She\u2019s wept in her tent over countless nights. She\u2019s posted photos of her grisly discoveries online, if you have the stomach for them.<\/p>
Dickman, director of WildCRU, a top conservation research unit based at the University of Oxford, says these killings were mainly carried out by local people trying to protect their cattle and goats. Lions threaten both their livelihoods \u2013 and their lives.\u00a0<\/p>
As a scientist who\u2019s had a lifelong passion for wildlife, you might assume that Dickman would also oppose trophy hunting, where large charismatic mammals are shot by wealthy tourists at vast expense \u2013 killed so that the hunter can return home with a tale of derring-do and a head or set of horns to adorn a living-room wall with a malingering, eerie presence.<\/p>
What is trophy hunting?<\/h2>
Hunters pay a fee to track and kill animals in order to claim a part of the body as a souvenir that they can take away with them \u2013\u00a0whether it be a set of horns or antlers or even a whole head. It is important to realise that, by its very definition, trophy hunting is legal \u2013\u00a0it is not poaching. Nor is it canned hunting<\/a>, where captive animals are are hunted in small enclosures<\/p> But she doesn\u2019t. Instead, Dickman has become increasingly vocal about the probable impacts of blanket bans on trophy hunting that could lead to more animals being killed. If lions<\/a> and other species generate revenue through trophy hunting, she argues, they and their habitat are more likely to be conserved.<\/p> The maths is hard to ignore. Around three villages outside of Ruaha, Dickman and her colleagues documented the killing of 35 large carnivores in one 18-month period. \u201cThis included 25 lions killed in one year in an area of much less than 500km\u00b2,\u201d she says. In contrast, in areas managed for trophy hunting, the recommended quota is 0.5 lions per 1,000km\u00b2.<\/p> In short, the level of killing where lions have no economic value was at least 100 times higher than is \u2013 or should be \u2013 permitted under trophy hunting.\u00a0<\/p> On a personal level, I can\u2019t imagine trophy hunting. I\u2019m an animal lover, I\u2019m a vegetarian, I don\u2019t understand it. But understanding it personally is very different from understanding the evidence around it.<\/p>Amy Dickman<\/cite><\/blockquote> On a broader scale, the area of land managed for trophy hunting in Africa is greater than all of its national parks combined \u2013 1.4 million km\u00b2, roughly equivalent to France, Germany and the UK combined. \u201cOn a personal level, I can\u2019t imagine trophy hunting,\u201d says Dickman. \u201cI\u2019m an animal lover, I\u2019m a vegetarian, I don\u2019t understand it. But understanding it personally is very different from understanding the evidence around it.\u201d<\/p> According to Tim Davenport, Africa director for the conservation group Re:wild<\/a>, in Tanzania alone between 1,000 and 2,000 lions \u2013 or 4-8 per cent of the entire global population \u2013 are dependent on land managed for trophy hunting. \u201cBy stopping trophy hunting [in Tanzania] without alternative financing in place, game reserves will be turned into maize fields and cattle ranches within a few months or years,\u201d he says. \u201cI\u2019ve seen it happen dozens of times.\u201d<\/p> Not all scientists agree with Dickman and Davenport, though. Hans Bauer, who also works at WildCRU, says that trophy hunting doesn\u2019t deliver for either people or wildlife in the way that it\u2019s claimed. Hunting \u2018blocks\u2019 in many African countries are being abandoned because they don\u2019t make money. \u201cAcross Africa, in the vast majority of cases, trophy hunting has not delivered more lions \u2013 whether because of financial imbalances, increased terrorism, land mismanagement or increased livestock mobility (or a combination of these factors),\u201d he wrote in an article forThe Conservation<\/em>.\u00a0<\/p> Many countries, including UK, around the world permit trophy hunting. Visit the website Book Your Hunt, and you\u2019ll see there are numerous hunting opportunities in North America, Eastern Europe, Southern Africa and Central Asia, far fewer in South America and South-East Asia. Neither India nor Kenya permit it.<\/p> According to Adam Hart, professor of science communication at the University of Gloucester, who has co-written a comprehensive book about trophy hunting (simply called Trophy Hunting<\/em>), eight out of the top ten countries ranked for their record in conserving large mammals permit trophy hunting. They include Botswana (1st), Tanzania (3rd) and Canada (8th).<\/p> Few people paid trophy hunting much attention until a lion nicknamed Cecil was killed by US dentist Walter Palmer just outside Hwange National Park in Zimbabwe in July 2015, but supporters and opponents have been debating its rights and wrongs, with increasing vehemency, ever since.<\/p> Some people have mocked up images of Amy Dickman killing animals and posted them online, and she has received threatening letters. Celebrities such as Ricky Gervais and Joanna Lumley have also joined in the conversation, voicing their objections to trophy hunting via social media.<\/p> This year, MPs tried to pass a law that would have banned British hunters from bringing back trophies from species protected under CITES. The bill passed easily through the House of Commons, but \u2013 controversially \u2013 fell foul of filibustering by peers in the Lords.<\/p> This wasn\u2019t the only controversy stirred up by the bill. According to analysis by Hart, 75 per cent of statements made in support of the bill in the Commons were misleading or incorrect. They included the claim that lions could go extinct by 2050, something for which there is no evidence. <\/p> Tim Davenport says that many people who object to trophy hunting don\u2019t understand the realities of conservation in Africa. \u201cWhat you\u2019ve got is people discussing what they think is conservation, but it isn\u2019t \u2013 it\u2019s animal welfare,\u201d he says.