Trophy Hunting

[Lisbeth]

It is criminal to shoot the big tuskers

[Lisbeth]

FIVE. The death toll of giant Amboseli elephants by trophy hunting in recent months has risen to 5. These icons are protected against hunting in Kenya but not when they wander across the border into Tanzania.

In what can best be described as eco-sabotage, a small but influential cabal of Tanzanian trophy-hunting operators are driving their industry over a cliff. These morally bankrupt individuals have one goal in mind – loads of cash – and have enough clients slobbering at the mouth to bag one of the last 100-pounders before they are either protected or extinct.

Numerous trophy hunters have contacted us to express their concerns, but few have spoken out with any conviction against the rotten eggs in their industry. And there are enough ethical hunters in the online forums we monitor to stop the rot. But none of them go beyond a few words of concern.

The tourism industry, too, remains largely silent. A leading entity representing many of us – tour operators and lodges – refused to publish to their members our concern about the situation. Are we the only high-profile tourism brand prepared to speak out publicly?

Obviously, boycotting Tanzania’s tourism industry would be disastrous. That route would weaken tourism and make trophy hunting more important as a revenue generator. What we need is for more members of the tourism and broader hunting industries to stick their necks out and demand an end to this attack by a few delinquent trophy-hunting operators on the remaining tusker population across Africa.

History will judge our generation for not taking decisive action against the evil ones.

Simon Espley – CEO

[Richprins]

[Lisbeth]

REFLECTION

A disturbing journey into the human psyche and trophy hunting


Role reversal: a lioness stands over the hunter. (Photo: Stephanie Klarmann)

By Stephanie Klarmann | 03 Jun 2024

Photographer and artist Roger Ballen’s latest exhibition The End of the Game is an immensely disturbing and provocative examination of the subjugation and commodification of wild animals through trophy hunting and captivity.
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Mexican poet and academic Cesar Cruz said that “art should comfort the disturbed and disturb the comfortable”.

As I step inside American artist Roger Ballen’s latest exhibition at the Inside Out Centre for the Arts in Rosebank, Johannesburg, a lion holding two human heads roars at me. I’m a little taken aback by the role reversal and remind myself that any critical examination of the human psyche and our relationship to the natural world is likely to elicit some uncomfortable feelings.

“A central challenge in my career has been to locate the animal in the human being and the human being in the animal” says Ballen.

I tell myself that stepping into this absurd world of grotesque taxidermied animals serves a necessary purpose: a critical reflection of the damage we cause to the natural environment and its inhabitants.

Installations like these poignantly elicit discomfort at the very notion of such role reversal and force viewers to question the wanton killing of animals for sport and fun. Just maybe, it might evoke questions of what it’s like on the other end of a hunting rifle.

Ballen’s aim, inspired by Peter Beard’s The End of the Game, is to question and to reflect on the destructive forces that have decimated wildlife populations across Africa through excessive consumptive use, poaching and trophy hunting since the advent of Western civilisation on the continent.


A step up at whose cost? (Photo: Stephanie Klarmann)


A sense of needless domination permeates this installation as a serval lies with a gin trap around its leg and rope
around its neck. (Photo: Stephanie Klarmann)

Looking at the ragged, lifeless trophies on display made me realise what a futile and egotistical activity trophy hunting is – the animals look stricken, shrunken and less than majestic. Why would anyone want that on display as a showcase of some “conquest” into Africa? In what ways are the dead creatures a sight to behold compared with the beauty of their living beings?

Each installation elicits a visceral reaction as the intensity of the displayed animals increases with each step through the gallery.

Ballen’s depictions of wild animals with rope haphazardly wrapped around their necks is a metaphorical deep dive into our human need to control, tame and break nature in our favour.

The commercial captive wildlife industry, encompassing captive facilities, live trade and trade in body parts and derivatives, is a very literal example of how we chain and subjugate wildlife for gain and vanity.

And while the installations offer a critique of hunting during bygone colonial times, trophy hunting and consumptive use still abounds today.

While venturing through the gallery, Ballen spoke openly about the continued excessive consumption we all engage in – from trophy hunting to the very small ways in which we engage with the world.


