Hunting In Africa Research Articles

A global survey of the societal benefits of trophy hunting in Africa

African trophy hunting is controversial. Central to the debate on this practice is whether it may be justified by any broader provisions to African society. These typically include meat supply to poor communities, problem animal control, and the funding of conservation and community development. The societal role of African hunting is as contested as the practice itself, with proponents advocating for the benefits of hunting, while critics point to these being inadequate. Little is known about the role of location and demography in the debate on hunting benefits. Here we circulated an anonymous online survey through our international networks. We asked respondents to indicate which (if any) benefits they thought may justify the practice and whether they supported African trophy hunting, or not. We also collected data on respondent geographic location, age, gender, and employment within conservation. The 5755 responses were analysed using multiple correspondence analysis and provided strong evidence for an association between the level of support/rejection of trophy hunting and potential benefits that were perceived to justify the practice. Funding of wildlife conservation through hunting was the most frequently selected benefit, even among many respondents with a neutral or slightly negative view toward trophy hunting as a practice. Respondents strongly opposed to trophy hunting were more likely to reject all societal benefits of hunting. There was some divergence in views between Africa-based respondents, and those outside of Africa. We suggest that any policy development on African trophy hunting be required to incorporate the views of all African stakeholders.

Angry Birds… All in a Twitter about Trophy Hunting: Are the Big Five Safe under the Eaves?

Trophy hunting has turned into a contentious global debate opposing urban westerners and rural African communities. The former argue for animal rights. The latter argue for human rights, de-colonialism and legitimacy over their resources, relying on the principle that legal rights should be given back to local people to sustainably use their wildlife. While human geography studies have examined both trophy hunting and social media influences on people and places, conservation as a body of knowledge has not yet caught up with the role of cyber-movements in spreading discourses. This paper presents a case study using netnography, content analysis and the Cycle of Aggression theory to capture the perception of Twitter users towards trophy hunting in Africa. Rural African communities are demanding a new deal in which they are shareholders rather than disempowered stakeholders in their own wildlife resource use and management. Thus, externally imposed bans, including import bans, undermine not only the foundations of sustainable wildlife management but also the rights of local peoples.

Barbara Pym’s Last Title

A STORY IS TOLD by Hazel Holt, junior colleague of Barbara Pym at the International African Institute, then close friend for life, then editor and biographer (while herself a good novelist). She records how late she was in coming to read her future colleague’s first published novel, Some Tame Gazelle. She had assumed that it was some repulsive account of big-game hunting in Africa. When she at last opened it, she was entranced.1 I like this story because my own experience was so similar. Clearly, Pym’s titles may sometimes be rather special. It would be safe to suppose that this wasn’t from mere whim or incapacity. Pym was a born writer, who would probably have liked to be a poet, as the more glamorous calling. But her gifts were for that real human world of small things that gave the novel its character, as far back as Defoe. Richly accurate as she could be, she yet worked through the excellent and unpretentious medium of ‘entertainment literature’ or romance, as a good number of the best literary artists in Britain before her had done. But loving poetry as she did, she would take a title from nineteenth century verse (Some Tame Gazelle) or seventeenth (A Glass of Blessings) even when she had to adapt it (No Fond Return of Love). These articulate memories of a classic past bring a certain half-ironic authority to the often extremely funny if touching romances that follow the titles, an effect of course increased by the frequent counterpoint of verse quotations inside the story.

The hunter and the hunted: Using web‐sourced imagery to monitor leopard (Panthera pardus pardus) trophy hunting

AbstractSustainable offtake of any threatened species and objective monitoring thereof relies on data‐driven and well‐managed harvest quotas and permit compliance. We used web‐sourced images of African leopard (Panthera pardus pardus) trophy hunts to determine whether online photographs could assist in monitoring and documenting trophy hunting in Africa. Of 10,000 images examined, 808 (8%) showed leopard trophy hunts and could be contextualized by date and country. From a subset of photos (n = 530), across six countries between 2011 and 2020, we extracted information on the leopards killed and hunter demographics. We found no significant differences in leopard sex, age, or shot wound position between countries, and most trophy leopards were in good physical condition. Most hunters were White (96%) and estimated at over 40 years old (82%), with the proportion of women hunters in younger age classes significantly higher than in older classes. Rifles, bows, and hounds were used in all countries, except Tanzania and Zambia, where rifles were exclusively used. Online images could not be reasonably compared to the CITES trade database, but in South Africa, more than half (57%) of all nationally registered leopard trophy hunts in the last decade (2010–2020) have been posted online. Online images also reveal hunting violations, including non‐permitted hunting of female leopards and illegal hounding. Such monitoring methods may become increasingly useful as social media usage grows and provide valuable insight into this multi‐million dollar industry.

