Trophy hunting in Africa hit world headlines recently after the killing of the 13-year-old lion Cecil, who was a popular attraction at the Hwange National Park in Matabeleland North in Zimbabwe.
Hunting is an important and growing business in southern Africa, despite the global outrage caused when Cecil was lured into range with meat and then shot dead by a US dentist after he had injured the animal with a bow.
South Africa’s minister of environmental affairs, Edna Molewa, last week wrote an opinion piece in the influential Daily Maverick publication to defend the professional hunting industry after public vilification over Cecil’s demise.
“The sector is valued at around 6.2 billion rand [Dh1.8bn] a year and is a major source of South Africa’s socio-economic activity, contributing towards job creation, community development and social upliftment,” she wrote. “Historically, sustainable utilisation of species through legal hunting has played a role in the growth of populations, including of lion, elephant and rhino.”
However, a recent report by Economists at Large says very little money from hunting operations makes it into local communities or conservation programmes, with the vast majority pocketed by international companies and African government agencies.
In the meantime, the hunting industry is weathering its biggest crisis in years following the Cecil killing.
“In terms of the fall out, the hunting industry is taking a beating and most of the hunters I know are deeply concerned for the future,” says Russell Gammon, a Zimbabwean photographic safari guide who operates trips throughout southern and eastern Africa. He adds that while that hunt took place on land that did not have a lion on quota – and was therefore illegal – the use of bait was standard practice and bow hunting is also allowed under special permit.
Professional hunting guides are not, as is often assumed, wealthy – many struggle to make a living in a highly competitive industry where well-heeled clients do not come along every day.
“The reality is most offering professional hunting services are in the unenviable position that most of the money they make comes from their tip [gratuity] at the end of a successful hunt,” says Mr Gammon.
“While they are responsible to ensure their client follows the law, it’s unrealistic to expect them to make ethical decisions on behalf of their clients – it’s never going to happen.”
Still, with the amount of cash involved, the sector is growing fast. From a handful of farms in the 1960s, today more than 28 million hectares, or nearly 17 per cent of the country’s agricultural land, is being used for game, according to the industry association Wildlife Ranching South Africa.
Farmers are converting away from cattle and other forms of ranching because game is less prone to disease, requires little in the way of chemical additives to the soil, and ends the need for weed removal. As a bonus, animals usually viewed as a nuisance or competition to cattle such as buck species, leopard and many others, are allowed to range free on farms.
Defenders of trophy hunting also cite growing populations of threatened species because of the spread of wildlife farming. Some, such as the Roan antelope, of which only a few thousand still exist, occur almost entirely in private game ranches.
Moreover, the land in question is frequently marginal and ill-suited to conventional farming, hunting supporters say. In some parts of southern Africa, such as parts of the Ghanzi district of Botswana, the land is arid and of poor agricultural use. Photo safaris, the alternative for which anti-hunting activists are calling, are unlikely to fill the void in less scenic areas where tourists have little incentive to visit, preferring the more picturesque Chobe, Kruger or Hwange reserves.
Even the organisation that brought the world’s attention to Cecil’s killing, Oxford University’s WildCRU, a carnivore research project, tacitly condones hunting. Among WildCRU’s biggest donors are the Dallas Safari Club – a trophy hunting association, and Panthera, an influential New York-based charity that studies big cats in the wild. A report funded by Panthera and co-authored by its scientists concluded that if lion hunting was banned, about 60,000 square kilometres of territory through which the big cats roam today would be lost to farming.
The study noted that lion hunts attract the highest mean prices, between US$24,000 and $71,000 per animal, of all trophy species. Lions generate 5 to 17 per cent of gross trophy hunting income on national levels, the proportional significance being highest in Mozambique, Tanzania and Zambia.
The study went further to note that if land was returned to cattle ranching, the single biggest threat to lions today – being killed by local people in defence of livestock – would also return.
“Restrictions on lion hunting may also reduce tolerance for the species among communities where local people benefit from trophy hunting,” the report said. Panthera declined to comment on the study.
Mr Gammon says land use would drastically change if hunting were curtailed.
“This is simple: private land owners switched from domestic livestock to wildlife because it was more lucrative and, like it or not, sport hunting is a big part of the equation.
“There is absolutely no doubt in my mind that if hunting is banned 95 per cent of those land owners will switch back to cattle the very next day,” Mr Gammon says, adding: “They chose wildlife for commercial rather than altruistic reasons and without the financial incentive provide by sport hunting there will be no place for the wildlife.”
Not surprisingly, critics of the industry argue otherwise. Johnny Rodrigues, the chairman of the Zimbabwe Conservation Task Force, says the industry is an insular clique of landowners and operators, who do little to foster wildlife conservation.
“Their contribution to conservation is nil; the people who hunt, the Zimbabwean National Parks Service and landowners are the only people who benefit,” he says.
Mr Rodrigues concedes that some hunting can be beneficial, but feels that so little data is currently available on animal management, that analysis is based on “guesswork”. For now, a moratorium on hunting – especially of big cats – should be in place until research into its effects on populations can be scientifically quantified. Mr Gammon, too, agrees that lion hunting in particular is problematic.
“Let’s be clear, lions are a special case because of their unusual biology. The knock-on effect of incoming males killing cubs, and the effect that has on the pride, makes it hard to make a case in favour of lion hunting.”
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