Trophy Hunting

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Peter Betts
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Re: Trophy Hunting

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SPOT on Article..Trophy Hunting is a Myth as a Conservation tool and we all fall for it


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Not all O**


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Re: Trophy Hunting

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Big-game hunting group ‘using influence on conservation watchdogs to undermine protections for endangered animals’

BY JANE DALTON - 2 JUNE 2019 - THE INDEPENDENT

Exclusive: Organisation has been heavily involved in Cites and IUCN for up to 20 years, winning campaigns to allow African lions and other species to still be killed.

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Trophy hunters, often from the US, pay large sums of money to shoot wildlife in Africa ( Getty)

A hunting group that says members are conservationists has wielded excessive influence over the world’s key wildlife watchdogs, Cites and the IUCN, a report claims.

Conservation Force (CF), which is run by a veteran hunter who once said “nothing else in life is more satisfying than an elephant hunt”, has argued successfully for protections for endangered species to be rolled back and has blocked measures that would curb “sport hunting”, the Campaign to Ban Trophy Hunting says.

CF members, who are opposing moves to protect threatened giraffes under US law, fought and won a drive against giving African lions the highest level of protection, according to the report seen by The Independent.

The document claims CF also drafted a resolution for Cites applying hunting quotas, so “enshrining trophy hunting as an acceptable activity in the case of threatened species”.

The organisation is believed to have been involved for about two decades in the International Union for Conservation of Nature and the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora, which aims to ensure trade in animals and plants does not threaten their survival.

Trophy-hunt opponents say the species most popular with hunters are declining rapidly and are now so vulnerable that any killing may mean irreversible declines.

CF’s own website highlights how:

· In the 1990s it led a campaign for importation of polar bear trophies;

· It has lobbied for the importation of cheetah trophies into the US;

· The organisation lobbied for a US big-game hunter demanding trophies from endangered lions in Tanzania be allowed into the country;

· In 1992, it won a lawsuit that reopened elephant trophy imports from South Africa, Namibia, Tanzania, Ethiopia and Cameroon; and

· In 2016, when US environmentalists called on the government to reclassify African leopards as endangered, preventing importation of their parts, CF opposed the plan.

The group has official observer status at Cites, and last year two of its documents were submitted to Cites’ Animals Committee at the hunting organisation’s request.

“The Surprising Benefits of Lion Safari Hunting” stated: “The benefits of tourist safari hunting counter the foremost threats to lion”, while “Benefits of Regulated Hunting for Leopard” argued that regulated hunting of leopards benefited the species by reducing threats such as habitat loss.

The organisation has filed more than a dozen challenges to the US Endangered Species Act, demanding the conservation status of wildlife be downgraded to make it easier for hunters to kill and bring animal trophies home, the Campaign to Ban Trophy Hunting (CBTH) says.

Members also sued Delta Airlines for refusing to carry hunting trophies, and sued the state of New Jersey for refusing to allow hunting trophies through its ports.

While poaching is illegal, trophy hunting – where gun owners bring home a wild animal or body parts, such as the head, paws or tail – is allowed by Cites.

Since the 1980s Cites has issued permits for the import of trophies from animals including hippopotamus, bears, leopards, zebras, and lions.

The CBTH says large numbers of primates – including various species of baboon and monkey – have also been killed.

“The loss of a single male lion or bull elephant can mean the loss of vital genetic resources that can put an entire local population at risk, impacting the species’ viability as a whole,” campaigners say.

CF’s website sets out successes against proposed curbs on trophy hunting and imports, including a lawsuit that re-established hunting import permits for Zambian elephants.

CF founder John Jackson III told National Geographic in 2014 that elephant hunting was “the most intimate, real relationship one can have with elephant. Nothing else in life is more satisfying than an elephant hunt.”

He is “credited by hunters with having prevented the African elephant from being listed as endangered”, according to both the report and CF itself.

Terry Pierson, of the International Professional Hunters Association, said: “IPHA’s thanks must also go out to John and the Conservation Force for keeping an eye on our welfare as far as Cites and all things of governmental nature is concerned. Without his constant diligence the future of our industry could be changed dramatically.”

In the past the group has been on a review committee of Cites, which it has campaigned to reform.

