How do you view trophy hunting (poll)

Just a thought though on the subject of colonialism and trophy hunting (and not one that I necessarily agree with but I feel it is worth mentioning).

I've heard it stated by native Zimbabweans (especially in the aftermath of the "Cecil the lion" case) and Namibians that they also percieve many of the arguments made by Westerners against permits being given in their countries for trophy hunting tour companies as "neocolonialism" and "paternalistic".

So it is a really complex issue within conservation and with so many sides to it and I suppose for this reason I do struggle to have a definitive stance towards it.

 

My gut feeling is that I really don't like trophy hunting. I'm not against hunting per se, but killing animals purely and solely for sport and enjoyment gets on my nerves. Not too long ago I left from one of my favorite birding spots early because I couldn't stand the hunter shooting down pheasant after pheasant on the fields on the other side of the road.

But it is not that simple. If game hunting is profitable enough it can replace livestock farming, and I think this has happened on some scale in South Africa. This gives problems for some wildlife, as game owners will fence their lands to keep large species in and this limits dispersal. However, game preserves offer significantly more habitat for smaller forms of life like plants, songbirds and insects than conventional farming would, even if large herbivore density is artificially high and may consist partly of non-native species (the whole native/exotic discussion is a bit moot when it comes to megafauna anyways, but that's a story for another time). Furthermore, the large mammals kept there, even if managed, are often still at least partly under natural selection and populations can be much larger than zoo populations, which helps retaining genetic diversity. Hunting preserves are not as good in conservation as actual nature reserves, but it is much better for wildlife than livestock farming (which, if we are honest, is often the most logical and profitable alternative for the land). Perhaps trophy hunting is the lesser evil here.

 

Just for future reference, utilitarianism is when you do something for happiness or your greater pleasure as opposed to doing something efficiently or logically . It’s a really confusing one because it feels as if it should be the other way around given the name but...

 

I personally can't sand tropy hunting. But it is sadly one of the view viable sollutions to stop over populations in some species.

 

I voted in favor of trophy hunting.

I leaned heavily towards I can see both sides of the argument...because I am not a hunter and never have hunted and probably never will.

I have not read the arguments above and I have, in years past on this forum, laid out my reasoning for supporting trophy, or recreational, hunting.

I understand the systems to manage hunting in place in many parts of the world are susceptible to corruption and in those cases may not actually benefit wildlife and habitat preservation in the accordance with the professed intent.

But outside of that acknowledgment, most arguments I run into that are counter to the practice are almost all, in my view, not always scientific and are often emotional. That said...I don’t hunt.

I’d rather not kill the animal and for me personally (as beautiful as I find some of them to be) having a taxidermy Moose or Whitetail Deer headmount in my office...I’d probably look at it with a little bit of regret. And that said...I’m am a natural born omnivore. If potatoes were animals...probably almost exclusively carnivorous.

I think the Addax and the Scimitar-horned Oryx would likely be a lot closer to global extinction if it were not for trophy hunting Texans.

I think many North American big game species and wildlands would be much more scarce barring trophy (or recreational) hunting. Although...I have actually seen anti-hunting arguments made based on the concept of “invasive” species and not just as it pertains to feral pigs.

Some species respond differently to hunting pressure. I couldn’t shoot an elephant under almost any circumstance. Or a whale. Or even an ape...much as I personally dislike Chimpanzees.

Subsistence hunting is a different thing. Here in Alaska my experiences have brought me into close association with folks who practice that lifestyle...including those who hunt Bowhead and Belugas and Narwhal. As well as Seals and many other species.

In our distant pasts we are all hunters...and most of us today sit back at camp performing other labors while our clansmen are out corralling, killing, butchering, gathering, and preserving the meat of various fowl, bovid, and swine...to deliver to our tables...mostly in the form of Tacos for me.

But not all of us and I respect that...but for most of us...our place in that food chain...makes any moral or emotional argument against taking wildife in a sustainable manner...a bit contradictory? To include mine against killing Elephants, Whales, or Apes. I don’t eat Dogs, Horses, or Seafood either. Still...I do enjoy taxidermy and reading hunting stories and browsing outdoor magazines. But I don’t hunt and don’t want to.

