African conservationists talk about Big Game Trophy hunting

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Trevor Lane, whose nonprofit Bhejane Trust defends Zimbabwe's dwindling rhino population, has no illusions about what would happen without trophy hunting. Lane cautions that "if we took the hunting out of those [impoverished] areas without offering an alternative, the [animals] would be poached out within two years. There would be nothing left."

Namibia's environment and tourism minister, Pohamba Shifeta, agrees, warning that the airline trophy transport bans spell "the end of conservation in Namibia" since hunters will stop coming if they can't fly their trophies home with them. He explained that "if have no income, they will abandon their role in protecting the country's natural resources."

Some animal-rights activists, such as Jeff Flocken, the North American regional director of the International Fund for Animal Welfare, have suggested that "ecotourism" - shooting animals with cameras instead of rifles - could replace trophy hunting as a viable revenue stream. Flocken praises Kenya's 1977 hunting ban as a successful model for the rest of the continent to emulate.

Yet since the ban was implemented, poachers have wiped out 70 percent of the nation's wildlife, according to the director of the Kenyan conservation group Living with Lions.

Experts on the ground in Africa warn that ecotourism can't compensate for trophy-hunting revenues. John Hanks, former head of the World Wildlife Fund's South Africa chapter, calls trophy hunting "absolutely essential." David Macdonald, the director of the Oxford University research team that was studying Cecil the lion, told National Geographic that photo safaris won't provide revenue in enough areas to combat poaching.

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