CF has been “heavily involved in IUCN over the past 15 years. Three CF board members have been on the African lion working group,” according to the CBTH paper, which added: “They have planned, co-authored and presented primary papers at African lion workshops.”

Members are also on various IUCN specialist groups, the report says.

According to CF’s website, its purpose is “to expand and secure conservation of wildlife, wild places and our outdoor way of life”.

Eduardo Goncalves, of the CBTH, said: “How does any of this equate with conservation? There are serious questions to be answered by Cites and IUCN about how trophy hunting interests have been allowed to work their way into the heart of decision-making processes.

“We’re facing a global extinction emergency with up to a million species under threat. They include some of the hunting world’s favourite targets. Thanks to the industry’s lobbying efforts a cruel colonial pastime is compounding the crisis facing endangered animals.”

An IUCN spokeswoman said the organisation was globally regarded as an impartial supporter of wildlife conservation and denied that Conservation Force, one of IUCN’s 1,376 members, had disproportionately any more influence than others.

“IUCN also has anti-trophy hunting organisations among its membership. IUCN commissions, including specialist groups of the Species Survival Commission, accept members on the basis of their individual experience and expertise, not as representatives of an organisation,” she said.

“IUCN firmly believes that sustainable use of wildlife – of which regulated hunting is one form – is a key component of sound and effective conservation, as outlined in IUCN’s Policy Statement on Sustainable Use of Wild Living Resources, adopted by IUCN Members in 2000.

“This is aligned with the UN Convention on Biological Diversity which has three key pillars: conservation, sustainable use, and equitable benefit sharing.”

Referring to IUCN’s briefing paper on the subject, she added: “Well-regulated trophy hunting – while it may be ethically unacceptable to some – is not a major threat to any species. The IUCN Red List of Threatened Species clearly shows that the major threats to the species that are of concern to anti-hunting groups are loss of habitat, loss of prey, and retaliatory killing.

“Yes, trophy hunting is badly run in some sites by some unscrupulous individuals and has caused problems. We need to root out these problems and improve the industry, but trying to ‘demonise’ hunting diverts much needed attention from real conservation problems.”

The Independent also asked Conservation Force and Cites to comment but has received no response.

Read original article:
https://www.independent.co.uk/environme ... 37491.html


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Re: Trophy Hunting

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0*\


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So go and moan to the lawmakers then? 0-


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Re: Trophy Hunting

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Trophy hunting is an essential brick in the wall of sound African conservation practice

Opinionista • Jason Roussos • 9 June 2019

There is huge pressure from lobby groups in developed nations to ban trophy hunting in Africa. Would the outcry be the same if farmers in the UK had to deal with man-eating crocodiles in their rivers, marauding lions around their cattle farms, and elephants killing people and destroying their crops?

Unless you have been to Africa and ventured beyond the well-travelled roads and comfortable accommodations found in many of the continent’s great national parks, you will never understand the real reason why Africa’s precious wildlife is in such peril.

You will never see first-hand what poor rural Africans must deal with just to survive on a day-to-day basis, often in direct conflict and competition with wildlife.

You will never understand the persecution that African wildlife is facing at the hands of illegal poachers.

But above all, you will never see how much habitat is being destroyed every day to sustain the booming human population.

There is absolutely no doubt that the future of African wildlife is bleak. Habitat loss threatens to destroy all forms of biodiversity, while unselective and indiscriminate illegal poaching adds to it.

Only a coordinated effort that incorporates a diversity of scientifically sound management practices will reap long-term solutions. There is no one “fix-all” strategy for conserving African wildlife. The only way to achieve success is to implement multiple conservation and management practices that work together for one common goal – the continued survival of wildlife, and habitat protection.

No matter how distasteful certain practices or techniques may be to some individuals or organisations, if they achieve conservation success then they cannot be shunned. How successful a conservation effort is in an area must be judged not by the survival of individual animals but rather by the species’ overall population trend. If over time some animals are killed, but the overall population of a species in that area remains stable or increases, then that conservation practice must be deemed successful.

Conservation must be viewed as a brick wall where each brick represents a different management technique or practice. Hunting, photographic safaris, game breeding, and zoos that educate visitors about wildlife are all examples of the various “bricks” in the conservation wall. Any time a brick is removed, it compromises the overall stability of the wall.

