re: Cecil the lion's killer revealed as American dentist

quote:

---

While the idea of devolving authority over wildlife — including the right to allow trophy hunting — to landowners, including communal landowners, has spread in Zimbabwe, Botswana, South Africa, and Namibia, a very different approach is firmly in place elsewhere in Africa, most notably in Kenya. Kenya banned all consumptive use of wild species in 1977: no sport hunting, cropping, ranching, live capture and sale, taxidermy, trophies, or souvenirs. The country used the hunting ban to build its brand as the destination for wildlife tourism in Africa, and it developed a thriving industry that brings in millions of dollars each year.

---

quote:

---

Since hunting was banned in Kenya wildlife populations have dropped by 80 percent. There are far too many confounding factors to attribute direct cause and effect of either banning or promoting trophy hunting to the fate of wildlife populations in Kenya and any country in southern Africa, but the dynamic is at least sufficient to give one pause when making the claim that hunting is per se bad for Africa’s wildlife. Yet that is precisely the claim that is often made.

---

quote:

---

Blame for the drop in wildlife in Kenya and across Africa cannot at this point by lain at the doorstep of trophy hunters. The leading causes are habitat loss caused by expanding human settlement, agriculture, and other kinds of land use incompatible with wildlife, followed by uncontrolled hunting, usually for bushmeat. In short, uncompetitive returns from wildlife compared with those from livestock or agriculture create incentives for landowners to convert any rangeland with agricultural potential to cultivation.

As habitat disappears, the risk of conflict between people and large and dangerous animals increases. Such conflicts are rarely resolved in favor of wildlife, unless people have exceptionally strong incentives to do so. The challenge of creating such incentives are so significant that some conservationists believe it may be time to abandon the ideal of coexistence and instead admit that the only solution is to separate people and wildlife altogether, with fences.

---