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Can legalised-hunting help conservation?

United Kingdom Sully Offline
Ecology & Rewilding
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#46
( This post was last modified: 07-10-2020, 01:08 AM by Sully )

With trophy hunting and the discussion around it, its framed as animal welfare vs conservation. This is misleading however. Ethics are a part of both sides, just those that support trophy hunting (who are genuine about conservation) apply a utilitarian approach to it, rather than a more personal analysis of the means to which the ends are achieved. Ethically it's as arbitrary, why is it right to view animals as figures that comprise a population? This is an important question. There is a deeper ethical discussion to be had here which I have my own views on but will diverge from the conversation, but bluntly, emotions vs facts is not the correct paradigm to view this debate by. Not to mention the idea trophy hunting achieves its desired goal is questionable to say the least.

For me, even if trophy hunting worked completely in the way it's intended to, I still wouldn't support it. Culling the human population would also undoubtedly work in curbing the climate crisis, but it wouldn't cross a rational persons mind because it's clearly morally wrong. It's the same thing for me.
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United States Pckts Offline
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#47
( This post was last modified: 07-10-2020, 03:27 AM by Pckts )

Nicholas Mcphee

Interesting article and something all Social Media Eco warriors should read.



As i work in tourism i find it amusing when i read or hear people saying shut down all hunting reserves overnight and convert them to tourism. Well thats great in theory but most modern day travellers sadly want guaranteed sightings of habiuated animals in 5 star lodges or travel with a budget so low that costs alone are not covered and environmental impacts are high.



Very few modern travellers want or have a viable budget to do wildlife tours in remote, non established areas with limited infrustructure.



Before jumping on the bandwagon perhaps read about animal agriculture conflicts, loss of habitat, Asian Bone trade, snaring for bush meat etc. The media obsession with Trophy hunting is forcing the sheep to not see the real causes for drastic declines. My personal theory for the hype is NGOS hype of trophy hunting is so they can get more money raised for donations by clueless Eco warriors who's money gets eaten up on corporate lunches and does nothing on the ground for wildlife.



Even when bioligists write about the main causes of declines the media and socal media eco warriors will still rant about Trophy hunting while enjoying a Amazon raised Beef burger that probably directly caused countless Jaguars and Pumas to be shot.


I personally would love a day when trophy hunting stopped, but we must be careful what we wish for. Unless tourists /wildlife lovers want to buy up millions of hectares and start changing travel habits then its likely that blanket bans would cause more harm than good.

https://hughwebsterauthor.wordpress.com/...I#comments
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Matias Offline
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#48
( This post was last modified: 09-22-2020, 05:55 AM by Matias )




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Matias Offline
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#49
( This post was last modified: 08-26-2021, 05:23 AM by Matias )

Quote:By Emmanuel Koro

If you want to be the number one enemy in rural African communities, tell them to stop using their land for cattle production. Cattle are considered a status symbol in Africa. A family’s wealth or status is generally measured by the size of the herd of cattle it owns.
Despite this, Namibia’s Anabeb Conservancy residents switched from using their land for cattle production in favour of wildlife trophy hunting. Why did they do this?

The benefits that the Anabeb Conservancy’s 200 households have been receiving from hunting over the years led to a decision in 2019 to completely abandon a centuries-old African culture of using land to support cattle. Today, wildlife roams freely where herds of cattle used to graze. It is a rare cultural transformation brought about by the extraordinary and life-changing wildlife hunting benefits.

For Anabeb Conservancy members, wildlife hunting brings more money and makes more economic and conservation sense than cattle. Cattle need more water and grazing land than wildlife. The wildlife land-use option also reduces human-wildlife conflict, as there are no wildlife revenge-killings for attacks on their cattle.

*This image is copyright of its original author

Water made available to remote communities because of hunting

“If you sell one cow you get US$125(N$2000) while a kudu fetches US$935 (N$15 000) or more depending on size,” said Anabeb Conservancy Chairman, Ovehi Kasaona, in an interview this week. “Therefore, our Conservancy decided last year to sell all our cattle and use the land for wildlife hunting and tourism lodges that we have built using hunting revenue.”

The hunting benefits to Namibia’s Anabeb Conservancy include the provision of water “within a five-metre distance for each household.” This has drastically reduced the long distances women and children would walk every day to fetch water in the dry landscape.

These impressive advancements due to hunting revenue have resulted in a significant improvement to people’s livelihoods in the Anabeb Conservancy, including better educational, health and sanitation services. The Conservancy recently used some of this revenue to buy an ambulance for the local clinic, making it easier for pregnant women and other residents from this community to receive emergency medical care. This, in turn, helps to prevent needless loss of lives.