Unless both non-consumptive management (where wildlife is not killed) and consumptive management (where wildlife is killed) are utilised side-by-side, conservation will never reach its full potential. Areas such as national parks are set aside for non-consumptive use and are safeguarded from a national level specifically to protect wildlife and wildlife habitat. As the cornerstone of the conservation wall, African national parks play a critical role in conservation. Nonetheless, national parks cover only a fraction of the landmass where wildlife exists in Africa.

In fact, in many African countries it is the areas outside these nationally protected lands that harbour more wildlife – not by density, but by total count. In Tanzania, for example, only 7% of the country’s land mass is allocated to national parks, whereas hunting areas make up 32%, thus harbouring a much greater wildlife population.

The countries that have adopted and implemented a multiple-use approach to wildlife management are the ones that have best succeeded at conserving their wildlife resources. Namibia is a prime example of how a country that utilises both consumptive and non-consumptive wildlife management has seen its wildlife numbers increase in recent years.

Kenya, on the other hand, only utilises non-consumptive management practices and has seen wildlife numbers outside protected areas plummet over the same time-frame.

Globally, the country that manages its wildlife resources in the most successful and scientifically-sound manner is the United States, where multiple-use is the fundamental driving force behind that success.

Over the past few years, African nations that utilise multiple-use conservation practices, especially with high-profile species like lion and elephant, have been specifically targeted because of their use of trophy hunting as a consumptive management tool. Trophy hunting is one of the many types of consumptive management practices that occur in a multi-use system.

Other consumptive management practices include meat hunting, trapping, and culling. People who hunt for subsistence or for meat are not facing the same backlash as trophy hunters, who are portrayed as killing for “sport” or “fun”, and for people who do not fully understand the critical role it plays, this understandably stirs up very strong emotions against the practice. However, what is most relevant when discussing trophy hunting and its role in conservation should be its final outcome on wildlife populations.

Trophy hunting is utilised when it is necessary to have a minimal biological impact on the overall wildlife population, while at the same time maximising the money generated to conserve that species. The only way to achieve this is to selectively harvest only old males, many of which are far past their reproductive prime, while charging top dollar to do so.

Meat hunters, on the other hand, do not pay large amounts of money to shoot an animal and are far less selective than trophy hunters when harvesting an animal. The reality is that meat hunters often harvest females as well as younger animals. This is perfectly acceptable in circumstances where a wildlife population needs to be controlled or reduced.

Trophy hunting, however, is utilised when dealing with a wildlife population that managers are trying to increase, hence the need to generate large amounts of money for conservation efforts while at the same time only affecting a species’ overall population by a negligible amount.

With all the recent hype surrounding trophy hunting, the most important conservation consideration to discuss has unfortunately been sidelined by a torrent of emotionally-charged rhetoric from both sides. That consideration should be the final outcome that trophy hunting has on a population in an area and what happens to that wildlife population and its habitat when trophy hunting is stopped.

In 1993, for example, elephant hunting in Ethiopia was prohibited. The tropical rain forests of the Gurafarda region harboured about 3,000 elephants of which between 10 and 15 were harvested a year. Within the 10 years following the ban there was no rain forest left in the area, let alone any elephants, as is the case today. This scenario would, unfortunately, be the outcome for most African hunting areas following a total ban on hunting or trophy importation.

Critical to the whole trophy hunting debate is to discuss what alternative management practice would be implemented to replace the conservation and financial void that would arise if trophy hunting was stopped. Only in very rare circumstances would non-consumptive tourism be able to replace the money spent by trophy hunters, since most hunting areas cannot compete with national parks when it comes to accessibility, infrastructure, and wildlife density. As a result, they are far less attractive for photographic tourists.

The reality is that following a hunting or trophy importation ban, most hunting areas would be left abandoned with no form of protection or wildlife and habitat management in place. This is an outcome that nobody, hunters or anti-hunters alike, would want.

I would urge everyone who is involved in the trophy hunting debate to look past their initial emotions stirred up by the fact someone is legally and intentionally killing African wildlife, and instead focus on the critical conservation brick that is filled by this practice. If trophy hunting is stopped throughout Africa, wildlife will still survive in national parks and other highly-protected areas. However, in the areas outside of these places it would be ravaged. The question should be as simple as: “Is that a good result for conservation or not?”

