17 Jun Trophy Hunts in Africa: Killing for Conservation or a Message Error?
Black rhinos are critically endangered because of the demand for rhino horn, used in folk remedies in Asia, particularly Vietnam. ©Roman Boed, flickr
On a winter weekend in mid January of this year, a man who lives in Dallas, Texas, won a Namibian auction. For $350,000, he gained the right to hunt an endangered black rhino. His life hasn’t been the same since: death threats against him and his family are now part of his everyday life.
At first, you might think that killing an endangered animal for sport is the antithesis of conservation efforts to keep species from going extinct. But the prize-winning man, Dallas-based Corey Knowlton, a thirty-five-year-old consultant for The Hunting Consortium, an international guide service, says he is a passionate conservationist.
Knowlton believes that hunting a singular, old black rhino is part of a process that saves critically endangered animals around the world.
But does it?
Funding conservation efforts
The thirty-five-year-old Knowlton, who is also a co-host of a hunting show on the Outdoor Channel called Jim Shockey’s The Professionals, entered the auction through the Dallas Safari Club, the first organization to hold such an auction outside of Namibia. Within Namibia and, in fact, most of Africa, it’s common practice to sell permits for trophy hunting, even for endangered species. Both Namibia and South Africa are legally allowed by the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species (CITES) to sell five permits for the hunting of adult male black rhinos (nonbreeding) each year.
Knowlton, a self-described passionate conservationist, has stated that left alone, the old rhino would likely be killed by its own kind and left to die in a horrible, slow manner — finished off by either lions or hyenas. He argues that the kindest thing is a quick death. Why not let a hunter pay a massive amount of money to dispatch the rhino and, at the same time, garner the Namibian government thousands of dollars for its black rhino conservation efforts?
The argument has legs. Throughout Africa in 2012, at least 745 rhinos were killed due to illegal poaching for their horns (thought to cure cancer and other illnesses in some Asian countries), which equates to approximately two rhinos per day. In 2013 in South Africa alone, poachers killed 1,004 rhinos. Some would say that the five rhinos that Namibia allows to be hunted each year seem insignificant in comparison, especially since they are older males who can no longer contribute to the growth of the population.
Hunting where ecotourists won’t go
Knowlton isn’t an anomaly among hunters. In fact, in 2006, researcher Peter Lindsey, now policy initiative coordinator for Panthera’s Lion Program, and his colleagues interviewed 150 people who either had already hunted in Africa or who planned to within the following three years. Their findings, which were published in the journal Animal Conservation, revealed that 86 percent of them preferred hunting in an area where they knew that a portion of the proceeds went back into local communities. Nearly half of the hunters also indicated that they’d be willing to pay an equivalent price for a lower-quality trophy if it was a problem animal that would have had to be killed anyway.
The hunter subjects in the study were also more averse to hunting “under conditions whereby conservation objectives were compromised,” such as in regions where wild dogs or cheetahs are illegally shot or in countries where legal quotas are routinely exceeded. Approximately nine out of every ten hunters said they’d be willing to hunt in places lacking high densities of wildlife or attractive scenery — stressing that they would be willing to go where generating revenue from ecotourism isn’t viable. And, according to the study results, trophy hunters pay higher fees per client than conventional tourists, therefore income can be produced from a smaller number of people, resulting in potentially lower environmental impacts.
Mixing messages
Those against the rhino hunt, however, question what the larger message of sanctioned trophy hunts by conservationists might mean. Can being for an auction where the prize is hunting an endangered animal, such as a black rhino, be reconciled with competing communications that the species the animal belongs to requires saving?
What might be surprising to learn is that the International Union for Conservation of Nature (ICUN) supports black rhino hunting by a permit auction. In July 2013, John J. Jackson III, the president of Conservation Force, an IUCN member organization, wrote, “hunting [the black rhino] enhanced the survival of the species in the wild,” that it was “not detrimental,” that it produced “needed revenue for recovery and essential management,” and directly benefitted “local livelihoods which increased community support for the presence of rhino and disincentives for poaching.”
Do you think that trophy hunting truly helps conserve endangered species, or should it never be condoned? Post your thoughts on the issue, below.
Here’s to your adventures, in whatever corner of the world you find them,
Candy
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