A portrayal of vanity as a gnarled leopard drapes the shoulders of a mannequin. (Photo: Stephanie Klarmann)


A cub and serval lay caged and tied down by rope next to a resting man. The cage and thick rope wrapped
around their necks create a disturbing scene of subjugation. (Photo: Stephanie Klarmann)

It was a stark reminder of how urgently we need to consciously and compassionately live within this world.

Depictions of dominance, like rope wrapped around the neck, skins, horns and heads adorning walls. What are the solutions to the destruction we have wrought?

If Ballen’s End of the Game is anything to go by, the first and most important step we can each take is to look inwards and reassess the ways in which we contribute to the exploitation of the natural world.

We cannot recoil any longer at the discomfort this confrontation evokes within us.

Without it this writer worries that we will continue along a path of destroying what we ultimately need for our well-being and survival. In many ways it is also not about the impact on us alone, but asking the uncomfortable question if we are at ease with destroying the natural world, something inherently beautiful, invaluable and unique in its own right.


Chained: in many ways this image captures the commercial captive predator industry’s exploitation of wildlife. (Photo: Stephanie Klarmann)

The human psyche is filled with complexities we can barely begin to quantify and understand in depth, but there is something in trophy hunting that continues to leave this writer personally perplexed, an enjoyment or sense of pleasure I can’t seem to grasp.

The diminished presence of each animal on display deeply troubles me still – in what ways did they offer sportsmanship and pleasure to the shooters? Their empty glass eyes will remain with me long after viewing the exhibition.

But that’s the impact of striking art.

An inescapable feeling of having your mind exposed, evoking emotions we try so hard to keep in check. End of the Game is a striking exhibition and one well worth attending.

“Good art affects the psyche faster than you can blink”. DM

Roger Ballen’s End of the Game exhibition is on at the Inside Out Centre for the Arts in Rosebank, Johannesburg from 28 March 2024 and will run for the remainder of the year.

Comments:

John Nash
3 June 2024 at 09:18
A fascinating modern version of the old fairground freak show, described with an arty, post-rational narrative. Great fun.
As humans, we have always used animals as a commodity – either directly or by removing them as a threat or because we use their land. We cannot live without consuming animals, even if it upsets trendy urban artists.
In South Africa, hunting, trophy hunting, live sales and meat production (HLM) support 40 million acres of privately owned, almost natural habitat, upon which many millions of wild animals and billions of non-hunted plants and animals are conserved. It is an excellent use for SA’s dry land and a useful model for Africa.
Consumption is inevitable either way – without the HLM, the land would be used for farming and ALL the wildlife would be cleared. Even Jo’burg was built where animals once roamed. Rosebank ate animals, too.
In the meantime, please enjoy this exhibition of modern taxidermy, another way of consuming animals usefully. Artists need support, too.

Reply
Luke S
3 June 2024 at 09:46
It’s a sad reality that our species constantly tries to justify it’s ever-increasing abuse of this finite planet’s resources, which inevitably leads to wild animal habitat loss and species extinction, more and more animals farmed for food, and worse (for example climate change).
There are only 2 ways forward that I can see. Either we seriously change the way we do things, and make those big changes very quickly, or we stop and ask ourselves whether we all really need to create our own children, especially when there are millions of children without parents. It’s pretty selfish and egotistical really. But nobody ever tells this story, because capitalism is based on population growth, and reproduction is such a deep-seated instinct, manifested as emotion, that speaking of such things immediately triggers most of us. Most of the approximately 8 100 000 000 of us so far…

Reply
Norman Sander
3 June 2024 at 09:56
I see the article also rails against hunting for consumptive use and the entire article suggests that humans basic instincts should be changed.
I hope the anti hunting lobby realises if humans stop consuming meat, that cattle, sheep, pigs and chickens would become endangered species, as they would serve no useful purpose. In the world of “survival of the fittest” they would be predated to extinction.
Also, in what way is an abattoir a more humane way of killing animals than hunting in the veldt. Anyone who has ever been to an abattoir would agree with me.
As for the stuffed lion and the dead human posing, why did he come to a lion hunt with a pellet gun (I trust you will all realise this comment is tongue in cheek). I shoot 2 or 3 Springbok a year which supplies, our very healthy, meat needs for the year.
While I personally do not understand trophy hunting, I do understand the revenue it brings to SA, which benefits taxes and in most cases, local poor communities with direct cash.
While I agree humans need to take a quantum leap in how they care for the planet, nature and the beings living here, I realise in this crowded world every sentient being needs to make a contribution. So, I support hunting. People in modern society do not understand the natural world any longer.