Conceptualising Drivers of Illegal Hunting by Local Hunters Living in or Adjacent to African Protected Areas: A Scoping Review

Illegal hunting of wildlife by community members abutting African protected areas contributes to unsustainable use of wildlife, resulting in significant declines in wildlife populations. Contemporary intervention measures have largely been ineffective, leading to pervasive and persistent illegal hunting. Such illegal hunting of wildlife is partly exacerbated by poor understanding of what motivates people to hunt illegally. Applying a scoping review approach, this study aims at developing concepts for drivers of illegal hunting and how they influence illegal hunting behaviour by local hunters living in or adjacent to African protected areas. A total of 30 publications were included for review analysis from 1014 publications retrieved using data base searches on Google Scholar and ScienceDirect. The study identified 12 proximate and five underlying drivers, which were categorised into 10 thematic drivers of illegal hunting by local hunters. The need for survival and sustaining livelihoods was conceptualised as the key thematic driver of illegal hunting by local hunters. The study represents a novel work of conceptualising drivers of illegal hunting by local hunters with implications on the persistence of illegal hunting in Africa.

Divergent views on trophy hunting in Africa, and what this may mean for research and policy

AbstractOver the past decade, trophy hunting in Africa has seen increased public and scientific interest. Much of that attention has come from outside of Africa, with little emphasis on local views. We circulated an online survey through international networks to explore demographic and regional differences in opinion regards support for African trophy hunting, trophy import bans, and outside funding of conservation estates supported by hunting. We received ∼5700 responses and found that location, demography, and conservation background influenced opinion. African and North American respondents showed (significantly) more support for trophy hunting than respondents from Europe or other areas, as did respondents with conservation backgrounds. Unlike North Americans, Africans supported external subsidies of wildlife areas presently funded by hunting. Many factors affected opinions on African hunting, but respondent location played a major role. Realistic policy on African trophy hunting should thus integrate African perspectives, in particular those of rural communities.

Stolen Trophies: Hunting in Africa Perpetuates Neo-Colonial Attitudes and is an Ineffective Conservation Tool

Stolen Trophies: Hunting in Africa Perpetuates Neo-Colonial Attitudes and is an Ineffective Conservation Tool

The moral residue of conservation.

Should conservationists use lethal management to control introduced wildlife populations? Should they kill individual animals to protect endangered species? Are trade-offs that prioritize some values at the expense of others morally appropriate? These sorts of ethical questions are common in conservation. In debating such questions, conservationists often seem to presume 1 of 2 possible answers: the act in question is right or it is wrong. But morality in conservation is considerably more complex than this simple binary suggests. A robust conservation ethic requires a vocabulary that gives voice to the uncertainty and unease that arise when what seems to be the best available course of action also seems to involve a measure of wrongdoing. The philosophical literature on moral residue and moral dilemmas supplies this vocabulary. Moral dilemmas arise when one must neglect certain moral requirements to fulfill others. Under such circumstances, even the best possible decision leaves a moral residue, which is experienced emotionally as some form of grief. Examples of conservation scenarios that leave a moral residue include management of introduced rabbits in Australia, trophy hunting in Africa, and forest management trade-offs in the Pacific Northwest. Moral residue is integral to the moral experience of conservationists today, and grief is an appropriate response to many decisions conservationists must make. Article impact statement: Defensible conservation decisions may neglect moral requirements, leaving a moral residue; conservationists should respond with grief.

Shooting pheasants for sport: What does the death of Cecil tell us?

