Take a deep breath everyone,聽trophy hunting is back in the news. Let鈥檚 see what we can do to calm the Internet outrage machine before it really gets going.
Here鈥檚 the backstory:聽the Department of the Interior announced it was going聽to begin allowing hunters to bring elephant trophies back to the U.S. from Zimbabwe and Zambia, then President Trump stated he was going to cancel that order.听The Obama Administration banned such imports back聽in 2014, due to what it saw as .听
Elephants are among the most intelligent and social of animals, and their numbers in Africa have fallen from a pre-industrial high of 10聽million to . So hunting them is bad, right? Well, that鈥檚 why everyone gets so outraged on the Internet about trophy hunting. But it鈥檚 not necessarily the reality.
Give me a few paragraphs to explain before you start shouting at your computer screen.
There are two major factors contributing to shrinking聽elephant populations: poaching聽and habitat loss. 聽that the illegal trade in ivory could be worth as much as $1 billion a year, and that up to 23,000 elephants are being poached each year. That鈥檚 dramatic and dangerous, but the biggest threat elephants and other large animals聽face聽is from ever-expanding聽human civilization, and the聽towns, roads, and agriculture that eat away at their聽habitat. People who rely on farming and cattle ranching value the land and the crops that grow on it.听Which means that the聽elephants that graze on that land are聽a threat to business.听聽
Sport hunting, counterintuitively, can counteract聽both habitat loss and poaching聽by giving the elephants a legitimate monetary value. Elephant hunts cost tens of thousands of dollars; that profit turns the animals聽from a nuisance聽into a valuable commodity. If a land owner stands to profit more from elephant hunts聽than he does from cattle farming, he'll allow more elephants to remain wild, and he also has the incentive聽to protect the animals from poaching. Many of the owners of land where聽elephants are hunted hire armed security teams to protect the animals聽from poachers.听
For example, hunting has in Zimbabwe as government-owned habitat. Without the cash from hunting, that might not be possible. In northeast Namibia, the number of elephants living on hunting reserves increased from . Hunting helped increase the number of the rare desert elephants in the country .听聽Of course, there are聽also examples of the system failing elephants. Trophy imports from Zimbabwe were banned by the DOI after by poachers there, and not enough of the cash from hunting has gone back into fighting poachers.听
One thing trophy hunting does not achieve is an economic benefit to local communities. Due largely to corruption, , and government officials. There聽is聽some hyper-local benefit from hunting, as local villagers are given the meat from kills, and that鈥檚 often their best source of protein.
By聽making elephants a source of revenue, the rich land owners聽that聽profit from elephant hunting are motivated to .听Teddy Roosevelt considered hunters the great conservationists. He once wrote:聽
In a civilized and cultivated country wild animals only continue to exist at all when preserved by sportsmen.听 The excellent people who protest against all hunting, and consider sportsmen as enemies of wild life, are ignorant of the fact that in reality the genuine sportsman is by all odds the most important factor in keeping the larger and more valuable wild creatures from total extermination.
Why can鈥檛 photo tourism replace hunting?聽An individual hunter spends large sums of money on a hunt, without requiring much聽infrastructure. Tourism largely takes place in National Parks. Hunting takes place on private land. Hunting protects elephants and their habitat in areas other than National Parks, where they wouldn't otherwise have any protections.听
National Geographic sums it up well. 鈥淐onservancy lands given over to trophy hunting have the added benefit of keeping the wild, wild,鈥 .
In short, sport-hunting is a聽for-profit private system that can help聽conserve elephant populations.听If people are getting rich from elephant hunting, then those people are聽financially聽incentivized to protect those elephants.听That鈥檚 my quick-and-dirty explanation of how hunting can benefit animals like the elephant. Sadly, it doesn鈥檛 always work out as well as it should, and for every example of a well-managed, scientifically-sound elephant-management policy working in benefit of the species, there are short-sighted聽assholes who fail to behave ethically to the benefit of the species. Pretty much all the countries in which elephants live and are hunted are not doing a good enough job of preventing poaching. And the international community is聽not doing a good enough job of eliminating the demand for ivory.听Yet, on the whole, hunting is still crucial to animal conservation in Africa for the simple reason that the money it brings sets aside vast amounts聽of protected habitat.听We don't have a better system to replace it with yet.听
It鈥檚 reasonable to want to find a better way to protect these animals聽and find ways to live alongside them harmoniously.听But we鈥檙e not going to get there if we don鈥檛 at least start that discussion from a place of rationality and knowledge. Outrage and ignorance won't聽help anyone鈥攅specially not the elephants.听