Finally, I would challenge anyone who does not live in rural Africa and does not have to deal with dangerous wildlife on a day-by-day basis to refrain from making decisions that restrict what Africans can and cannot do with their own wildlife.

Imagine if the populace of Great Britain, or any other densely-populated developed nation, had to deal with man-eating Nile crocodiles in their rivers, hungry lions around their cattle farms, and elephants that harass and trample people while knocking down trees and ravaging farms throughout the countryside. Now imagine, on top of all of this, the government being told by foreign nations that they were not allowed to manage, utilise and fully benefit from their wildlife in the ways they deemed fit, not only for the species but also for their citizens.

The outlook of how to manage these species in those countries would be changed dramatically.

Wildlife is a renewable resource that needs to be properly managed in our increasingly-crowded world. If any conservation practice that is proven to work in certain areas is stopped, then we have all failed at doing our part to protect our planet’s wildlife, and another valuable brick has been lost from the conservation wall.

Jason Roussos is President of the African Professional Hunters’ Association.


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Re: Trophy Hunting

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What else can you expect from the President of the African Professional Hunters’ Association O**

I hope for him, that he shoots better than he writes ( nothing to do with the opinion expressed ;-) )


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Good article! \O


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Re: Trophy Hunting

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Trophy hunting ‘imperial’ and ‘unsustainable’

BY ROSS HARVEY - 20TH JUNE - THE ECOLOGIST.ORG

Trophy hunting elephants has negative consequences for conservation and local communities.

A colonial attitude remains pervasive among those who defend the trophy hunting of elephants. They argue that ‘the west’ must stop lecturing Africans about how to manage their elephants.

But it was Western hunters who shot elephants out to the point where they had to establish reserves, dispossessing and crowding out local communities in the process.

Fortress conservation and green militarisation are direct functions of these past colonial activities that created a ‘white hunter/black poacher’ narrative.

Imperial saviours

A major part of the reason that local communities are so upset at being excluded from national parks has much to do with how they were established in the first place – largely by colonial authorities creating hunting playgrounds.

Public relations efforts to paint western trophy hunters as the imperial saviours of poor African communities are therefore difficult to countenance. As with colonialism and slavery, the hunting of elephants for sport will eventually be abolished.

The hunting of elephants for sport is morally dubitable, with hunters arguing that they kill the animals they love for the sake of conservation. In reality, the conservation value of hunting is being questioned, and its direct revenue contributions are rapidly declining.

The ostensible indirect benefit through monetary and bushmeat contributions to communities remains questionable in light of governance concerns.

Woodlands

Botswana, which has a growing elephant poaching problem, reintroduced hunting on the premise that an exploding elephant population had exceeded its carrying capacity. But even Ron Thomson, having defended hunting his entire career, agrees that hunting is not a population-control method and “will have no ecological impact whatsoever on the elephant over-population problem that certainly exists.”

He argues that elephant management in Botswana has nothing to do with hunting or poltics but everything to do with establishing a “management solution to a population of elephants that is very obviously grossly in excess of its habitat’s sustainable carrying capacity.’”

Thomson cites no science in support of his view that carrying capacity has been exceeded. Conversely, 24 scientists contributed to: The Return of the Giants: Ecological Effects of an Increasing Elephant Population, published in Ambio, a scientific journal, in 2004.

The article states: “Much of the Chobe elephant problem has concerned the role of elephants in the disappearance of the riverine Acacia woodlands on the elevated alluvial plains along the Chobe River.

“As we have shown, these woodlands were probably a transient artefact, caused by artificially low densities of large herbivores following rinderpest and excessive hunting of elephants about 100 years ago, creating a window of opportunity for seedling establishment.

Carrying capacity

“Now that these woodlands have all but disappeared, their re-establishment would require drastic reductions in herbivore populations, including not only elephants, but also smaller browsers like impala.

“Our studies have confirmed that the ecosystem along the Chobe riverfront has changed profoundly since the 1960s, probably reverting towards a situation somewhat similar to the one before the excessive hunting of elephants and the rinderpest panzootic [a virus].

“There is, however, little evidence of a reduction in the carrying capacity for other large herbivores, in fact the dominating species of browsers, grazers and mixed feeders have increased in numbers concurrently with the elephants.

“We do not, however, see any ecological reason to artificially change the number of elephants in Chobe National Park, either through culling or opening new dry season ranges by providing extra water from boreholes.”