Abstract People hunt and kill animals for sport in many parts of the world. This raises many issues, some of which were brought to the fore when a lion Panthera leo, nicknamed Cecil, was killed by a trophy hunter in Zimbabwe in 2015. Cecil's death led to an unprecedented public reaction in Europe and the USA, and a debate in which opponents and supporters of sport hunting advanced different types of argument based on, inter alia, conservation, animal welfare and economics. The reaction to the Cecil event provides a perspective for scrutinizing sport hunting more widely. In this article we explore parallels between lion trophy hunting in Africa (which can involve either wild or captive‐bred lions) and shooting of common pheasant Phasianus colchicus, a sport which is largely sustained in the UK by the annual release of over 40 million captive‐bred birds. These two forms of sport hunting share common themes that are likely to be influential for the future of sport hunting more widely. These include the extent to which sport hunting maintains land for wildlife, and the impacts of intensification (e.g. the extent to which quarry are reared and released). Concern for the welfare of quarry animals is a dominant theme in debates about hunting. These themes are likely to be relevant for the conservation of many species hunted for sport. Increasing distaste for the killing of animals for sport in many countries may lead to the end of some types of sport hunting, with implications for both habitat and wildlife conservation. It would be both prudent and appropriate for conservationists to increase the urgency with which they seek alternative methods for preventing loss of biodiverse land to other uses. A free Plain Language Summary can be found within the Supporting Information of this article.

狩るものとしての「野生」 : アフリカにおけるスポーツハンティングが内包する問題 : カメルーン・ベヌエ国立公園地域を事例に

狩るものとしての「野生」 : アフリカにおけるスポーツハンティングが内包する問題 : カメルーン・ベヌエ国立公園地域を事例に

The Short Happy Life of Francis Macomber, de Ernest Hemingway: Notas de Leitura

This article analyses one of Ernest Hemingway's best short-stories. Full of ironies, evocations and parallels, the work has many of the underlying themes of Hemingway's fiction. Through the theme of hunting in Africa, the closeness to the wilderness and the confrontation between life and death, Hemingway offers his perspective on happiness.

Local perceptions of trophy hunting on communal lands in Namibia

Trophy hunting in Africa is currently under pressure as some countries explore various policies that aim to put a halt to an activity that many people in the Western developed world view as unpalatable or unethical. However, in the debate over trophy hunting policy the voices of local communities, who in many instances allow wildlife to persist on the lands they control because of the tangible benefits they derive from it, have been largely unheard. Here, we report on an opportunistic survey of 160 rural residents of Namibia from 32 communal conservancies that generate varying levels of livelihood benefits from wildlife uses, including trophy hunting. About three quarters of these community members were employed in some manner by the conservancy. We used a mixed methods approach to assess community members' perceptions on trophy hunting, the benefits it generates, whether it was “good” or “bad”, and how they would respond if trophy hunting were halted. 91% stated they were not in favour of a ban on trophy hunting, and only 11% of respondents would support wildlife on communal lands if a ban were in fact enacted. Most respondents (90%) were happy with trophy hunting occurring on communal lands due to the benefits it provides. These responses were consistent across respondent demographic categories, although those who stand to lose the most (i.e., those employed by or managing a conservancy), viewed trophy hunting in an even more favourable light. Our results suggest that in Namibia, a trophy hunting ban would be viewed very poorly by conservancy residents, and would seriously weaken their support for wildlife conservation. The imposition of trophy hunting policies by countries far from where rural land managers are conserving wildlife would not only restrict communities' livelihood options, but may have perverse, negative impacts on wildlife conservation.

Sustainability and Long Term-Tenure: Lion Trophy Hunting in Tanzania.