So...Man is a Hunter. And we humans are prone to contradictions, if not hypocrisy.

For me...the argument comes down to this:

Does trophy, or recreational, hunting provide economic incentives that allow for sustainable wildlife populations and the preservation of the habitat that supports those populations?

If the answer is yes, that trophy hunting does provide economic incentives to preserve populations of wildife and habitat, then I support the practice.

I believe we can also add that recreational hunting can help reduce human/wildlife conflict, engender an appreciation for conservation, and fulfill (in some of us) a basic human biological drive.

Hunting saved North America’s “Big Game”.

 

I think that conservation is often used as an excuse to defend trophy hunting. There was a study which showed how this practice in reality didn't add much to the protection of wildlife and nature (also because it's sometimes made in pricate and fenced areas) and in some cases it damaged the populations of animals such as elephants.
However I chose the third option, because in some specific situations hunting can possibly be useful.

I'm happy that the Selous Game Reserve (a former trophy hunting area) in Tanzania is now mostly a national park, hopefully the numbers of some species will recover a bit.

 

Do scientific specimens count as ‘trophies’?

 

I don't like the concept of trophy hunting, but I can see its value if the hunted animals are overabundant and are threatening the biodiversity in a reserve and the money is used to keep the reserve open. Many reserves must be suffering financial problems, due to lack of tourism in the last year. I would prefer them to stay open, even if this is due to trophy hunting, rather than being sold, leading to the possible deaths of the animals they preserve.

 

Highly regulated trophy hunting has saved several large mammal species within Europe. Because the hunting stock and hunting grounds were under strict protection and only certain people had right to hunt a certain number of animals, offenders heavily puniched. Wisent in Poland, bears in Slovakia, etc.

I can´t talk about other parts of the world. But in Central Europe, trophy hunting doesn´t have much negative influence on wildlife. If you want to hunt for trophy, you have to pay a hefty fee to the hunter association that rents the hunting ground, each hunting association has its animals counted and annual hunting quota is set centrally in a way to not endanger any of the species.

Till today, the biggest negative impact of hunting policy is damage to forests due to too high numbers of grazers like deer which hunters keep in stock artificially high compared to carying capacity. Currently, with slow return of wolves and other carnivores, this might get better at least in those places remote enough to support a wolf pack/lynx territory.

 

Regarding your comment on the utility of trophy / game hunting I totally agree it is a very complex issue indeed and it may have large returns / benefits for ecosystem conservation despite how distasteful it may seem (I do feel that it can be distasteful too).

I somewhat agree about genetic diversity but then again there is controversy there as there are some conservationists that claim that trophy hunting actually removes "good genes" from populations and that this may have undesirable evolutionary consequences.

Not really related to trophy hunting but there is a similar argument surrounding the potential banning of bullfighting in Spain that I find interesting. Fighting bulls are raised across the country on hectares of land that have high levels of biodiversity and have proven to be some of the last refuges of the critically endangered Iberian lynx.

If bullfighting is banned in Spain then the chances are quite high that this land would rapidly become converted to agricultural crops and of course loose that precious biodiversity.

 

Good point @GiratinaIsGod ! I think you may be right that it is a "necessary evil" in terms of conservation in Sub-Saharan Africa.

I don't know and I'm sure many would say that it doesn't count.

But if we are honest the old time big game hunters who "collected" in the name for science (Teddy Roosevelt, William Cornwallis, John Alexander Hunter, Frederick Kirby, Powell Cotton etc.) did at least partly collect specimens as trophies even if it was under the guise of science and did contribute to natural history and scientific classification.

Interesting comment @Dassie rat and particularly about the current situation and the financial fall out / aftermath of COVID-19.

I do think you are right that many protected areas and game reserves may have to resort to using trophy hunting as a means of staying open.

 

Thank you @amur leopard, much appreciated, but I believe the term utilitarianism is applicable in to the issue of trophy hunting as it is mentioned in a good many papers and articles on the controversy surrounding the debate.

Yes, I can definitely see the value in trophy hunting in Central Europe and you are right that it did at least in part help in the conservation of large ungulates in particular like the famous example of the wisent in the Białowieża forest of Poland.