Reply
Michele Rivarola
3 June 2024 at 15:10
I don’t hunt but I eat meat so I do understand hunting for food i.e. you east what you kill. That is what I do except that someone else does the killing. As regards to trophy hunting it is nothing less than the lowest of low ways of humans satisfying their blood lust in the absence of a war zone. I beg to ask what is the benefit of killing a rhino or an elephant or a lion or any other creature for no other purpose than satisfying personal basic instincts. I don’t buy into the excuses that it provides a living, many other things do yet we don’t willfully obliterate them. Life is precious, any life, and all life is precious if nothing else simply because we cannot recreate what we are so intent on destroying.

[Lisbeth]

Trophy hunting of Amboseli’s super-tuskers in Tanzania sparks outrage, calls for a ban

MALAVIKA VYAWAHARE - 22 JUL 2024

• Trophy hunters in Tanzania killed at least five male elephants with tusks weighing more than 100 pounds (45 kilograms). These iconic residents of Amboseli National Park in Kenya are known to venture into neighboring Tanzania, which allows trophy hunting.

• Conservationists described a “gentleman’s agreement” that held until early last year, whereby hunters in Tanzania left Amboseli elephants alone when they crossed over into Tanzania.

• The 51-year Amboseli Elephant Research Project is the “longest study of elephants in the world,” making these elephants some of the best known in the world; they’re keenly tracked and intimately known by scientists.

• In a letter published recently in the journal Science, two dozen signatories called for a moratorium on the hunting of elephants from Amboseli National Park that enter Tanzania, saying elephants from this “unique” population must not be hunted “to feed egos or the financial interests of short-term gain.”

Conservationists have called for a halt to trophy hunting of elephants from Kenya’s Amboseli National Park that cross over into neighboring Tanzania, following the killing of at least five males with unusually large tusks by hunters in Tanzania.

Trophy hunting is legal in Tanzania but not in Kenya. Under what conservationists described as a “gentleman’s agreement,” hunters have left Amboseli elephants along the Kenya-Tanzania border alone — until now.

The arrangement was a recognition of the importance of this population of African savanna elephants (Loxodonta africana), which are severely threatened and in decline. The 51-year Amboseli Elephant Research Project is the “longest study of elephants in the world,” making Amboseli’s elephants some of the world’s best-known elephants, widely photographed by tourists and intimately known by scientists.

For Cynthia Moss, who heads the Amboseli Elephant Research Project, and Joyce Poole, co-founder and co-director of the nonprofit ElephantVoices, the killings struck a personal note. Both launched into their scientific careers studying this population nearly five decades ago. Scientists have names for most of the 2,000 elephants from 69 families here, many of whom were born and grew up under their watchful eyes.


Amboseli icons Tim and Kilimanjaro, Amboseli National Park 2016, Kenya. Image courtesy ElephantVoices.

Vital insights into elephant behavior and their social lives have emerged from the project, including a recent finding that they appear to call each other by names. Elephant populations have suffered precipitous declines in Africa due to poaching, habitat loss and human conflicts. However, removing large bulls could have an outsized impact on the larger group, backers of the ban say.

Interested groups like hunting bodies and conservation organizations sometimes focus on the impact on pachyderm populations. This overlooks the importance of individuals in communities formed by highly social animals like elephants. Poole said bulls older than 35 years are “keystones” for male society. “Just like in humans, you can’t just take out a leader in the society and think it doesn’t have repercussions,” Poole said.

Older bulls help guide the behavior of younger males, especially adolescent elephants. The survival of these males, many of whom continue to breed, is also critical to preserving the genetic pool that has yielded magnificently endowed males in the first place. These males carry the genes for tusks grander than those found elsewhere.


Focus on the impact on pachyderm populations often overlooks the importance of individuals in communities formed by highly social animals like elephants. Image courtesy ElephantVoices

An unofficial agreement
There’s another reason taking out these majestic tuskers is a bad idea, conservationists say. They’re a big draw for tourists, and countries like Kenya and Tanzania are important wildlife tourism destinations, home to some of the last iconic bulls emblematic of wildlife in the region.