It is argued that trophy hunting of large, charismatic mammal species can have considerable conservation benefits but only if undertaken sustainably. Social-ecological theory suggests such sustainability only results from developing governance systems that balance financial and biological requirements. Here we use lion (Panthera leo) trophy hunting data from Tanzania to investigate how resource ownership patterns influence hunting revenue and offtake levels. Tanzania contains up to half of the global population of free-ranging lions and is also the main location for lion trophy hunting in Africa. However, there are concerns that current hunting levels are unsustainable. The lion hunting industry in Tanzania is run by the private sector, although the government leases each hunting block to companies, enforces hunting regulation, and allocates them a species-specific annual quota per block. The length of these leases varies and theories surrounding property rights and tenure suggest hunting levels would be less sustainable in blocks experiencing a high turnover of short-term leases. We explored this issue using lion data collected from 1996 to 2008 in the Selous Game Reserve (SGR), the most important trophy hunting destination in Tanzania. We found that blocks in SGR with the highest lion hunting offtake were also those that experienced the steepest declines in trophy offtake. In addition, we found this high hunting offtake and the resultant offtake decline tended to be in blocks under short-term tenure. In contrast, lion hunting levels in blocks under long-term tenure matched more closely the recommended sustainable offtake of 0.92 lions per 1000 km2. However, annual financial returns were higher from blocks under short-term tenure, providing $133 per km2 of government revenue as compared to $62 per km2 from long-term tenure blocks. Our results provide evidence for the importance of property rights in conservation, and support calls for an overhaul of the system in Tanzania by developing competitive market-based approaches for block allocation based on long-term tenure of ten years.

A Natural History of Modernity: Bernhard Grzimek and the Globalization of EnvironmentalKulturkritik

This article explores the doomsday vision of humans and other animals found in the nonfiction books, documentary films, and autobiography of former Frankfurt Zoological Garden director and television star Bernhard Grzimek. Focusing on his career transition in the 1940s and 1950s from veterinarian to zoological director to global conservation activist, the article shows that the Malthusian fears that underpinned Grzimek's plea for national parks in sub-Saharan Africa that segregated people and wildlife had their origins in an environmental Kulturkritik born of post-Nazi and Cold War ruminations about human aggression and environmental destruction. Grzimek portrayed both the zoo and the national park as compensation for a “great extinction” that linked the industrialized slaughterhouse in Europe to trophy hunting in Africa. This natural history of modernity envisioned a global nature commons beyond the ideologies of Christian humanism and social democracy, yet it enfolded Africans into a European narrative of development that left no room for cultural landscapes created by customary tenure and vernacular ecologies.

The Trophy Hunting of African Lions: Scale, Current Management Practices and Factors Undermining Sustainability

The trophy hunting of lions Panthera leo is contentious due to uncertainty concerning conservation impacts and because of highly polarised opinions about the practice. African lions are hunted across at least ∼558,000 km2, which comprises 27–32% of the lion range in countries where trophy hunting of the species is permitted. Consequently, trophy hunting has potential to impart significant positive or negative impacts on lions. Several studies have demonstrated that excessive trophy harvests have driven lion population declines. There have been several attempts by protectionist non-governmental organisations to reduce or preclude trophy hunting via restrictions on the import and export of lion trophies. We document the management of lion hunting in Africa and highlight challenges which need addressing to achieve sustainability. Problems include: unscientific bases for quota setting; excessive quotas and off-takes in some countries; fixed quotas which encourage over-harvest; and lack of restrictions on the age of lions that can be hunted. Key interventions needed to make lion hunting more sustainable, include implementation of: enforced age restrictions; improved trophy monitoring; adaptive management of quotas and a minimum length of lion hunts of at least 21 days. Some range states have made important steps towards implementing such improved management and off-takes have fallen steeply in recent years. For example age restrictions have been introduced in Tanzania and in Niassa in Mozambique, and are being considered for Benin and Zimbabwe, several states have reduced quotas, and Zimbabwe is implementing trophy monitoring. However, further reforms are needed to ensure sustainability and reduce conservation problems associated with the practice while allowing retention of associated financial incentives for conservation.

Infectious disease emergence and global change: thinking systemically in a shrinking world.

