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Save the Animals…By Hunting Them

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Save the Animals…By Hunting Them Save the Animals…by Hunting Them By Joe Flood Go ahead and kill the elephants. And rhinos and tigers and all the rest of your favorite Lion King animals. It might be their best hope for avoiding extinction. Before you fire off the angry tweets, let’s look at the grim plight of African wildlife. Over the past few years Africa has suffered an onslaught of poaching, driven by growing buying power in Asian countries where ivory is a status symbol and rhino horn powder, a traditional medicine, can fetch as much as $100,000 a kilogram. The international response has been to “get tough” with poachers and smugglers, which is a good thing. But many animal rights groups are also pushing for outright bans on hunting all “charismatic megafauna” (think: lions, tigers, bears, anything you can turn into an anthropomorphized cartoon character). But banning big-game hunting can actually, well, backfire. The reason? Economics. It might sound counterintuitive, but hunting provides an incentive for ordinary Africans to help preserve the lives of otherwise dangerous or crop-stealing animals. Blanket bans, on the other hand, privilege sentimentality over basic economic incentives, to the animals’ detriment. In other words, to save the animals, people should be allowed to kill them. To see how this plays out, look to Kenya, the go-to destination for African safaris, whose savannahs were the model for landscapes of The Lion King. Four decades after enacting a ban on big-game hunting, Kenya has compiled one of the worst records of wildlife conservation in Africa. Officials probably meant well, but while enforcing the ban, they managed to alienate the very rural communities whose cooperation they needed. To establish national parks, they displaced entire villages — and then pocketed tourism profits instead of sharing them with the people they’d expelled. That left the subsistence farmer, tired of lions eating his goats — and maybe his children — with every incentive to poison dead cattle, thereby killing whole prides of lions that ate their carcasses. Or to poach the elephant who had been raiding his pumpkin patch and sell the tusks to an ivory smuggler offering big dollars. Meanwhile, countries like Namibia and South Africa have a more inclusive, bottom-up conservation strategy. Namibia’s 1990 constitution guarantees villages and tribes ownership of neighboring wild animals. The central government dispatches researchers to study populations and set quotas on how many animals can be killed. But it leaves implementation to local authorities, who allow traditional “bush meat” hunting by locals, negotiate with tourism companies to sell hunting licenses and distribute proceeds among villagers. Making villagers stewards of the land and its wildlife gives them an incentive to protect it over the long term, with results far better than absolutist strategies like Kenya’s. The recent experience of journalist Glen Martin, whose book Game Changer predicted the current poaching epidemic, underscores the point. In Namibia, he and some rangers came across a poached wildebeest carcass — and ordinary villagers joined the hunt to find the poacher. “Twenty years ago, that guy would’ve been a hero for bringing meat to the people,” says Martin. “Now, he’s seen as someone stealing from the people.” Poachers are still idolized in places like Kenya, where wildlife does little for ordinary villagers, Martin says. And until that dynamic changes, no hunting ban will ever be enforceable. That said, as poaching profits reach incredible highs, the practice is gaining a toehold even in Namibia, where about a dozen black rhinos were poached over the past year or so. The scale of the new poaching threat led Botswana and Zambia to impose temporary hunting bans last year as an experiment to see if such bans work. The key word here is experiment: a scientifically-driven analysis of policy geared toward protecting wildlife. Which is exactly what Africa’s leading conservationists are calling for. “Hunting is part of our culture; it is a way for people to get meat and to make money,” said Wabotlhe Mokgothi Letubo, coordinator of Botswana’s Tshole Trust, at an anti- poaching program sponsored by the U.S. State Department last year. Poaching should stop, she said, but she added that ordinary Africans need ways to make money from wildlife. “There is a big difference between poaching and hunting, and sometimes people from America and Europe do not understand this,” she said. But there is another proud tradition at work here: distant, romanticizing Westerners telling Africans what’s best for them. And that’s a tradition we hope will die off — for the sake of the charismatic megafauna themselves. http://www.ozy.com/immodest-proposal/save-the-animals-by-hunting-them/39349 The Heavy Price of Trophy Hunting The