Hunters’ Answer to Cecil The Lion Outrage Is That We Create 53,000 Jobs

MARTIN PIETERS SAFARIS

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Hunters’ Answer to Cecil The Lion Outrage Is That We Create 53,000 Jobs
June 9, 2016 — 11:00 PM WAT Updated on June 10, 2016 — 8:44 AM WAT

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Cecil the Lion in happier times Source: Zimbabwe Parks and Wildlife Management Authority via EPA
  • Trophy hunting in Africa earns $426 million: Safari Club
  • Cecil the Lion’s death caused backlash against hunting
Hunters who travel to Africa to shoot big game had been keeping a low profile in the aftermath of global outrage provoked by the killing of Cecil the lion in Zimbabwe last year. Now they’re fighting back.

The conservation arm of Safari Club International, which suspended the membership of U.S. dentist Walter Palmer for shooting Cecil, has published research that says trophy hunting contributes $426 million dollars to eight, mostly poor sub-Saharan African countries and employs 53,000 people.

United Airlines and Delta Air Lines Inc. banned transporting animal trophies, and tighter hunting rules were introduced after Palmer shot the 13-year-old male lion, who was part of an Oxford University conservation project, after he wandered out of Zimbabwe’s Hwange National Park in July. Such restrictions threaten a vital source of income for one of the world’s poorest regions, according to SCI, home to the world’s largest collection of hunting records.


“There’s certainly some negative impacts that have been realized in the aftermath of that incident,” said Matthew Eckert, director of conservation at the Safari Club Foundation, SCI’s conservation arm, which funded the report. “It’s drawing more attention from the public to one side of the perspective, that’s the animal activist, the animal-rights movement. They’re being blinded and not seeing the importance of hunting to conservation and the people.”

Each year between 2012 and 2014 almost 19,000 international hunters, mostly from the U.S., visited the eight African countries studied in the report, spending on average two weeks and $26,000. Most of that spending is in remote rural areas where people have limited economic opportunities, it said.

“By providing jobs and income to local communities, hunting conveys a positive value to wildlife which incentivizes communities to protect game species and the land they, and all wildlife species, depend upon,” the report said.

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That’s not an argument that sits well with animal-rights organizations, which say hunting is too lightly controlled and in South Africa, the most popular destination, land owners are driven to breed animals with the biggest horns or unusual coat colors that do little for conservation. In the rest of Africa, it’s mainly wild animals on government or community land that are hunted. Botswana, Mozambique, Namibia, Tanzania, Zambia, Zimbabwe and Ethiopia were included in the study along with South Africa, where trophy hunting accounts for about 3 percent of the tourism industry.


“When you hunt it’s supposed to be selective but trophy hunters tend to just want the biggest trophies,” said Isabel Wentzel, a spokeswoman for the South Africa’s National Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals. “It’s a free-for-all.”

SOURCE: http://www.bloomberg.com/news/artic...-cecil-the-lion-outrage-we-create-53-000-jobs
 
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Thanks for sharing Martin
 
are there any honest major news papers out there that can and will report the truth about huntings role in conservation,something that joe average can and will read with his or her morning coffee?mr and mrs america do not read safari mag or visit hunting sites.
 
are there any honest major news papers out there that can and will report the truth about huntings role in conservation,something that joe average can and will read with his or her morning coffee?mr and mrs america do not read safari mag or visit hunting sites.

At this time, no.
 
Thank you Martin.
I find the last statement silly. I've never gone to Africa to hunt only the biggest horned animal. So the assumption of that cruelty society nut flys right out the window. There is no free-for-all in hunting by her definition because that would mean that representative animals are not taken as trophies.
HA!
 

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