The liberal news media and many people expressed outrage over the trophy killing of Cecil the Lion, but calling for trophy hunting bans could actually hurt African lions.
According to The New York Times, conservation efforts in African countries could be severely crippled by the anti-trophy hunting sentiment that swept the United States in the wake of Cecil’s death.
Though it may seem counterintuitive, trophy hunting (which is legal in 20 African countries) drives up the value of rare large animals and causes locals to be more tolerant of their existence, the Times said.
“You stop trophy hunting, the live market is going to change completely; it’ll go to meat value, really,” South African game ranch owner Stewart Dorrington told the Times. “So that will deprive the national parks and the provincial parks of a lot of their budget.”
A 2012 study cited by the Times found that a blanket ban on hunting actually posed a greater risk to lions and other trophy animals than the possibility of overhunting.
“Even though hunting may seem unpalatable to a lot of people around the world, it is actually very, very necessary,” ecologist Vernon Booth, one of the study’s authors explained “Without the trophy hunt money, locals would increasingly poison lions, which are considered dangerous to people and livestock.”
Booth continued, “If there is a complete ban on lion hunting, the tolerance levels for lions would just plummet ... and in wild areas outside of the protected areas, lions would be exterminated, and very quickly.”
The Times found that the appeal of trophy hunt money is so great, that “in southern Africa, the emergence of a regulated trophy hunting industry on private game ranches in the 1960s helped restore vast stretches of degraded habitats and revive certain species, like the southern white rhinoceros, which had been hunted almost to extinction, conservationists say.”
Zimbabweans themselves were confused by the outrage over Cecil’s death because lions are dangerous predators, not adored mascots.
