endangered species poached by sophisticated gangs who sell their horns in Vietnam.