world came together last week in a rare moment of solidarity following the abhorrent slaughter of what was, by all accounts, a very popular lion. When the now-infamous dentist from Minnesota unleashed the bolt from his crossbow, he ignited a global fury by taking down this beloved lion – though it required another 40 hours of pursuit before the dentist finally found the badly wounded Cecil and ended his life with a rifle. Officials in both the United States and Zimbabwe are seeking the offending trophy hunter for questioning, and calls for indictments and policy changes rose out of the online outcry. Our own petition calls for the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service to reconsider exempting some trophy hunters from what would otherwise be a solid ban on importing African lion trophies after a proposed listing is final. Cecil’s death was strikingly similar to the killing of another beloved animal closer to home. In December 2012, a hunter shot and killed what was then Yellowstone’s most popular wolf. Scientists studying her knew her as 832F, while others called her the ‘06 Female or ’06. She was a six- year-old, radio-collared alpha female from the Lamar Canyon Pack that roamed Yellowstone National Park. The Wyoming trophy hunter that killed 832F was, by many accounts, acting legally, as Wyoming then allowed the hunting of wolves. In 2014, Wyoming was ordered by a federal judge to again protect them under the Endangered Species Act. Wolves in that state, unlike those in neighboring Montana and Idaho, are currently fully protected under the Act. While the killer of ’06 may have been acting within the law (though there is some question as to whether he artificially and illegally lured the wolf out of the safe confines of Yellowstone National Park), he was certainly acting against the public interest. Like Cecil, ’06 was the subject of ongoing scientific study and was treasured by wildlife enthusiasts. For as little as $18(the cost of a “wolf license” for Wyoming residents), this trophy hunter was able to deprive the rest of the public from continuing to enjoy the benefits of ’06. Beyond the loss of scientific benefit in continued study, there is a clear economic cost to allowing trophy hunters to satisfy their own wants by taking animals like ‘06. Wolf-related tourism brings in$35.5 million annually to Wyoming, Idaho, and Montana. High profile wolves like ’06 are key drivers of that spending. Like Cecil, she was a park favorite that drew photographers and wildlife enthusiasts who wanted only to see her. Also like Cecil, she served a very valuable role in her ecosystem. Apex predators like lions and wolves facilitate balance by preventing other animals from overgrazing and by keeping these same populations healthy. When wolves were brought back to Yellowstone in 1995, they changed the behavior patterns of herbivores, allowing plant life to regenerate and bringing benefits across the environmental spectrum. Lions serve a similar function, keeping their ecosystems healthy by preying on ungulates, and keeping those herds and their shared habitat healthy. Tragically, these two killings bear another similarity in their immediate impact on existing social structures. Cecil’s killing will bring the ascension of another lion who will likely kill Cecil’s twelve cubs. Scientists call this the perturbation effect. When a dominant male lion is killed, other adult male members of his coalition and their offspring are often killed by the successor to his crown. The death of ’06 was equally devastating to her pack. The social structure of the Lamar Pack was torn apart following the killing of ’06 and another wolf, 754M, a beta male in the pack, who was also ‘06’s mate’s brother. The mate of ‘06, 755M (754M’s brother), abandoned the pack following the killings and left the area to set out on his own. A previously healthy, thriving pack was upended and has never fully recovered. The killing of ’06, like the killing of Cecil, was not just the killing of a lone animal. Their social structures were ripped apart. Economic, environmental, and scientific benefits were sacrificed. Hearts were broken. These killings are preventable. In Cecil’s case, the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service can quickly act toclose the U.S. market for “trophies” like Cecil’s by finalizing proposed protections under the Endangered Species Act. African lions have declined by as much as 60 percent in just three decades. If we don’t act, they could be extinct by 2050. In addition to issuing its final rule protecting lions, the Service should reconsider its planned exemption for the import of lion trophies from countries it deems to be engaging in “scientifically sound management.” Trophy hunters kill as many as 600 African lions annually. That is roughly a 2 percent loss every year, spread disproportionately onto healthy, adult male lions favored by trophy hunters.
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