HARARE: The outcry over the killing of the lion Cecil in Zimbabwe by an American dentist called Walter Palmer is already producing conseqences. Trophy hunters need to carry the animals’ body parts home, so if airlines turn their shipment down, their plans will be frustrated. This is what Delta Airlines has just announced it will be doing.
The company issued a statement saying it will “officially ban shipment of all lion, leopard, elephant, rhinoceros and buffalo trophies worldwide as freight. Delta will also review acceptance policies of other hunting trophies with appropriate government agencies and other organizations supporting legal shipments,” it said.
Delta was the target of a petition with nearly 400,000 signatures urging it to join South African Airways in the ban. Delta is the only U.S. carrier with direct routes to South Africa and it holds a key position to disrupt the flux of animal trophies from that continent.
Other airlines are also signaling they will introduce similar bans; these include Air France, KLM, Iberia, IAG Cargo, Singapore Airlines and Qantas. Sumofus, a non-profit organization, has an ongoing petition targeted at airlines urging them to introduce a ban.
What the episode shows is that a huge portion of the public opposes to trophy hunting as something immoral and totally unacceptable. The idea that someone will fork out tens of thousands of dollars to snuff out an animal – and then display it in their living room – does not resonate for many people and experts, not to mention animal rights activists. A petition asking American authorities to extend the Endangered Species Act to include lions has gathered more than one million signatures. Congressmen have acted swiftly to introduce bills to protect lions as well. Sixty-one per cent of the people who hunt in Zimbabwe are Americans.
On the other hand, some people argue that trophy hunting helps finance conservation efforts, although the Cecil case casts a questioning light on such assertion. Zimbabwe does need tourism as the sector accounts for more than 10 percent of its GDP. However, hunting represents a small fraction of another much friendlier form of tourism callee ecotourism. According to a CNBC report, the Zimbabwe Conservation Task Force, ecotourism rakes in $200 million annually, white hunting contributes a mere $20 million.
The fact is that even proponents of this type of hunting (aka “canned” hunting) acknowledge its limitations as a conservation tool, one that many people would find counterintuitive. In this 2009 report compiled by the West and Central African Protected Areas Programme, the authors say the strategy has shown mixed results.
“Hunting areas are less resistant to external pressures than national parks, and thus will play a lesser role in future conservation strategies,” it said. It went on to acknowledge the main point of it was the income stream from the hunters without support from donors and government. Whether that translates into conserving life is not so clear.
In 2013, Economists At Large estimates said the value of trophy hunting is often overestimated and put the value of this activity as around $200 million all over Africa, which is a drop in the ocean compared with the region’s GDP of $2.4 trillion. It also said that a tiny fraction of that money (three to five percent) actually benefits local economies. Is it really worth it, considering the bad PR and how easily trophy hunting can be corrupted into poaching? Kenya banned trophy hunting in 1977 and it makes $600 million annually with ecotourism, which seems to show that keeping animals alive is much more profitable – and, of course, ethical.