Full access link: Namibia – Why rural communities choose wildlife hunting over cattle
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Matias Offline
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#50

The September 26 TEDx talk by Mike Arnold (a member of the American Association for the Advancement of Science) highlights the work of the Zambezi Delta Safaris in Coutada 11, Marromeu Complex, Mozambique. Filmed on site, Mike explains conservation through trophy hunting, subsistence fishing programs, improving agricultural practices, habitat protection and restoration, as well as the differences between regulated hunting and poaching.






Remembering that the Zambeze Delta Safaris, together with the Cabela's Foundation, were responsible for the reintroduction of lions (24 lions), today its population has tripled. Recently reintroduced 11 cheetahs.

"It doesn't matter if conservation is done by ecotourists or regulated hunters, the difference is good governance, good projects, good attitudes... letting local communities receive the financial flow of living with wildlife.
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Matias Offline
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#51
( This post was last modified: 01-25-2023, 06:28 PM by Matias )

Habitat use of and threats to African large carnivores in a mixed-use landscape

Quote:Large carnivore site use

Full large carnivore detection and site use model rankings are in Appendix S4.

At the home range scale, across all PAs, lions were best predicted by low illegal human activity (β = 0.63 [SE 0.28]) (Figure 2 & Table 1), regular law enforcement (β = 0.59 [0.26]), and high buffalo site use (β = 0.52 [0.25]) (Figure 2), which all had a significant effect. Lion site use exhibited a nonsignificant positive association with actively managed hunting areas, Acacia-Commiphora habitat, and proximity to a ranger post. The overarching management strategy (i.e., photographic vs. hunting tourism) had no meaningful association with lion occurrence. Within hunting areas, lions exhibited a significant association only with actively managed hunting areas (β = 1.16 [0.44]). At the scale of short-term use within their home range, lions were significantly associated with areas of high buffalo site use (β = 0.25 [0.07]) and proximity to riparian habitat (β = 0.18 [0.07] (Table 1) and nonsignificantly associated with areas of high impala and greater kudu availability.

At the home range scale, across all PAs, leopard site use did not exhibit significant relationships with any of the covariates. The species nevertheless exhibited nonsignificant positive associations with regular law enforcement, actively managed hunting areas, and greater availability of riparian habitat. Neither overarching management strategy (photographic or hunting tourism) nor illegal human activity affected leopard occurrence at this scale. No significant effects were observed when also restricting the analysis to hunting areas, although active block management was the covariate with the greatest summed model weight (Table 1). For both analyses, the large covariate β coefficients suggested that the species’ high naïve occupancy was likely confounding results to an extent. Within their home range, leopard site use was best predicted by increasing distance to PA boundary (β = 0.14 [SE 0.05]) and more cover (β = 0.10 [0.05]), both of which had a significant effect. Leopards were also nonsignificantly positively associated with areas of the home range with higher greater kudu and mean ungulate prey availability.


At both scales, there was little evidence of any covariate having a strong impact on cheetahs; the null model received strong support. It was not possible to model cheetah site use within hunting areas due to the low number of detections (5) and resulting low naïve occupancy (0.06).


At the home range scale, across all PAs, wild dog site use was best predicted by high availability of prey (β = 1.76 [SE 0.69]) (Table 1) and greater distance to large rivers (β = 1.00 [0.43]) (Figure 2). Similar effects were observed within hunting areas, alongside a nonsignificant positive association with miombo woodlands. Whether an area was used for photographic or hunting tourism appeared to not affect wild dog occurrence. Short-term wild dog site use was significantly positively associated with greater kudu (β = 0.51 [0.21]) and impala (β = 0.49 [0.22]) site use and with relatively greater distance to PA boundary (β = 0.55 [0.25]) and cover (β = 0.59 [0.25]).

Because spotted hyaenas were detected at all sampled sites at the home range scale, it was not possible to model habitat use at this scale. This suggests that, at this spatial scale, spotted hyaenas were using virtually all areas within PAs in the landscape. At the short-term use scale, spotted hyaena exhibited a significant positive relationship with buffalo site use (β = 0.29 [SE 0.04]) (Table 1) and a significant negative association with roan and sable site use (β = 0.13 [0.04]). Spotted hyaenas were also nonsignificantly positively associated with areas of the home range close to riparian habitat.


Competing management strategies and the growing threat of hunting area abandonment


Whether an area was designated for hunting or photographic tourism did not affect large carnivore occurrence. This result mirrors Mills et al.’s (2020) finding of comparable occurrence of lions in hunting concessions and NPs in West Africa. Nonetheless, we recommend further research into whether hunting offtake is eliciting finer-scale effects on the study populations. For example, while hunting did not affect leopard site use in Zimbabwe, it negatively affected abundance (Searle et al., 2020), and similar effects have been noted for lions (Creel et al., 2016). Our results nevertheless suggest that large carnivores can persist in hunting areas if these are effectively managed, and that management and protection levels are a better determinant of persistence than whether the area is used for photographic or hunting tourism (as also noted by Bauer et al. [2015]).


