IS KILLING MUFASA SAVINIG SIMBA 2
Running head: IS KILLING MUFASA SAVING SIMBA? 2
Is Killing Mufasa Saving Simba? Trophy Hunting in Africa
Student Name
Clover Park Technical College
Abstract
Trophy hunting in Africa is an age-old sport that has become a topic of great debate over the last few decades. These sport hunts have been a major source of income for conservation groups around Africa funding programs that would otherwise be cancelled due to budget cuts and lack of government funding. Trophy hunting is a huge contributing factor to conservation of African wildlife and in the fight against illegal poaching of protected species.
Killing an animal and hanging the dead and lifeless head on your wall has been one of humanities biggest guilty pleasures since the Victorian era. Many people agree that this particular time in our history was the beginning of the end for most species of animals, especially those that have long inhabited the plains of Africa. These hunts along with poaching and significant loss of habitat are causing these species of animals to become endangered one by one, yet trophy hunting in Africa still exists. Even though its heavily criticized by every animal rights group and most first world countries, this sport killing of Africa’s wildlife is the best shot we have at saving them. Trophy hunting is saving and preserving the wilderness of Africa.
The biggest problem for any conservation group in the world is funding. Funding is essential to keep facilities and national parks staffed, guarded, and maintained by the governments that run them. Unlike hunting in the United States, African hunting is an extremely expensive sport that is used to help fund these conservation programs. Lindsey (2012) writes “Trophy hunting generates $380-400,000 for Niassa National Reserve, almost 20% of the total funds required to maintain the 42,000 square kilometer protected area”. Unfortunately, money from the local government isn’t reliable due to the corruption that most African countries have.
Trophy hunting is often portrayed as the bad guy when it comes to the idea of conservation, when the biggest threat to African wildlife is poachers. African countries that have well-regulated hunting programs have seen that the number of animals killed by legal sport hunters is under 10% of those killed by poaching (Holechek & Valdez, 2012). Not only do trophy hunts provided income for the conservation groups, but the hunting companies themselves privately maintain infrastructure, such as roads, building, exc. These companies also provided privately funded anti-poaching efforts throughout Africa (Brink, Smith, Skinner & Williams, 2016). Trophy hunting isn’t the cause of the decline of wildlife, in fact the effects of illegal poaching far outweigh the effects of the hunters.
Holechek (2012) explains “Trophy hunting for recreation in an important wildlife conservation tool because it gives wildlife value while leaving a relatively small footprint”. Loss of habitat is an almost unavoidable problem as the population of humans increase. African landowners have in the past used their lands for businesses such as farming, cattle, and lumber as a means to make money. What trophy hunting has done is create incentive for these landowners to lease out their lands to conservation groups for activities such as hunting for profit. This practice has helped significantly in increasing both the habitats for wildlife and the economy of the local peoples by providing employment and money flow. Another often overlooked outcome of this is tourism. With travel being easier than ever, these privately-owned nature preserves, that are funded by hunter, have become an entirely new business in the form of African safaris for people wanting to see animals such as lions and elephants in their natural habitat. Lions have long been considered a nuisance due to them killing livestock and even people, but now they are even more valuable than the cattle they once killed. With all of those factors coming into play, a larger effort to reduce poaching has occurred in order to protect this new “cash crop” of Africa.
Trophy hunting is widely accepted as an inhuman and barbaric recreation carried over from a time where people didn’t care about the consequences of their actions. Growing up as a hunter I was always taught that you never kill just to kill, you hunt to bring food to the table and to always respect wildlife in any possible way. Trophy hunting isn’t the enemy of African wildlife, poaching is, and right now the best shot that these conservation groups have at protecting these animals is allowing hunters to hunt. Well regulated hunting has shown that it can be very beneficial to African wildlife.
Wildlife has become one of Africa’s major industries over the past few decades. Due to this industry the conservation of wildlife is now larger than ever, but this industry is constantly threated by lack of funding and illegal poaching. Trophy hunting has become a huge source of funding for these conservation groups that would otherwise go unfunded. Poachers will always be a threat to wildlife, there’s no way to avoid this, but trophy hunters provided a means to protect these animals by using privately funded anti-poaching programs and incentivizing landowners to protect wildlife. These problems will never go away and taking away trophy hunts will only further hurt the successes that conservation groups have worked for.
References
Brink, H., Smith, R. J., Skinner, K., & Leader-Williams, N. (2016). Sustainability and long term-tenure: Lion trophy hunting in tanzania. PLoS One, 11(9) doi:http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0162610
Holechek, J., & Valdez, R. (2018). Wildlife conservation on the rangelands of eastern and southern africa: Past, present, and future. Rangeland Ecology and Management, 71(2), 245-258. doi:http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.rama.2017.10.005
Lindsey, P. A., Balme, G. A., Booth, V. R., & Midlane, N. (2012). The Significance of African Lions for the Financial Viability of Trophy Hunting and the Maintenance of Wild Land. PLoS ONE, 7(1), 1–10. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0029332