BackgroundConcern intensifying that emerging infectious diseases and global environmental changes that could generate major future human pandemics.MethodA focused literature review was undertaken, partly informed by a forthcoming report on environment, agriculture and infectious diseases of poverty, facilitated by the Special Programme for Tropical Diseases.ResultsMore than ten categories of infectious disease emergence exist, but none formally analyse past, current or future burden of disease. Other evidence suggests that the dominant public health concern focuses on two informal groupings. Most important is the perceived threat of newly recognised infections, especially viruses that arise or are newly discovered in developing countries that originate in species exotic to developed countries, such as non-human primates, bats and rodents. These pathogens may be transmitted by insects or bats, or via direct human contact with bushmeat. The second group is new strains of influenza arising from intensively farmed chickens or pigs, or emerging from Asian “wet markets” where several bird species have close contact. Both forms appear justified because of two great pandemics: HIV/AIDS (which appears to have originated from bushmeat hunting in Africa before emerging globally) and Spanish influenza, which killed up to 2.5% of the human population around the end of World War I. Insufficiently appreciated is the contribution of the milieu which appeared to facilitate the high disease burden in these pandemics. Additionally, excess anxiety over emerging infectious diseases diverts attention from issues of greater public health importance, especially: (i) existing (including neglected) infectious diseases and (ii) the changing milieu that is eroding the determinants of immunity and public health, caused by adverse global environmental changes, including climate change and other components of stressed life and civilisation-supporting systems.ConclusionsThe focus on novel pathogens and minor forms of anti-microbial resistance in emerging disease literature is unjustified by their burden of disease, actual and potential, and diverts attention from far more important health problems and determinants. There is insufficient understanding of systemic factors that promote pandemics. Adverse global change could generate circumstances conducive to future pandemics with a high burden of disease, arising via anti-microbial and insecticidal resistance, under-nutrition, conflict, and public health breakdown.

MARK CIOC. The Game of Conservation: International Treaties to Protect the World's Migratory Animals. (Ohio University Press Series in Ecology and History.) Athens, Ohio: Ohio University Press. 2009. Pp. 267. Cloth $44.95, paper $24.95

Mark Cioc's book is a brief but ambitious analysis of several treaties and conventions dealing with wildlife from the first half of the twentieth century. Cioc argues that the agreements should be seen as hunting treaties, not conservation treaties, because the negotiators' real goals were to preserve hunting opportunities, not protect the environment. While the agreements did have some conservationist merit, if almost by accident, they were individually and collectively missed opportunities to change human uses of migratory species for the better. In fact, Cioc calls them “‘diversions’ that provided a legal framework behind which the carnage continued” (p. 5). This description, while an admirable attempt to link disparate events, fits better for some conventions than others. Cioc divides the book into three chapters and a lengthy set of appendices. The chapters deal with conventions in 1900 and 1933 to regulate big game hunting in Africa, treaties in 1916 and 1936 to protect migratory birds in North America, and conventions in 1931, 1937, and 1946 as well as a protocol from 1938 that were primarily intended to regulate whaling in the Antarctic. The appendices cover sixty pages and include the full text of all eight of the agreements. The inclusion of these documents is helpful to the reader and makes the book useful for undergraduate courses.

Bats as bushmeat: a global review

A questionnaire survey and literature review revealed the extent of hunting of bats for bushmeat in the Old World tropics. High levels of offtake were reported throughout Asia, the Pacific islands and some Western Indian Ocean islands, where fruit bats of the genus Pteropus are eaten extensively. Most hunting in Africa was reported in western states and the largest fruit bat Eidolon helvum was preferred. Insectivorous bats are also eaten, particularly Tadarida in Asia. Hunting is both for local consumption and commercial, sometimes involving cross-border transactions. The high levels of hunting reported and the low reproductive rate of bats indicate there are likely to be severe negative effects on bat populations, and declines of several species are documented. Although there has been only one reported attempt to manage offtake, this indicates that it is possible and apparently successful. Furthermore, voluntary controls on hunting have halted declines in bat numbers. There have been several initiatives to reduce hunting pressure and conserve threatened bat species, mainly on islands that, when sustained, have been successful. More education projects and community-based conservation initiatives should be encouraged together with further attempts at sustainable harvesting in situations where disease risk has been evaluated.