Many businesses that organize hunting safaris also arrange expeditions to spot wildlife. “The last thing you want is for someone to shoot elephants that are part of a long-term study and bring the industry a bad name,” Poole told Mongabay.

Kenya was a prominent trophy-hunting destination prior to a ban in 1977. Neighboring Tanzania continues to allow trophy hunting and issues permits to safari operators through a bidding process. There are hunting concessions along the Kenya-Tanzania border, and elephants in Amboseli, whose range stretches over 30,000 square kilometers (11,600 square miles), most of it in Kenya, are known to cross over.

Until recently, according to Moss, a “gentlemen’s agreement” held where hunters in Tanzania didn’t target tuskers from Amboseli. It was in recognition of their importance as “research subjects” and also because they’re so habituated to human presence. “Shooting an Amboseli bull … is about as sporting as shooting your neighbor’s poodle,” Moss said in a prepared statement.

However, the discovery of elephant carcasses by conservationists in Tanzania, who alerted their counterparts in Kenya, signaled the end of this unwritten accord. “We were only able to identify the first elephant killed,” Moss said. “It was an elephant I had known since he was born. His name was Gilgil.” They could identify Gilgil because someone photographed the corpse before it was allegedly set on fire. The hunters burnt the carcasses to prevent identification, Moss said.

After hunters felled the first of the five “super tuskers” — so called because their tusks weigh more than 100 pounds, or 45 kilograms — and claimed its majestic tusks, the incident drew in other clients searching for their own “trophies.”

Without any official agreement between the two countries’ wildlife authorities, the accord depends on its acceptance by individual hunting operators.

In 2023, a new company won the hunting bid for a concession bordering Amboseli on the Tanzanian side. The website of Kilombero North Safaris promises “Tanzania’s premiere big game safari experience.” Online, hordes of angry elephant lovers have left reviews criticizing the business and calling for hunters to boycott it.

The company didn’t respond to Mongabay’s requests for comment.


Tim in musth in 2016 at Amboseli National Park, Kenya. Musth is a period of heightened sexual and aggressive activity experienced by bulls. Image Courtesy ElephantVoices.

Wild subjects
The killing of Amboseli tuskers spotlights more than one company’s practices; it shows the limits of the human endeavor to subjugate the wild world to human-made laws.

Elephants are long-ranging animals. The Amboseli tuskers roam the Amboseli-West Kilimanjaro landscape that adjoins Mount Kilimanjaro National Park and straddles the Kenya-Tanzania border. According to one estimate, about 70% of Africa’s jumbo populations live across borders. In transcending human-made boundaries, elephants get entangled in considerations of international wildlife law that treats wild animals as resources of host countries.

This is especially problematic where one country’s conservation strategy diverges from another on something as controversial as trophy hunting.

It’s more than a legal-judicial matter for advocates like Poole. “It seems so wrong to me that animals that move back and forth, freely across a border, should belong to anybody except themselves,” Poole said. “These are autonomous, conscious, self-aware animals who have names for one another.”

In a letter published in the journal Science, two dozen signatories, including Poole and Moss, demanded a formal moratorium on the hunting of Amboseli elephants in Tanzania. The petition doesn’t challenge Tanzania’s broader policy on trophy hunting. According to a local news report, in 2022, tourists on wildlife hunting trips to the country generated around $20 million in revenue from fees and other related tourism activities.

The backers of a moratorium described the Amboseli-West Kilimanjaro elephants as “unique and irreplaceable,” saying they mustn’t be hunted “to feed egos or the financial interests of short-term gain.”

The Tanzania Wildlife Management Authority (TAWA) didn’t respond to Mongabay’s request for comment.

[Richprins]

Fortunately these old tuskers have long since passed on there genes!

[Lisbeth]

I hope so, but i is not ethic anyway

[Lisbeth]

OPINIONISTA

Killing of five elephants, said to be ‘super-tuskers’ from Kenya’s Amboseli, sparks major row

By Ross Harvey - 06 Aug 2024. Dr Ross Harvey is the Director of Research and Programmes at Good Governance Africa and a senior research associate at the Institute for the Future of Knowledge based at the University of Johannesburg.’