That said, I am very uneasy with the idea of trophy hunting of wolves and in general about the entrenched conflict that exists between the hunting lobbies of Europe and North America and conservation efforts in the reintroduction of the wolf.

Yes, I think you are right that there could be quite a bit of that and I have also read some studies that seemed to suggest that trophy hunting was either not very useful for the conservation of biodiversity or actually downright harmful.

Again, it is such a polemical debate and both the advocates and detractors of this practice are very deeply entrenched in their positions so it is sometimes hard to see through all of the static and fiery talking points.

I think my personal view on trophy hunting would be an objective middle ground (similar to my view on zoos in some ways) between acceptance that it can sometimes benefit conservation and a bit of cynicism of the practice and recognition that if not implemented well it can also be harmful.

 

Interesting comment @Pleistohorse , thanks for sharing it.

Quite a lot to unpack here so lets begin with what you've said on emotional reactions to the practice and what the science says on trophy hunting.

Yes, the arguments against trophy hunting are often rooted in an entirely emotional response based on "animal rights" type talking points and do not correspond to the science. However, I do think that hunting lobbies are also guilty of the same kind of emotional stance towards many issues and particularly with wolves / large predators and in defence of the practice of trophy hunting.

Moreover, I have read some very well reasoned scientific studies that suggest that trophy hunting may not be as beneficial as claimed afterall and may have a deleterious effect on the genetic management of wild animal populations.

Personally I think that there is vitriol on both sides of the debate which makes it very hard indeed to see the facts. It may well be that benefits from trophy hunting may species-specific / ecosystem-specific or perhaps vary widely from region to region.

I agree with you on what you've said about American bison, oryx and addax and think these are examples of where trophy hunting has delivered some results in terms of species conservation.

Furthermore, I agree with you that humans are a species innately hardwired to hunt (we may just replace / redirect this to different activities in the modern day like shopping, hobbies etc ) and that we all have the legacy of thousands of years of our ancestors hunter-gatherer lifestyles within our genes, metabolisms, social behaviour and psyches. I also wholeheartedly agree with you of course on the merits of tacos .

But though I agree with you on subsistence hunting I dont think we are necessarily innately hardwired as a species towards the practice of "trophy" hunting as a recreational activity. I do think that this is not as ancient a drive and that it probably emerged from a totally different socio-historical context and probably post agricultural revolution.

 

This is a great topic, and cheers to @Onychorhynchus coronatus for starting up a discussion on it.

I'll preface by saying that whether or not trophy hunting is morally good or permissible is a different issue than whether or not trophy hunting helps conserve wildlife. I'm going to leave the former alone for the most part, other than to address a couple of things:

That's not surprising to me. There are a lot of instances of Western countries and organizations dictate what they think the right moves are to conserve wildlife in Africa. Many African people, governments, and countries disagree with some of these moves and resent being told that they don't know how to manage their own wildlife and natural resources. Personally I'm sympathetic to that standpoint; Africans have a tough situation balancing necessary economic development with conserving wildlife; there's a lot of trade-off decisions and cost-benefit analyses involved that Westerners may not intuitively understand. Many people have a globalist mindset and want wildlife in Africa to be conserved for the world's benefit, while Africans and the governments on that continent may not share the same perspective.

I think utilitarian applies here in the sense that a few animals being given up to trophy hunters to conserve the population as a whole is an intrinsically utilitarian argument. As for the naming of that philosophy, it relates to maximizing "utility", which can mean "greater good" or "happiness" or "revenue" or any other number of things depending on the context.

With that, I'll focus on the idea of whether or not trophy hunting helps conservation.

I think the correct answer is: it can, but only when applied properly. Part of the reason for there being mixed evidence about the benefits of trophy hunting is because situations are different between species and between countries; what works for lions in Tanzania may not be what works for rhinos in South Africa. I have read papers showing evidence that trophy hunting indeed has helped many species in many areas; the comeback of white rhinos was largely supported by trophy hunting. Meanwhile, trophy hunting may be partly to blame for a sharp decline in lions throughout the continent (though it's certainly not the only reason - habitat loss, poaching, and conflict with local people are most likely bigger contributors).