Habitat complexity

Further to this, 16 scientists co-authored a piece in Science Advances in 2015 that demonstrates that what pro-cullers refers to as ‘destruction’ is more appropriately understood as conversion: “African elephants convert woodland to shrubland, which indirectly improves the browse availability for impala and black rhinoceros.

“By damaging trees, African elephants facilitate increased structural habitat complexity benefiting lizard communities.

“Predation by large predators (for example, lions) on small ungulates is facilitated when African elephants open impenetrable thickets. African elephants are also great dispersers of seeds over long distances.”

Insisting on ‘carrying capacity’ as the primary factor to determine elephant population size betrays Thomson’s worldview that “there is nothing ‘natural’ about wildlife management”.

His view is that the natural order is there mainly to serve man. That attitude subverts the call to steward responsibly to one of mere domination.

Diversity protection

Thomson laments that “today, all over southern Africa, our national parks are being managed as ‘elephant sanctuaries’ – at great cost to biological diversity” and that we should all be ashamed of ourselves for having allowed this.

Thomson views culling as the only serious ‘management solution’. He is furious that “governments will not cull even the most excessive of elephant populations” and blames biological diversity destruction on this decision alone.

Against all science, reverting to the view that wildlife management is akin to managing an agricultural establishment, Thomson says the optimal carrying capacity in southern Africa is “in the vicinity of one elephant per 5km2”.

Therefore, Botswana on its own may be able to sustainably carry “infinitely less than 50,000”. And, of course, we shouldn’t fear because elephants in rejuvenating habitats will double their population every 10 years and have to be culled again.

His lust for culling on the altar of some utopian notion of species diversity protection is telling.

Gene depletion

Thomson endorses hunting because “it will provide many benefits to the local rural folk’, again emblematic of colonialist language. But he really believes in mass culling as the only sustainable solution.

Culling is deeply questionable on every level. Elephant populations in Africa are declining at the hands of poachers. Hunting will only amplify the negative effect of poaching, as it also targets large tuskers.

The removal of prime males from elephant families causes social havoc and gene depletion, and culling makes everything worse.

Added to this, culling actually creates a population problem rather than solving it. In the subsequent 20 years to the Kruger culling of 1994, the elephant population increased non-linearly from about 8000 to 15000 individuals and has continued to grow exponentially.

Perhaps it is most important for Thomson to understand that the culling of the past, much of it overseen by him, has caused irreparable damage to elephants and other species.

Unexpected consequences

It has been found that abilities to process information on social identity and age-related dominance are severely compromised among African elephants that experienced separation from family members and translocation decades previously.

Professor Don Ross writes: “For a number of years, southern African wildlife managers culled [elephant]herds to prevent over-population from threatening habitat sustainability.

“Typically culls would focus deliberately, though not exclusively, on older bulls who had already made substantial genetic contributions. In consequence, in two South African reserves in the 1990s young bulls were relocated to constitute new bachelor herds, without any older bulls to provide leadership.

“This had dramatic unexpected consequences. The young bulls displayed recurrent, atypical, lethal violence against rhinoceroses, and were occasionally observed forcing copulations with them.”

Thomson really should be aware of these studies that provide detail of the negative effects of culling and the loss of older bull males for elephant herd sociology.

Poaching epidemic

In the context of a poaching epidemic, it simply does not make sense to allow the trophy hunting of older bulls, let alone to cull.

Older bulls’ tusks grow exponentially larger towards the end of their lives and their musth cycles suppress the musth cycles of younger bulls and therefore prevent premature breeding and violent behaviour.

Large tuskers are in severe decline, and must be heavily protected from trophy hunting and poaching, as Dr Michelle Henley has noted.

Furthermore, trophy hunting of elephants, never mind culling, raises serious moral questions. Thomson’s language is crudely utilitarian – elephant hunting and culling are seen as a means to an end, that end being a utopian bushveld garden free from vegetation transformation or ‘too many elephants.’

The means are justified and rationalised on those grounds, typically with an appeal to ‘stick to the facts’ or to keep emotion out of the equation.

Governance challenges

Arguments that communities have called for hunting to return are not to be ignored. But to unthinkingly claim that only Western armchair critics are opposed to the practice is to ignore the fact that the whole trophy hunting endeavour (of elephants especially) is imperialistic and morally questionable.