Given how few big tuskers are left in the world (some estimates suggest fewer than 50), the agreement between Kenya and Tanzania to not hunt the Amboseli population couldn’t be more important.
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Five mature elephant bulls have been shot by trophy hunters in Tanzania in the past eight months, at least two of which are said to have been “super-tuskers”. An unofficial agreement between Kenya and Tanzania had protected these elephants for 30 years. A new Avaaz petition rightly calls on the Tanzanian government to end the madness.

The Amboseli elephants have been studied extensively for nearly five decades now. Much of what we know about elephants is literally thanks to this set of remarkable elephant families.

The 30-year reprieve (and the fact that Kenya long ago banned trophy hunting) allowed the Amboseli population to thrive and produce some of the world’s most magnificent bull elephants despite the general population decimation trends across the continent. These trends only slowed after the US and China imposed domestic ivory trade bans in 2015 and 2017 respectively.

As renowned Amboseli elephant researcher Cynthia Moss told Africa Geographic, “shooting an Amboseli bull is about as sporting as shooting your neighbour’s poodle.”

It is unconscionably cruel to shoot highly habituated elephants for “sport”. As Moss, who is one of the leading Amboseli scientists, rightly points out, it is hardly “fair chase” or “ethical” to shoot an Amboseli bull with a high-calibre rifle.

Given how few big tuskers are left in the world (some estimates suggest fewer than 50), the agreement to leave the Amboseli population alone couldn’t be more important, not only for genetic heritage but for the sake of any future hope of human-elephant coexistence. Elephants are increasingly being born with smaller (or no) tusks in response to the rapacious history of poaching and trophy hunting for ivory over the past 200 years. Tuskless elephants have lost their essential “elephantness”.

In response to the recent killing, some of the world’s foremost elephant scientists penned a letter to Science, a leading academic journal, calling for authorities to end the trophy hunting of big-tusked elephants in northern Tanzania.

Joyce Poole, Moss and their co-authors, many of whom have studied the Amboseli elephants for more than 40 years, noted that the dead elephants were part of “one of the last gene pools for enormous ivory and the source of the largest tusks ever collected… Alive, these ‘super-tuskers’ have great biological, economic, and social value; once they are shot, their contribution ends.”

That is essentially the end of the argument. Hunting big tuskers for trophies is a fundamentally unsustainable, self-defeating activity.

The letter was followed by a petition to the US Secretary of the Interior and the US Fish and Wildlife Service (USFWS) to ban imports of the trophies from the hunts into the US. Earlier this year, the Pro-Elephant Network also reiterated its call to the USFWS to halt the import of elephant hunting trophies into the US.

Shortly before that, Simon Espley of Africa Geographic wrote a second letter to Michel Mantheakis, the chair of the Tanzania Hunting Operators Association, asking for information about these hunts after Mantheakis had attacked an Africa Geographic report on the hunts.

Espley pointedly noted that “our request to you was for the specifics related to these hunts. Yet, your public response after our report was a generic ideological sermon, complete with unsubstantiated claims and cheap shots aimed at Africa Geographic…” and “…if an activity further reduces the population of a species or genetic trait already in decline then that activity is, by definition, not sustainable”.

Mantheakis has yet to respond.

Other scientists have castigated the Science letter. They explicitly posit that revenue from hunting benefits local community members and provides conservation revenue that would otherwise be absent. The assumption often does not bear up under scrutiny but still provides a useful fiction for defending trophy hunting.

One defender opined that the Amboseli gene pool will not be affected by only five rare tuskers being shot; this is without any evidence that it won’t, while calling for evidence that it will. Only one of the five tuskers has been identified – the hunters burned the carcasses – and he was only 35 years old, yet to reach his breeding peak, which begins at 40. I’m not a mathematician, but five of 50 gone is a damning 10% decimation in a short eight months.

It was, therefore, surprising to see the director of WildCRU at Oxford University, Professor Amy Dickman, call the letter “backward” and describe the call for a ban on trophy imports as “imperious”. On X, she asks: “Yes those old males breed, but where is the proven conservation impact of hunting five bulls from a relatively secure, generally growing population?”