Some general findings from what I've read on the subject:

- Trophy hunting works best when managed by local communities who benefit from the practice. They have an incentive to protect the animal populations they have, as well as protect the economic impact of the hunters' bid money and spending on local services. Governments are prone to treating trophy wildlife as resources to be tapped harder when revenue is low, and the corruption of many African countries leads to poor practices and over-exploitation of populations. Likewise, if the benefits mainly go to private non-local companies that lowers personal investment and raises the likelihood of improper practices.

- Trophy hunting works best when the animals taken were not going to have a significant impact on the population, the primary example being older males that are past the age of peak reproductive dominance. Hunting females, juveniles, or males in their reproductive prime can harm the population both demographically and genetically.

- Trophy hunting works best in areas where ecotourism is not a viable alternative. A study found that most hunters were fine with hunting in areas where wildlife was not concentrated or easily visible, or where the surroundings were not very aesthetically pleasing. As much as ecotourism is touted as the best way to conserve wildlife, for places that are not pretty and where wildlife is not easy to look at ecotourism is not a very realistic option. Trophy hunting provides communities in those areas with a suitable replacement model.

- Trophy hunting can also be a good substitute for national parks or tourism-based conservation areas because it receives far fewer people. While national parks are great and we should keep them, the reality is that high levels of tourism can put stress on local environments and populations. Game reserves allow for a more natural, less human-stressed local environment that nevertheless becomes profitable thanks to hunter bids - even if it makes less money on average than national parks or tourism-based ventures do.

- In relation to the two points above, game reserves create a reason to leave many wildlife areas undeveloped - which is important when land is a commodity and there are economic incentives to develop it rather than leaving it natural.

TL,DR: I would say that trophy hunting is a useful and realistically necessary conservation tool. It is not perfect and only works when done properly, but it fills in gaps created by other conservation measures and there is evidence showing that trophy hunting can have a positive impact on wildlife populations in some situations. Ultimately the decision of whether or not to practice it should, I think, be left up to two things: the likelihood of it benefiting a particular population in a particular area, and the likelihood of it positively benefiting the local community.

 

No problem and thank you for your comment !

I agree that it is a very nuanced topic within wildlife conservation and that it invariably generates a lot of debate which is why I thought it could make for an interesting thread here on the site.

Again, as with many issues pertaining to conservation I agree with you that the moral / ethical dimensions regarding trophy hunting is a separate topic (and should be dealt with separately) from whether it is an effective means of conserving wildlife.

Oh I agree about the complexity of the African voices and perspectives on the issue and these are the ones that I find perhaps the most interesting.

There are native indigenous Africans on both sides of the debate and so comparisons with colonialism and accusations of neocolonialism have often been raised as a criticism by both the African proponents and detractors of trophy hunting.

Again I agree with what you've said here that if implemented it should be done by local communities, managed well, high level corruption stamped out (though that is definitely a hard one to crackdown on) and that paradoxically trophy hunting has a smaller ecological footprint than mass ecotourism to the famous African National Parks.

 

I have to admit here that perhaps one of the reasons why I do not have a definitive stance on the issue of trophy hunting and the debate surrounding it is probably because I do not feel any great interest or emotional engagement (though of course I care about African biodiversity / conservation) towards / with the Sub-Saharan African megafauna.

To be clear, I recognize that trophy hunting is not limited to Africa but if we are honest it is probably an industry that is most prevalent on the African continent. I also find the debate extremely interesting as a topical issue within conservation biology which is why I posted this thread.

However, I just can't summon up any strong feelings or a stance towards it and for this reason I think I'm sort of middle ground on this issue and recognise that there are valid arguments on both sides of the debate.

 

Yes. Good points. I acknowledge that trophy hunting, which is thrilling for me right up until pulling the trigger...I guess I just use a camera , is a recently evolved social practice. Especially it’s commercial aspects.

It is to earlier hunting practices, as recreational travel is to the impulses of our ancestors to roam the Earth and explore.

While hunting itself certainly got its start as humans pursued other animals for food, we quickly began collecting the non-edibles for materials and tools.

