Eulogy of Opportunities Missed

By: Paul Stones, a member of the SAMPEO Group, South Africa’s most professional and experienced outfitters.
Websites: South African Outfitters | Paul Stones Safaris Africa

How many times has it been said that, “Hunting will not last 10 more years”. I have heard this statement made many times in my hunting career which, to date, spans some 25 years. To me, and for the very first time, this statement is starting to ring true although I cannot be totally sure of the actual time frame.

Hunting is disappearing in Africa, of this there can be absolutely no doubt. Today it is not a patch on what it was even 10 years ago, a fact seemingly unnoticed by many South Africans in the game and hunting industries. In the recent past we lost both Botswana and Zambia and, although Zambia has now reopened, much damage will have been done over the past two years of inactivity through the poaching of game. We can only hope that all will once again thrive through responsible hunting.

Zimbabwe is not close to what it once was, not by a country mile. The CAR is now regarded as one of the most dangerous countries on earth. Boko Haram threatens parts of the Cameroon. These may be perceptions to some but realities to many paying clients concerned about their well-being when it comes to booking hunts and paying deposits.

I can accept that much of the decline is exceptionally hard to control. For example, socio-economics factors in Africa play a huge role. Amongst them poverty, population explosion, unemployment, political interference, incompetent governments and corrupt officials are all factors that create environments where hunting suffers. An unavoidable chasm in Africa you may well be right in thinking.

However, when the threat comes from within and from forces that we can actually control, it is far more dangerous to our existence. The term “treason” comes readily to mind! A dictionary’s definition – “the betrayal of a trust or confidence; treachery”. A strong statement? An uneducated fool’s ramblings? Or maybe a truth that many do not wish to hear?

In the current turmoil of the hunting world, Africa and, more to the point, South Africa, has what no other continent or African country, respectively, has to offer. Unquestionably the largest variety of quarry species on the continent, we also have the most varied hunting habitat anywhere in Africa. We are logistically advantaged, we offer a first world tourism service…I can go on and on, the list is long and distinguished. We have the opportunity to create the finest hunting destinations for quality, experience and value anywhere in the world. In this we have no peers even if our erstwhile neighbours are included in this comparison! Why then the clear feeling of negativity in this writing?

The game industry in South Africa was born on the back of professional hunting – an indisputable fact. Out of cow, sheep and goat dung and barbed wire misery a Phoenix was born. Outfitters offered more money to domestic livestock farmers then they ever would have imagined possible for half the work and even less expense.

The industry grew, wildlife numbers increased and the game ranching industry flourished as did the outfitters of that era. All rightly so and all cards fairly dealt. A fairy tale of conservation success. Oh how those heady days of early beginnings and solid relationships between hunter and farmer have now diminished. In many cases the symbiotic relationship is no longer what it was. Landowners – often wealthy businessmen with no acumen for anything other than money making – pull the strings of a once glorious industry. The puppeteers control and the puppeteers will reap the rewards of their ignorance of an industry that few ever truly understood and even less are truly successful in.

South Africa has been tagged as a joke for many years by much of the African hunting fraternity. A misconception for sure but, at times, we do ourselves no favours in attempting to stem the tide of criticism. We have ridden this negativity with aplomb, business has continued to come to our shores and for that we can be grateful.

Today a very different threat now lurks. Our hunting grounds are being carved up into breeding pens, colour variants flourish. They are a worthless addition to our famed “conservation ethic”, contrary to the drivel those that pedal these obscenities, spout! “They are bred for the demand of the hunting industry” they say. How noble of them to consider us, while they actually dupe many to pour their life savings into the “future” of game ranching. When all have acquired the “golden geese”, whom will buy the eggs, I ask?
Without question it will not be the hunting industry. Our clientele by and large hunt for the experience of an African safari, hot coffee around hotter fires, wild animals in wilder areas with the possibility of the unknown and the assurance of value for the product we offer.

Coloured, line bred, caged, corn fed, photographed, vaccinated, catalogued and priced through ignorance, these Frankenstein freaks are not on their radar and never will be. The oversupply and lack of demand for these animals will very soon become apparent and the term “tulip mania” will once again come into play – a term used metaphorically to refer to any large economic bubble (when asset prices deviate from intrinsic values)!

This scourge, is now combined with the latest threat – the sale, for once again obscene prices, of quarry species with horns over a certain length and we see the removal of these animals from their natural environments into breeding pens in the hope of recreating their genes and breeding large horned, artificially
raised “trophy” animals.

Market pricing is a free beast, capitalism ensures this. However, when greed supersedes longevity, it is highly dangerous. Short term gain over long term security will always have its victims. In this case professional hunting through the marketing to clients, be they foreign or local, is going to suffer hugely. The allure of seeking that elusive 60 inch kudu bull, 30 inch nyala or 45 inch buffalo is slowly but surely being eroded. Many landowners currently refuse to allow us to hunt animals of this size, stating that such specimens are worth far, far more to the breeder. If we wish to hunt them then the price offered to us is so exorbitant most would be too embarrassed to even offer it to a client. Also, as soon as the clients realise that coming to South Africa removes the chance of finding that elusive trophy in the wild, they will seek other options. Most definitely!