Further evidence of this was provided by our finding that large carnivores were faring better in areas with evidence of regular and sustained law enforcement activities than areas without (WMAs, GCA, OA, sections of the NP and GR), and in actively managed hunting areas compared with those left vacant by operators (Figure 3). In both cases, we believe this is primarily a result of differences in management resources. In Tanzania, NPs and GRs generally receive greater conservation investment than WMAs, GCAs, and OAs (Stoner et al., 2007; this study), and the higher illegal human activity and lower wildlife occurrence observed in the latter confirm patterns noted elsewhere (Oberosler et al., 2019; Stoner et al., 2007). Similarly, hunting operators in Tanzania are required to support regular protection activities within their blocks (MNRT, 2018). When blocks are vacated, management is returned to the Tanzania Wildlife Management Authority (TAWA), which often lacks the resources to effectively protect such vast areas, particularly without the income generated from hunting activities (EU, 2017; MNRT, 2016; TAWA, personal communication). Our findings thus suggest that increased protection associated with the presence of hunting operators can improve the management of wildlife habitats in the absence of other sources of conservation funding. Nevertheless, we were unable to determine whether poor management by hunting operators played a role in blocks becoming degraded before they were abandoned. This possibility should not be excluded, given past evidence of overharvesting (Brink et al., 2016; Packer et al., 2011). Ensuring sustainable practices, and that operators implement regular protection activities, should be a priority for PA managers.

Regardless of underlying drivers, block vacancy was the best predictor of lion and leopard absence within hunting areas, indicating that the high level of human disturbance in vacant hunting blocks is a key conservation threat in the study landscape. From 2014 to 2018, approximately half of Tanzania's hunting areas, covering almost 150,000 km2, were vacated by hunting operators (FZS, 2018). Thus, if the situation in Ruaha-Rungwa is indicative of vacant blocks elsewhere in the country, the dereliction of protective management associated with hunting block vacancy may present a novel and important threat to Tanzania's biodiversity. This is likely to be the case especially where human population density around PA boundaries is high, as in parts of the study area. We, therefore, encourage further research into this emerging threat, both in Tanzania and in other countries experiencing similar trends of hunting area abandonment (Zambia and Mozambique; FZS, 2018).

In light of these findings, we also caution against attempts to phase out trophy hunting (or, more specifically, protection activities associated with it) without appropriate alternatives being in place (Dickman et al., 2019; Lindsey et al., 2007). Given the ongoing conservation funding shortage (Lindsey et al., 2018) and the size of the areas of concern, both consumptive and nonconsumptive strategies are likely to be required to preserve Africa's vast network of wildlife areas (Dickman et al., 2019; Lindsey et al., 2007). These will likely have to involve mechanisms that are both established (photographic and hunting tourism) and innovative (e.g., debt for nature swaps, carbon payments, conservation basic incomes, private philanthropy, joint ventures with the private or nongovernmental organization sectors, and sustainable livestock-wildlife systems [Buscher & Fletcher, 2020; Lindsey et al., 2014]). We, therefore, urgently recommend investments to identify and implement solutions to what appears to be a novel and potentially severe threat to the region's wildlife and its habitats.

I posted in this thread because of the message of the Article and the endorsement of its consecrated postulants: Phillipp Henschel, Amy Dickman, David Macdonald and newcomer Paolo Strampelli.

In the discussions I participated in, I always defended that trophy hunting is a conservation tool that, when well managed, maintains the landscape and all the wildlife that lives in it. It conserves populations, not individuals. The biggest problem is leaving the land vacant (deprived of any kind of conservation action that prevents the traditional use of the land). More important than our personal preferences is the understanding that replacing the regulated hunting industry in Africa requires a tried and tested model that can maintain and develop this land for people to use in conjunction with the full enjoyment of wildlife. This model does not yet exist, and anyone who calls for the cancellation of regulated hunting is, as a result, making millions of hectares lost to conservation – What happens when concessionaires of hunting areas return their concessions to the local government? So far, no African government has made them new national parks. People occupy and kill all wildlife for consumption and trade. When a good hunting block no longer has “a concessionaire/tenant”, people run out of time to get everything they can before the government grants a new authorization to another concessionaire. However, if the return is due to commercial unfeasibility caused by the loss/absence of customers, all this land will be lost forever. It is necessary to look responsibly when seeking a goal, the side effects can prove to be disastrous for the animals you want to conserve. There is nothing more pragmatic than keeping land free from traditional human use.