The continuity of the spirit among all living things in the philosophy and literature of Henry Rider Haggard

Henry Rider Haggard is a man of many contradictions, not least concerning his representation of hunting in Africa. He is often considered as an adventure novelist whose interests lay in the supposed excitement of big game hunting. His early and most famous novels are replete with the wholesale slaughter of African animals by colonial hunters intent on profit from a landscape filled with a never‐ending supply of animals. However, even as a youth, Haggard was troubled by the killing of animals and never hunted anything he did not use himself. He took the philosophy a step further in the early twentieth century by exploring the idea that animals and humans share a common spiritual existence which manifested itself in psychic communication. This exploration is reflected in his work The Mahatma and the Hare, which encompassed both a renunciation of hunting and an allegorical delineation of the author's interest in animism. His biographers, for the most part, have neglected his appreciation of the importance of maintaining a spiritual equilibrium between man and nature which culminated in his public condemnation of commercial and sport hunting. In this he was well ahead of his time, more in line with the late twentieth‐century environmental movement than with his Victorian counterparts.

Hemingway's "Francis Macomber" in Pirandellian and Freudian Perspectives

Ernest Hemingway's Short Happy Life of (1936) is one of his finest stories. The author counted it among his best achievements, and a great number of critical readings have shown it to be a text that is supremely characteristic of Hemingway's style as well as of his subject matter, themes and preoccupations. It gives us in terse dialogue and graphic narrative, mostly from the two male characters' viewpoints, the East African setting, the safari, the action scenes, and, above all, the emotional crisis that comes to a head among the main participants. Critical discussion has centered chiefly around the ending (murder or accident?) and the evaluation of the three major characters, Robert Wilson (admirable or brutish?), Macomber (initiate to true heroism or sham virility?) and Margaret Macomber (hateful or pitiable?). (1) Other critical preoccupations have included aspects of colonialism, Hemingway's misogyny, or smaller points like the significance of the guns mentioned in the text, of the Shakespeare quotation (serious or ironical?), or the meaning of four-letter man (the c-word, of course). This essay approaches the text from two diametrically opposed angles. First it takes up the philological question of Hemingway's sources, and then it tries to supplement former readings by a psychoanalytically guided interpretation of the tale's psychodynamic deep-structure, its phantasmal scenario of early-childhood affects and object relations, in the aim of clarifying the literary profile of the story and referring it to broader psycho-cultural contexts. The quest for the sources of Hemingway's tale has hitherto been only partly successful. Biographical parallels seem to be more apparent than literary analogues. Francis is a work of fiction, but was clearly triggered off by stories and situations encountered at the African safari undertaken by Hemingway and his wife in 1933-34 (described in Green Hills of Africa, 1935). Philip Percival, the white hunter and guide of the party, is recognizable in Robert Wilson to a certain extent, although Wilson's role is less friendly and humorous than Pop's part in Green Hills of Africa. The author's strained feelings about his rich wife, Pauline Pfeiffer--they split up soon after--can be found in the depiction of Margot Macomber as a typical bitch. (The theme is also present, as is well known, in Snows of Kilimanjaro, 1936.) Margot's biting dialogue sounds different, though, from Poor Old Mama's solicitous, cheerful talk in Green Hills. Robert Wilson's clipped manner of speech, packed with Briticisms, seems partially to go back to a British infantry officer, Eric Dorman-Smith, whom Hemingway had met and admired as a young man. (2) Wilson and Macomber are, of course, also projections of Hemingway's ambivalent self-fantasies, his own particular idealizations and anxieties. Other historical persons behind the characters include the attractive Jane Mason (Hemingway's occasional lover and sportsfellow of the mid-thirties) as well as an anonymous nice jerk to whom Hemingway referred enigmatically more than twenty years after the completion of the story. (3) The ending of the narrative has historical model. Philip Percival, who had mentioned to Hemingway instances of sexual contacts between some colleagues of his and their female clients, remarked drily that to his knowledge no client has ever succeeded in shooting her husband as EH describes. (4) The literary analogues so far mentioned by critics are of a more general kind. Philip Young pointed out that Stephen Crane's novel The Red Badge of Courage (1895), one of Hemingway's favourite texts, relates, as does Hemingway's short story, a young man's passage from fear to courage. (5) Other suggested parallels include Stewart Edward White's The Land of Footprints (1912), a book Hemingway had read, which describes hunting in Africa in terms comparable to Macomber, and Leo Tolstoy's novella Death of Ivan Illich (1886), which centres around a loveless marriage and the maturation of the eponymous character. …