The ethics of trophy hunting - could shooting lions actually save them from extinction?

Anyone who eats meat but takes offence at a lion or giraffe being stalked and killed is a raging hypocrite, and the trophy hunting industry in Africa is actually good, not bad, for the conservation of animals.

That’s the message from those defending the sport, one which seems particularly poignant today on World Lion Day, and only a few months after photos of an American hunter posing jubilantly with the body of a black giraffe she’d killed in South Africa went viral triggering a bitter online backlash.

The giraffe was shot legally, by a woman whose enjoyment of it is hard for most of us to understand - resulting in something of a dilemma. Why is the hunting of some animals (birds, deer) vilified so much less than others (lions, giraffes)? Why do meat-eaters turn a blind eye to the horrors of factory farming, but spew fury over the death of an animal that’s spent its life in the wild. Is it merely because lions are better-looking than pigs? Or, more obviously, because lions (and now giraffes) are endangered, and pigs are in abundance.

The real question, though, is whether the (largely unpopular) notion from some that trophy hunting - not canned hunting, an entirely different matter - is actually good, not bad, for the fate of endangered safari animals. 

Two controversial killings

Tess Thompson Talley, the aforementioned 37-year-old woman from Kentucky who posed with her giraffe conquest, was branded “broken and soulless” by musician Moby, “disgusting, vile, amoral” by actress Debra Messing, and an unprintable expletive by comedian Ricky Gervais.

When Talley first posted the image last year on Facebook (she later deleted it), the caption read: “Prayers for my once in a lifetime dream hunt came true today! Spotted this rare black giraffe bull and stalked him for quite a while.”

It drudged up memories of Cecil the lion, who was hunted and killed with a crossbow by 55-year-old American dentist Walter James Palmer at Zimbabwe’s Hwange National Park in 2015, sparking a similar public outcry. Palmer was the subject of so many threats that he was forced to abandon his dental practice for several weeks and take his family into hiding.

After learning that Cecil had in fact been the park’s most famed and widely-admired lion, Palmer defended the killing, telling the Minneapolis Star Tribune: "If I had known this lion had a name and was important to the country or a study obviously I wouldn't have taken it."

As for Talley, she told CBS News that the giraffe was "beyond breeding age, yet had killed three younger bulls” explaining, “now that the giraffe is gone, the younger bulls are able to breed".

She added: "This is called conservation through game management. The numbers of this sub-species is actually increasing due, in part, to hunters and conservation efforts paid for in large part by big game hunting. The breed is not rare in any way other than it was very old. Giraffes get darker with age."

The profile of an average trophy hunter

Big game hunting is legal in South Africa, where the industry and related tourism brings in $2bn (￡1.57bn) annually, according to the BBC. Hunters typically pay thousands of dollars to hunt a variety of animals, usually over the course of several days, and kill them with the assistance of local guides. The carcasses are generally used for meat, with their heads preserved as a trophy.

A market analysis conducted by Trees (Tourist Research in Economic Environs and Society) in association with the North-West University, having surveyed more than 500 trophy hunters between 2013 and 2016, revealed the following insights.

Ninety-seven percent of the hunters were male, with an average age of 61. Eighty-five per cent were married, versus six per cent single, and 71 per cent either held a diploma or postgraduate degree. An overwhelming 86 per cent were American, six per cent were Canadian, and one per cent were from the UK. Another one per cent were Australian, and another one per cent, Danish.

On average, respondents stayed at their hunting lodge between 11 and 12 days and the total average spend (not including the cost of the animal itself) was $14,859 (￡11,640) for the 2016 season, up from $6,051 (￡4,740) in 2013 - a substantial rise. These costs included flights to South Africa, food, ammunition, licenses and permits, and trophy shipping fees.

Hunters can choose from a wide range of animals to kill. An impala, for example, costs an average of ￡185, accounting for ten per cent of those hunted; a giraffe costs ￡1,715; a hyena ￡4,113; and a buffalo ￡559. Lions only made up one per cent of species hunted, costing an average of ￡7,662, while elephants made up 0.21 per cent and cost ￡11,248; and four leopards were killed that season, costing an average of ￡23,895 each.

Most popular trophies | Species hunted in South Africa 2015-16

A majority of the hunters polled, interestingly, had not considered choosing a lion - 73 per cent, as opposed to 27 per cent who had considered it, but there was a two per cent increase in those who’d be willing between 2013 and 2016. Those who indicated that they wouldn’t hunt a lion gave reasons including “I do not like the idea” and “one should not hunt top predators”.

The largest group of respondents (44 per cent) had collected between one and ten trophies during their hunting career, followed by 30 per cent who’d collected between 11 and 20, and 16 per cent who’d taken home between 21 and 30 trophies.

Asked why they’d chosen South Africa as a hunting destination, most respondents reasoned that it was affordable, with good “animal availability”. The majority (72 per cent) preferred to stalk their prey, rather than shoot from a vehicle (19 per cent). Eighty per cent said they’d return.