Not too much longer and we were using other animals for adornments, ceremony, and decoration...trophies?

We painted their stories, and ours, on the walls of caves. Scratched them into rocks.

Posted them to this site’s media pages...

 

Very good point here and the subject of ethnozoology and paleolithic cave paintings is one that fascinates me.

I believe it is an inescapable and innate instinct and drive in humans to tell stories and narratives about animals and I think that the name the story telling primate / "Homo narrans" is an apt one.

I really like that you suggested that zoochat is a continuation of the storytelling / narrative about animals as I do think it is an extension of this. I also think that even dry scientific / ecology papers published in journals are indeed merely updated stories about animals in the written printed form.

As you've mentioned the earliest evidence of human creative expression was the creation of images of animals during the Magdalenian period and sites such as Chauvet, Lascaux, Tito Bustillo (I've had the priviledge of having met and spoke with one of the discoverers of this site) are testament to that.

Undoubtedly some of this storytelling was about the hunting of game such as bison, horses, woolly rhino, red deer, reindeer, ibex, auroch, mammoth, cave lions, cave bear amongst other species. In some paintings there are very clear signs that hunting was on the mind of these ancient artists as some of the animals have been painted with spears protuding from wounds on their backs or sides and blood pouring from their mouths.

For a long time a lot of the anthropologists and archeologists who studied these sites believed that they were created as a form of "hunting magic". That is to say in the sense that Ice Age man created images of the game he hunted ritually in order to either ensure the success of his hunting expeditions or because in his cosmovision he believed that in times of scarcity that this would increase the amount of prey.

Maybe this was the case in some cases but I think it is generally accepted now that it can't have all been about "hunting magic". Not all of the paintings seem to have been created with the idea of hunting on the artists mind and cognitively there was clearly something else at work. Personally I think that the "mind in the cave" theory by David Lewis Williams is a very compelling one but the truth is we will never know why or in what spirit these images were created.

 

This is turning out to be a really interesting poll.

The gap in numbers of votes is gradually narrowing between people who are anti trophy hunting and those who can see both sides of the argument.

 

A quite critical question from my part, does trophy hunting also imply proper usage of the meat or not? Even without that, one can still argue that if managed well the conservational benefit of regulated trophy hunting can be important. But of-course, if this can also be used as another source of food-production this seems like a welcome bonus to me.

I don't know wether this has been done before, but an interesting model could be on where the hunter has rights to the trophy (skin, antlers, ... whatever they want for my part) but that any excess meat is sold into the local food-circulation. This could be an additional source of proteins to (slightly) reduce the need for illegal hunting of bushmeat.

The argument of colonialism is an interesting one. As most African countries are technically free economies, isn't a foreigner running a business there technically just another businessman? I do agree that talks should be held with local people about ancient hunting grounds taken away from them, but wether it's a local businessman or a foreign one doesn't change the fact that they don't have access to it anymore. As most people that caused this don't run things anymore, you can argue that any reserve-owner is keeping this continuous cycle of "theft" going regardless of his/her origin ("theft" is because I don't to make an absolute statement about wether this should still be counted as theft or wether they should actually be considered accountable).

Edit. before I probably get a lot of comments criticizing the above. I'm just talking about the owner/employer. The people he/she hires is a whole other matter. One in which I think it would be the rightest thing to do to work with local people, but with our globalization and free economies one can even argue wether it's not a person's right to choose who he employs. Similar to how companies in Belgium are employing people from Eastern Europe for various reasons. Somethings to do jobs Belgian people don't want to do but sometimes also to do jobs that Belgian people could and would have done instead if it wasn't so much cheaper to use foreign labor forces. Is this wrong, maybe. But it's kind of the model the world is using right now, and in a certain way it's up to a country to regulate this if they want to (yes I know, corruption, bribes, ... doesn't create a country that fully reflect's people's voices).

So to summarize: I'm not saying that it should be the way it is with foreign owners and workers, but it is in a certain way the model that we as a world have created. And yes, without a doubt Europeans, Americans and now also Eastern-Asians have a slightly larger responsibility in creating this model. But singling one group of people out as the one and only cause ... maybe not the most accurate representation of the entire system.