<\/p> In Pakistan, the right to go after a single markhor can set you back more than $100,000 (\u00a380,000), while a prices quoted for a single white rhino<\/a> can be $140,000 (\u00a3110,000), and you can probably pay a lot more than that<\/p> But opposition to trophy hunting encompasses multiple strands. One complaint is that it perpetuates a colonial trope of rich white westerners exploiting the continent\u2019s resources, which also keeps local people in poverty and prevents other ways of funding conservation taking root. Another is that permitted quotas can be too high, resulting in declining populations. <\/p> And it\u2019s cruel \u2013 tourist hunters are unlikely to be as skilled as their professional guides and can choose to use bows and arrows instead of guns to kill their quarry. Cecil, it\u2019s claimed, took 40 hours to die.<\/p> Mucha Mkono, a lecturer in sustainable tourism at the University of Queensland, has looked at attitudes among African social media users to trophy hunting. She examined responses to news stories about the Cecil killing and found frequent references to the neo-colonial nature of the activity.<\/p> Mkono \u2013 who is Zimbabwean \u2013 says many people in Africa are uneasy with the idea of rich, white people flying in to shoot their wildlife. \u201cBlack people are economically precluded from participation in trophy hunting,\u201d she points out, \u201cand if they try to hunt wildlife for themselves, they can be penalised for poaching.\u201d<\/p> Many African leaders accuse those trying to bring an end to trophy hunting of being equally neo-colonial. It is not up to the UK or USA to tell Africans how to manage their environment, they argue \u2013 if they want to make money out of rich westerners hunting their wildlife, that\u2019s up to them.\u00a0<\/p> An equally contentious issue is what replaces trophy hunting were it to disappear. Even opponents concede that something has to.<\/p> More tourism is not the answer. A lot of trophy hunting takes place in areas that are either too remote, not sufficiently scenic, or plagued by tsetse flies, making them unviable for westerners who like their home comforts.\u00a0<\/p> But there are other alternatives, if only we were able to implement them. Ecologist and conservationist Ian Redmond, who has worked in Africa throughout his career, is a co-founder of Rebalance Earth<\/a>, a new initiative that aims to help developing nations monetise their biodiversity.<\/p> Animals such as elephants<\/a>, Redmond says, have enormous value while alive in terms of the ecosystem services they provide. It\u2019s calculated that a single forest elephant helps trees store an estimated 9,500 tonnes of CO2 per km\u00b2 by weeding out smaller trees, allowing those that survive to grow larger.<\/p> \u201cThe carbon value of a single forest elephant is $1.75 million,\u201d Ralph Chami, another co-founder of Rebalance Earth, told a conference organised by Born Free in December 2022. The forests of Gabon alone could be worth \u00a3950 million a year, he said.<\/p> But these are only notional figures. Who\u2019s actually going to pay for these services? Chami suggested that global corporations such as Microsoft will want to showcase their eco-credentials to both their consumers and investors by buying into such a market.<\/p> But not everyone is convinced. Adam Hart says the problem is that this model is effectively wealthy countries giving money to poorer ones. \u201cThat means they can stop at any point,\u201d he points out. \u201cIf they don\u2019t like the government of Zambia or there\u2019s a coup somewhere, suddenly it\u2019s \u2018What, we\u2019re paying these people?\u2019\u201d<\/p> What about the argument that trophy hunting doesn\u2019t really benefit local communities? This is perhaps the most disputed of all the claims and counter-claims. Namibia is often cited as the best example of community-run conservancies in which most of the income from the fees ends up in the hands of local people.<\/p> In fact, there is a better example \u2013 Pakistan. WildCRU researcher Bilal Mustafa has in-depth knowledge of trophy hunting in his home country \u2013 mainly species such as mountain goats called markhor (renowned for their huge, corkscrew horns), ibex and blue sheep. Hunters are willing to pay $100,000 and more for the right to shoot one of these animals, and annual incomes for a single province can be in the millions of dollars \u2013 and, crucially, 80 per cent of all income is returned to the local community.<\/p> This money is spent on schools, community centres and roads. Literacy rates in trophy hunting regions have increased from 10 to 70 per cent of the population, with girls especially benefitting. \u201cThe early marriage of girls has been reduced because of an increase in the literacy rate of girls up to 90 per cent, and most of them are also now going to university,\u201d Mustafa says.<\/p> Wildlife populations have increased. Markhor numbers in the province Gilgit Baltistan rose more than five-fold to nearly 3,000 between 2000 and 2016, and money from trophy hunting is also used to compensate those farmers who lose livestock to predators such as snow leopards.<\/p>Can trophy hunting help conservation?<\/h2>
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Does trophy hunting just take place in Africa?<\/h2>
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How much does trophy hunting cost?<\/h2>
The case against trophy hunting<\/h2>
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Can trophy hunting benefit local communities?<\/h2>
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