This appears to miss the point on purpose. It’s not about general population stability; it’s about the decimation of the world’s last big tuskers and the loss of their unique and irreplaceable genes which haven’t yet been passed on!

Just the two chapters on bull elephants in The Amboseli Elephants alone contain sufficient scientific information to fully warrant a ban on elephant trophy hunting. Dickman confusingly charges that because the Science letter refers primarily to the scientific value of the super-tusker population, its authors somehow neglect the impact of elephants on human beings or think it unimportant. This is sheer ad hominem assertion without evidence, ignoring that the hunting community itself has largely been severely critical of the hunts.

The aggressive deflection by one of the world’s leading conservation scientists from the issue at hand – decimation of the world’s last super-tuskers – is confusing. The constant refrain is that trophy hunting bans will increase human and elephant conflict. But this crude consequentialist reasoning is a strange rationalisation of an unjustifiable activity. Exactly how did local communities benefit from the slaughter of these five tuskers, especially given that their carcasses were burned?

Dr Katarzyna Nowak – one of the authors of the Science letter – pointed out to Dickman on X that scientific research is clear that removing older bulls from male elephant societies may increase human and elephant conflict: “Older bulls may police aggression directed towards non-elephant targets or may lower elephants’ perception of their current threat level. Our results suggest male elephants may pose an enhanced threat to humans and livestock when adolescents are socially isolated, and when fewer older bulls are nearby.”

In other words, removing older bulls through trophy hunting likely exacerbates human and elephant conflict. The idea that trophy hunting somehow increases local communities’ threshold tolerance for conflict with elephants is in my view delusional.

Dickman’s plea is ostensibly for this debate to be about costs and benefits that hunting may bring to conservation. But the fact that the big tuskers’ carcasses in northern Tanzania were burned suggests that the hunts had very little do with conservation or community benefits.

In 2023, Nikolaj Bichel and Adam Hart released a 377-page book called Trophy Hunting (recently reviewed on Daily Maverick). While largely defending trophy hunting’s conservation potential, the authors recognise some of the moral contradictions entailed in the practice and admit that trophy hunting is often poorly governed. They cite Craig Packer, a conservation scientist based in Tanzania for many years:

“[T]here might only be four or five honest operators out of fifty-plus companies in Tanzania. Only a tiny minority was willing to take the longer view of conservation; the rest were fly-by-night operations that only cared about short-term profits. They had no incentive to ensure healthy populations in the distant future. If they overshot the lions in Tanzania, they could move operations down to Zambia or Zimbabwe the following year.” (p. 247)

This is further highlighted by Espley’s point to Mantheakis, which strongly contradicts Dickman’s insistence that without trophy hunting, conservation land would become degraded:

“Your industry abandoned 110 out of 154 Tanzanian hunting zones in which you had exclusive use – because they were no longer profitable for trophy hunting. That’s 140,000km² of land – that could’ve benefited conservation – lost. This land was utilised by the trophy hunting industry you hold in such high esteem – and then abandoned once depleted. This abandoned land no longer contains trophy animals and is being reduced to wrack and ruin – playing host to poaching, mining, logging and other harmful activities.

“That you proudly trumpet the land still being hunted as an example of a ‘viable’ and ‘well-regulated’ industry and ignore the elephant in the room speaks volumes. This pro-hunting article highlights the reality facing the trophy hunting industry in Tanzania. And yet you claim that all is well in your industry…”

In light of what has just transpired in northern Tanzania, these points couldn’t be more salient. Incentive misalignment – between long-run sustainability and short-term profits – is baked in and epitomises the ultimate governance problem with trophy hunting in open, unfenced systems: the incentive to “over-harvest” is more powerful than government’s incentives to govern the practice, or (evidently) of the hunting community’s own instinct for self-preservation.

Why will Mantheakis not respond? Why are scientists like Amy Dickman so quick to dismiss the legitimate scientific concerns of the authors of the letter to Science? And why did Bichel and Hart fail to cite any of the Amboseli research(ers) in their book, or Connie Allen and others for that matter?

We’re at risk of losing the world’s last super-tuskers and some of the world’s top scientists are loudly defending trophy hunting while ignoring biological reality. DM

[Richprins]