In the initial article by pro trophy hunting lobbyist and scientist, Amy Dickman, she looks at the potential problems with banning the activity. Here I suggest that she has omitted many important points on this vast subject. I also suggest that she is looking at the worst-case scenario and not considered that we have alternatives.
One of the main points that is not mentioned here is that not all of those who propose a trophy ban are proposing an outright ban on hunting.
Banning trophies doesn’t mean people won’t come and hunt. How it affects the potential hunting market does need to be studied but even if hunters cant bring trophies home many will still come to hunt an elephant. The article comes across as if it’s a total hunting ban but have you studied what the implications actually are in terms of potential numbers of hunters or revenue lost?
Then another point not talked about here are the deep issues surrounding the activity. Sure as a white person sitting in privilege you can find some points as to why TH may look good on paper but what does it do to the black person in Africa?
The trophy hunting industry must be over 90% white male sport? In Africa, it is for foreigners. The poor black man brought up off social grants in Africa is made to be a poacher for shooting wildlife in his tribal lands (even to put food on the table for his family) while a rich foreigner who benefited off capitalism in another country can come and shoot animals on the same land just because he has the money and can get a permit from a government which usually doesn’t care about the locals they pretend to care about.
This is a huge issue and why we need to shift from trophy hunting to sustainable hunting where locals are not still being sidelined by neo-colonialist activities which still only benefit the rich. The implications of rich whites coming to hunt in the lands of poor blacks do not sit well at many levels and probably have far-reaching implications to wildlife and wild area that we don’t fully understand.
Don’t forget the activity also had foreigners coming out and killing the herds over the last few centuries, killing off migrations and driving species extinct. I’m sure you have heard of the Bluebuck or Qagga from the Cape area of South Africa. You would have noted that unmanaged hunting killed them off. They are extinct. There is poorly managed hunting all over this continent still and even though it has caused the extinction of mammals and far more birds around the world, your words are “But it seems no one can cite a single species for which trophy hunting is a major threat”. My cheeky question to you is did you ask?
You also have not covered habitat degradation as well as your colleague did, and how trophy hunting areas are becoming degraded. It is highly possible that banning trophies will shift the way the industry operates in Africa – something needs to change and if the hunting industry isn’t prepared to improve the way it operates then we will have to find other ways such as bans and hope that the outcomes will be different to the trajectory they are headed in now.
NP
