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Yeah, well … Obviously you have some deeply held "feeling's" (sic) in favor of trophy "hunting, for reasons of your own ...
No I base my opinions on facts on the ground. Viscerally trophy hunting is unappealing. An educated person tho must think beyond visceral reactions to understand the truth.
As they are able to legally reap the economic rewards from the wildlife they look after, the game parks have an incentive to conserve these species. And some benefits trickle down to the local community – for example creating more jobs – which means locals have an incentive not to poach wildlife illegally because now they can benefit from its value through the legal economy.
This approach has worked wonders in Namibia through the conservancy model, in which local communities living around the wildlife to be protected are put in charge of their wildlife. They are able to offer trophy hunts to tourists, and so reap the benefits. This has dramatically reduced poaching, and some trophy species populations are booming as a result.
Banning trophy hunting or restricting trophy imports wouldn’t address these challenges. In fact, it could do more to endanger wildlife than save it. Consider what happened in Kenya after it banned all hunting in 1977. Since then, Kenya’s populations of large wild animals have declined 60%-70%, according to wildlife economist Mike Norton-Griffiths. Kenya’s lion populations have fallen to 2,000 from 20,000 a half century ago. Hunting bans in Tanzania and Zambia have produced similar results.
Trophy hunting is one of the main ways local people reap benefits from living in regions with large wildlife. Across Africa, hunting generates more than $200 million in revenue each year, mostly in southern Africa, according to a study in Biological Conservation. A 2012 study in PLOS One, an open-source, peer-reviewed science journal, noted that eliminating revenues from lion hunting could “reduce tolerance for the species among communities where local people benefit from trophy hunting, and may reduce funds available for anti-poaching.”
Allowing some level of hunting can, in theory, give hunters, ranchers, and other people close to the wild resource a stake in preserving the species and the entire ecosystem and managing it sustainably. Managed hunting could reduce the pressure on land being converted from its natural state to cattle ranching or agricultural cultivation—a driver of some of the greatest environmental destruction around the world. Often competition for land between landowners and rural populations on the one hand, and wildlife on the other, puts wildlife at great risk, as landowners and rural populations see wildlife as pests and so kill them. Without being able to derive monetary value from wildlife, landowners and local populations may have no stake in any conservation of the species or preservation of the ecosystem. If bans and other restrictions on land use and requirements for conservation impose significant costs on local owners, they may even want to extirpate the species from their lands to avoid such conservation costs. In the United States, the case of the black-footed ferret is example.
Trophy hunting presents a difficult ethical problem for the WWF, which says it may be one way to reduce poaching for ivory, the number one killer of Africa's elephants.
"It (poaching) kills 12,000 elephants a year," said Gramling. "We've also learned – and this can be a challenge for conservationists – that in some circumstances, regulated hunting has to be tolerated, because it reduces the poverty that fuels poaching."
Is there such evidence? According to a 2005 paper by Nigel Leader-Williams and colleagues in the Journal of International Wildlife Law and Policy the answer is yes. Leader-Williams describes how the legalization of white rhinoceros hunting in South Africa motivated private landowners to reintroduce the species onto their lands. As a result, the country saw an increase in white rhinos from fewer than one hundred individuals to more than 11,000, even while a limited number were killed as trophies.
In a 2011 letter to Science magazine, Leader-Williams also pointed out that the implementation of controlled, legalized hunting was also beneficial for Zimbabwe’s elephants. “Implementing trophy hunting has doubled the area of the country under wildlife management relative to the 13% in state protected areas,” thanks to the inclusion of private lands, he says. “As a result, the area of suitable land available to elephants and other wildlife has increased, reversing the problem of habitat loss and helping to maintain a sustained population increase in Zimbabwe’s already large elephant population.” It is important to note, however, that the removal of mature elephant males can have other, detrimental consequences on the psychological development of younger males. And rhinos and elephants are very different animals, with different needs and behaviors.
No I base my opinions on facts on the ground. Viscerally trophy hunting is unappealing. An educated person tho must think beyond visceral reactions to understand the truth.
As they are able to legally reap the economic rewards from the wildlife they look after, the game parks have an incentive to conserve these species. And some benefits trickle down to the local community – for example creating more jobs – which means locals have an incentive not to poach wildlife illegally because now they can benefit from its value through the legal economy.
This approach has worked wonders in Namibia through the conservancy model, in which local communities living around the wildlife to be protected are put in charge of their wildlife. They are able to offer trophy hunts to tourists, and so reap the benefits. This has dramatically reduced poaching, and some trophy species populations are booming as a result.
Banning trophy hunting or restricting trophy imports wouldn’t address these challenges. In fact, it could do more to endanger wildlife than save it. Consider what happened in Kenya after it banned all hunting in 1977. Since then, Kenya’s populations of large wild animals have declined 60%-70%, according to wildlife economist Mike Norton-Griffiths. Kenya’s lion populations have fallen to 2,000 from 20,000 a half century ago. Hunting bans in Tanzania and Zambia have produced similar results.
Trophy hunting is one of the main ways local people reap benefits from living in regions with large wildlife. Across Africa, hunting generates more than $200 million in revenue each year, mostly in southern Africa, according to a study in Biological Conservation. A 2012 study in PLOS One, an open-source, peer-reviewed science journal, noted that eliminating revenues from lion hunting could “reduce tolerance for the species among communities where local people benefit from trophy hunting, and may reduce funds available for anti-poaching.”
Allowing some level of hunting can, in theory, give hunters, ranchers, and other people close to the wild resource a stake in preserving the species and the entire ecosystem and managing it sustainably. Managed hunting could reduce the pressure on land being converted from its natural state to cattle ranching or agricultural cultivation—a driver of some of the greatest environmental destruction around the world. Often competition for land between landowners and rural populations on the one hand, and wildlife on the other, puts wildlife at great risk, as landowners and rural populations see wildlife as pests and so kill them. Without being able to derive monetary value from wildlife, landowners and local populations may have no stake in any conservation of the species or preservation of the ecosystem. If bans and other restrictions on land use and requirements for conservation impose significant costs on local owners, they may even want to extirpate the species from their lands to avoid such conservation costs. In the United States, the case of the black-footed ferret is example.
Trophy hunting presents a difficult ethical problem for the WWF, which says it may be one way to reduce poaching for ivory, the number one killer of Africa's elephants.
"It (poaching) kills 12,000 elephants a year," said Gramling. "We've also learned – and this can be a challenge for conservationists – that in some circumstances, regulated hunting has to be tolerated, because it reduces the poverty that fuels poaching."
Hello … ???
Let's try it again … in simple American English ...
Being opposed to TROPHY "hunting" is not an "anti-hunting" position ...
I guess if they're dead, stuffed and mounted indoors, they will be forever in no danger from disease, starvation, parasites, drought, bad weather, etc., etc. ...
So your saying that if we do not trophy hunt, all those others will be in danger from disease, starvation, parasites, drought, bad weather, etc., etc. ..
I have a felling that someone has no clue what (sic) and or =/= means....
I could be wrong...and if so, I'll admit it, unlike others....
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