Your average trophy hunter therefore, based on these statistics, is a wealthy American male who targets game rather than lions. Those that do choose lions and giraffe, of course, are the ones to make the news.

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Can trophy hunting be good for conservation?

Those who argue yes do so on the basis that trophy hunting, as we’ve seen, brings in huge revenue that goes back into protecting and maintaining both the land and the animal populations. Better to have controlled hunting, which must sustain itself to survive, than illegal poaching, which diminishes populations, they say.

Kenya, for example, banned hunting in 1977, but over the past 20 years has seen a decline in wildlife of nearly 70 per cent, according to a 2016 study by the Directorate of Resource Surveys and Remote Sensing, the International Livestock Research Institute and the University of Nairobi.

Botswana banned trophy hunting in 2014, and one of the undesirable effects was that some native hunters who had until then earned their livelihood tracking animals for the purposes of trophy hunting felt they had little choice but to start working for poachers instead.

So how might hunting help turn things around? The International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) Species Survival Commission (SSC), states: “Well-managed trophy hunting can provide both revenue and incentives for people to conserve and restore wild populations, maintain areas of land for conservation, and protect wildlife from poaching.”

Amy Dickman, director of Tanzania's Ruaha Carnivore Project, part of Oxford University's WildCRU, wrote for CNN: “I am a lifelong animal lover and vegetarian for whom the idea of killing animals for fun is repellent. However, I am fearful that impulsive and emotional responses to trophy hunting - no matter how well-meaning - could in fact intensify the decline of species such as lions.”

She went on to acknowledge that the number of lions in Africa has halved in 20 years but that trophy hunting was not the culprit, writing: “In reality, the key issues are loss of habitat, prey loss from bushmeat poaching and conflict with local people.”

According to an oft-quoted study from 2006, private hunting operations in Africa control more than 540,000 square miles of land, which is 22 per cent more than is protected by national parks.

Of course, there are “responsible” hunting operations, which carefully manage quotas so that younger, breeding-age animals aren’t taken out of the population, and there are corrupt hunting operations, which care only about profit.

A case for trophy hunting | By Richard Holmes, of Richard Holmes Safaris

What’s the position from anti-trophy hunters?

First, South African safaris that don't support, allow or facilitate trophy hunting bring in an enormous amount of revenue themselves. The most high-end lodges, Ulusaba, Singita, Londolozi among them, charge more than ￡1,000 per night, per person, for a stay in their finest suites, and guests flood in all year round. Therefore these lodges, too have a financial incentive to protect the animals on their land - arguably a more sustainable one.

Secondly, a lion residing on a reserve where they are protected from hunting can be admired and photographed countless times over the natural course of its life. A lion in a hunting reserve can only be shot once.

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Thirdly, trophy-hunting can - some argue - provide a smokescreen for poaching and corruption. According to a report from Save African Animals: "Hunters prize rare trophies. To get them, many pay bribes to exceed the hunting quota, shoot the wrong species, age or gender, to use illegal methods or to hunt without a permit."

Then there's the assertion that the exorbitant fees paid by trophy hunters simply don't end up in the right hands. Biologist Dr. Naomi Rose told The Humane Society of the United States, “Regarding the statement that trophy hunters do a lot for conservation, it’s true that some portion of some hunters’ fees goes to conservation in some countries, but it’s rarely the major source of conservation funding. Usually middlemen - commercial outfitters - take the lion’s share of sport hunting proceeds and local communities and conservation and management agencies get the dregs.”

A case against trophy hunting | Dr Mark Jones, Associate Director at Born Free

Finally, of course, the idea of shooting a beautiful safari animal simply feels abhorrent to most of us, who, given a gun and told to shoot a zebra (which are in plentiful supply) would refuse point blank. But if this is you, and you eat bacon, you’re paying someone else to do it for you, albeit it a pig - but an animal of far superior intelligence born into a farm, not the wilds of an African safari. Whatever your views on trophy hunting, it’s a fact amid this debate that simply can’t be ignored.

My view, having just returned from a week on an African safari? I’m a wildlife-loving vegetarian who, as a general rule, prefers animals to people. Lions are bold, magnificent, enthralling animals and seeing them in the wild was nothing short of magical. As I watched a young female slink past our safari vehicle, I tried my best to climb into the mind of someone who would gain pleasure from executing her and found it to be impossible, disgusting even.

No-one can seem to agree on the statistics regarding whether or not trophy hunting is helping to raise, not lower the numbers of Africa’s endangered animals - it’s an incredibly complex issue. But if  someone were to prove to me, beyond reasonable doubt, that allowing rich Americans to pick off a limited number of lions in the name of fun was the only way to save the entire population from extinction, I’d have to grit my teeth and stand by it.

Let’s just hope that non-hunting safaris win out, conservation organisations succeed, and it never comes to that.

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