It is also an effective way to understand how important the wildlife management areas (WMA and GMA) are for the conservation of the Greater Ruaha landscape.
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Matias Offline
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#52

A review of the ecological and socioeconomic characteristics of trophy hunting across Asia

Quote:Abstract

The continuing debates about trophy hunting should be underpinned by an understanding of at least the basic characteristics of the practice (e.g. species, quotas, areas, prices). Whilst many countries in Asia have established trophy hunting programmes of considerable importance to conservation and local livelihoods, there remains some ambiguity over the extent of trophy hunting in Asia as its basic characteristics in each country have not been compiled. In this study, we compile information on various ecological and socioeconomic characteristics of trophy hunting of mammals for countries across Asia by reviewing published and unpublished literature, analysing trade data, and obtaining contributions from in-country contacts. Across Asia, established trophy hunting programmes exist in at least 11 countries and target at least 30 species and one hybrid (incl., five Vulnerable and one Endangered species). Trophy hunting in these countries varies markedly in areas (e.g. >1 million km2 in Kazakhstan, 37% of country, vs. 1325 km2 in Nepal, <1% of country) and annual offtakes (e.g. Kazakhstan: 4500 individuals from 4 of 5 trophy species; Pakistan: 229 from 4 of 7; Mongolia: 155 from 6 of 9; Tajikistan: 126 from 3 of 6; Nepal: 22 from 3 of the 4 that are trophy hunted in practice). Permit prices also vary across species and countries, with domestic and international hunters sometimes charged different rates. Hunters from the USA appear overwhelmingly prominent among international clients. National legislations typically mandate a proportion of trophy hunting revenue to accrue locally (range: 40–100%). We provide five key recommendations for research to inform trophy hunting policy in Asia: (1) Ecological impact assessments; (2) Socioeconomic impact assessments; (3) Evaluations of the contributions of trophy hunting to conservation spending; (4) Evaluations of the contributions of trophy hunting to the post-2020 Global Biodiversity Framework; (5) Further examinations of perceptions of trophy hunting.
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Matias Offline
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#53
( This post was last modified: 03-09-2023, 11:55 PM by Matias )

Toxic Twitter abuse could skew UK wildlife law



Quote:Wildlife conservation efforts could suffer because toxic online rows about trophy hunting are becoming increasingly abusive, ecologists have warned.

Scientists have analyzed hundreds of tweets about trophy hunting and found that 7% were abusive. This is a similar proportion to content on partisan topics on social media platforms known to highlight extreme viewpoints.


The findings, by conservation scientists at the University of Reading and the University of Sheffield, are published today (March 9) in the journal Conservation Biology.


Graphic images posted on Twitter of tigers, crocodiles, giraffes and elephants shot by hunters often provoke angry responses from Twitter users. For example, in two tweets examined by the researchers, one user says a trophy hunter "deserved to die" and another said trophy hunters should "shoot yourselves."

As a result of this hostile atmosphere, arguments from some conservationists, who suggest trophy hunting might be positive overall for protecting species and habitats, are often shouted down by the opponents of hunting. This means different conservation viewpoints are not heard and policymakers are less aware of them.

Lions, lies and legislation

Quote:Are African animals the responsibility of UK politicians? It certainly seems MPs think so, according to a short film Tweeted recently by the Leader of the House of Commons, regarding Henry Smith’s Hunting Trophies (Import Prohibition) Bill. It shows Penny Mordaunt solicitously asking Smith “Are you ready?” as he prepares to ‘protect’ wildlife. 


The only wildlife shown is African, transplanted into hallowed UK settings. A cheetah calmly sits outside Parliament. An elephant stands, magnificent, in the halls of UK power. A zebra lies down in the lobby. A leopard reclines on the stairs. A lion relaxes in the centre of the House. It is beautiful — and extremely jarring for many viewers, particularly Africans, who have protested against it. 

It jars because the film is a searingly accurate insight into how wildlife is perceived in this Bill. The focus is exclusively on beautiful, docile individuals, entirely removed from the context of their habitat, populations, and those countries and communities who actually conserve them. In the real world, these animals require massive areas of land. Real lions, leopards and elephants kill and injure people, attack livestock and destroy entire harvests, imposing huge costs on often-vulnerable communities. Protected areas come with major economic and opportunity costs. People need tangible reasons to put up with this – and trophy hunting is one such reason. Just as with photo-tourism, it helps incentivise governments and communities to maintain wild habitats and biodiversity. These areas are vast — more lion range, for example, is conserved in hunting areas than in National Parks. 

But aren’t these animals part of our global heritage? The lion is, after all (and slightly oddly), the UK national animal. Aren’t rich white hunters killing the last few of these magnificent animals, driving them ever closer to extinction?
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