Aside from the moral questions and the conservation consequences of culling and hunting, it’s not clear that governance challenges associated with managing hunting have been solved.

Will local communities get a fair share of hunting revenue (which is globally declining)? How will that money be distributed in a way that genuinely serves community members and incentivises them to drive conservation-driven development?

If bushmeat is what communities are asking for, are there not feasible alternatives to trophy hunting?

I’m highly sympathetic to the voice of communities, and have written extensively on the topic, but I am not sympathetic to elephant hunting as a solution unless the governance challenges are properly addressed and the science that shows how the extermination of 400 older males a year – in the midst of a poaching crisis – can be ‘sustainable’ when the number of large tuskers are dwindling.

Disrupting sociology

The entire population is also likely in decline. Elephant-themed revenue creation projects, being pioneered on the ground by excellent outfits such as Eco-Exist, which aim to drive down human and elephant conflict, are surely the way forward.

It is not scientific or objective to divorce the material psychological consequences of culling and hunting elephants from necessary ecological management.

The science shows us that disrupting elephant sociology is inextricably linked to negative conservation consequences.

Increased aggression among elephants due to culling, hunting and poaching will only increase human and elephant conflict. We have to pursue co-existence and shared benefits rather than a crude utilitarianism that wilfully endorses cruelty.

Original publication: https://theecologist.org/2019/jun/20/tr ... ustainable


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Re: Trophy Hunting

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South Africa selling tiger and lion hunts to Chinese nouveau riche

BY LOUISE DE WAAL - 25TH JUNE 2019 - THE SOUTH AFRICAN

Tigers, leopards, lions, elephants and rhinos were among the many species of wild animals on offer by South African hunting outfitters at the first-ever Chinese hunting show in Shanghai last weekend.

Critically endangered tigers, considered to be ‘functionally extinct’ in China, are now offered by several South African hunting businesses.

Since tigers are primarily defined as an exotic species in South Africa, the captive breeding, trading and hunting of this CITES Appendix I species is unregulated, with an estimated 60 mostly unlicensed tiger breeders, including several backyard breeders in Gauteng.

Inkulu African Safaris in the Eastern Cape advertised black rhino hunt for between Euro 500,000 and one million at the China Hunting Show, Imberba Rakia in Limpopo offered tiger hunts (prices on request only), and Clayton Fletcher from Tinashe had a 7-day ‘cat in the bag’ hunting package, including lion, oryx, blue wildebeest, zebra, springbok, and warthog, for US$22,000.

Image

Firearm ownership in China is heavily regulated making it nearly impossible for individuals to possess a rifle and legal hunting grounds are limited, so the burgeoning elite with little shooting experience travel abroad to indulge in their new-found hobby.

Lack of hunting expertise does not seem to be as an issue for the South African hunting outfitters represented at the show over the weekend. Fletcher of Tinashe Outfitters for example guarantees to make any Chinese hunter competent to shoot within a 2-day period.

The booming Chinese economy has created an extensive, affluent middle-class of 400 million people with a third already travelling outside China, according to the China Hunting Show website.

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In search of new markets, South African hunting businesses now offer a myriad of African wildlife to these nouveau riche Chinese citizens and lions are still one of the top choices.

As South Africa only issues about a dozen wild lion permits per year, the tawny and white lions adorning the exhibition brochures are most likely captive bred

“Don’t let the wide, open space of these game farms fool you”, says Smaragda Louw (Ban Animal Trading South Africa), who visited the show. “These lions are not hunted in the wild, but in an enclosed area with no escape.”

Tinashe Outfitters located in the NW province for instance can legally offer hunting of a captive bred lion a mere four days after its release from captivity. The shortest release time in any province in South Africa with no restrictions on the minimum camp size.

Image

Are these would-be hunters aware that most of these lions will be captive bred and habituated to humans through unscrupulous activities, such as cub petting?

As expected, many visitors attending the China Hunting Show over the weekend were completely unfamiliar with the concept of trophy hunting, let alone “canned” hunting. However, “by the end of the day, cash was changing hands as first-time hunters began planning their first overseas hunting trips”, stated show officials on social media.

See original article here: https://www.thesouthafrican.com/opinion ... eau-riche/


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