Does allowing wealthy tourists to kill wild animals actually help conservation?
ByJAMES FAIR
TROPHY HUNTING●
S ince 2009, Amy Dickman has come across some horrific sights on the edge of Ruaha National Park in Central Tanzania where she studies, and tries to resolve, conflict between people and predators. They included lion cubs that had been speared and dumped in the bush and the carcasses of six lions, and 70 rare vultures, poisoned and left to endure long and painful deaths.
She’s wept in her tent over countless nights. She’s posted photos of her grisly discoveries online, if you have the stomach for them.
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 – and their lives.
As a scientist who’s 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 – 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.
But she doesn’t. 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 and other species generate revenue through trophy hunting, she argues, they and their habitat are more likely to be conserved.
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. “This included 25 lions killed in one year in an area of much less than 500km²,” she says. In contrast, in areas managed for trophy hunting, the recommended quota is 0.5 lions per 1,000km².
In short, the level of killing where lions have no economic value was at least 100 times higher than is – or should be – permitted under trophy hunting.
On a broader scale, the area of land managed for trophy hunting in Africa is greater than all of its national parks combined – 1.4 million km², roughly equivalent to France, Germany and the UK combined. “On a personal level, I can’t imagine trophy hunting,” says Dickman. “I’m an animal lover, I’m a