The even greater victims will be the very game that was saved through hunting as, when the flow of Dollars, Sterling, Euros and Rubels dries up through the lack of desire to participate in the un-Hemingwayesque practices that now abound, the scent of cow dung and unsightly lengths of barbed wire will once again pervade the bushveld and our sons will weep for the opportunity that our generation took from them!

There are 6 comments on this post

Wayne Colegate

August 12, 2015, 10:02 pm


I am at a loss to see how hunting, particularly trophy hunting enables conservation in any way. There are now scientific methods of controlling the size of herds and prides and killing for cash and trophies is no longer a necessity. However we know that the real purpose of hunting is the testosterone boost provided by man feeling all powerful by killing an elephant or giraffe or any species causing no major disruption in the conservation of the area. Sterilization through distributed food works well and involves no barbaric hunting and shipping of animal parts. Something that most airlines are now agreeing not to do. Even independent couriers like FedEx and UPS are no longer allowing the shipment of trophies. It is just a start but it will put pressure on the corrupt government and outfitters who thrive on the killing business. Please don’t play the conservation card with biologists and eco experts they know the truth.
- Peter Flack
  
  August 20, 2015, 8:54 am
  
  
  Thank you for your comment, Wayne. As you imply that you are well-informed, I wonder if you have read the Wall Street Journal of 7 August. They seem to disagree with you as do I and for the same reasons.
  Kind regards,
  Peter.
  
  Article from Wall Street Journal, mentioned above:
  
  How Trophy Hunting Can Save Lions
  The revenues support the agencies that safeguard wildlife from poachers.
  By Terry L. Anderson And Shawn Regan
  
  An American hunter’s killing of a beloved lion named Cecil in Zimbabwe last month was enough to fuel widespread outrage. But the details of the hunt are even more damning: The lion was allegedly lured out of a national park and then killed illegally.
  
  Unfortunately, this one sorry episode is tarnishing the role that well-managed, legal hunting can play in promoting wildlife conservation. Cecil’s death has inspired passionate calls to ban trophy hunting throughout Africa. Three U.S. airlines have announced that they will no longer transport lions and other big-game African animals killed by trophy hunters.
  
  Not surprisingly, politicians have jumped on the bandwagon. Sen. Robert Menendez (D., N.J.) introduced legislation last week that would ban the import or export of animals being proposed for inclusion under the U.S. Endangered Species Act.
  
  Last October the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service proposed listing the African lion as threatened under the Endangered Species Act, but the agency has yet to complete the listing. Mr. Menendez’s bill would effectively end the trophy hunting of lions by Americans.
  
  But would restricting trophy hunts really save the king of beasts? Not according to the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. “Lions are not in trouble because of responsible sport hunting,” wrote director Dan Ashe after the agency concluded its listing review of the species. “In fact, evidence shows that scientifically sound conservation programs that include limited, well-managed sport hunting can and do contribute to the long-term survival of the species.” The agency determined that the major threats to lions are habitat destruction, declines in the species they prey on, and increased conflicts between humans and lions.
  
  Banning trophy hunting or restricting trophy imports wouldn’t address these challenges. In fact, it could do more to endanger wildlife than save it. Consider what happened in Kenya after it banned all hunting in 1977. Since then, Kenya’s populations of large wild animals have declined 60%-70%, according to wildlife economist Mike Norton-Griffiths. Kenya’s lion populations have fallen to 2,000 from 20,000 a half century ago. Hunting bans in Tanzania and Zambia have produced similar results.
  
  Trophy hunting is one of the main ways local people reap benefits from living in regions with large wildlife. Across Africa, hunting generates more than $200 million in revenue each year, mostly in southern Africa, according to a study in Biological Conservation. A 2012 study in PLOS One, an open-source, peer-reviewed science journal, noted that eliminating revenues from lion hunting could “reduce tolerance for the species among communities where local people benefit from trophy hunting, and may reduce funds available for anti-poaching.”
  
  For Africans who lose crops, livestock and even human lives to dangerous species such as lions, wildlife is often seen as a liability to be avoided or killed rather than an asset to be protected. “Why are the Americans more concerned than us?” one Zimbabwean told Reuters, commenting on the furor over Cecil’s death. “We never hear them speak out when villagers are killed by lions and elephants.”
  
  Citing research by the Field Museum in Chicago and the Kenya Wildlife Service, the New Scientist reported that, on average, in Kenya each lion eats $270 worth of livestock annually. Such losses are catastrophic in a country where per capita income is $1,200. Herders would rather kill lions than conserve them.
  
  Andrew Loveridge, the Oxford researcher who collared and studied Cecil, acknowledges the benefits of big-game hunting. “Hunting, as much as people might detest it, does have a role in conservation,” he told the BBC last week, noting that more land is protected as hunting reserves in Africa than as national parks. “If there was no hunting, what would happen with that land?”
  
  Hunting also provides much-needed funding for Africa’s protected areas. Consider the Zimbabwe Parks and Wildlife Management Authority, responsible for managing the Hwange National Park, where Cecil lived. Panthera, the conservation group, notes that this wildlife agency derives the majority of its funding from trophy hunting. If this revenue goes away, so does the agency’s ability to adequately safeguard wildlife populations from poachers and other illegal hunters.
  
  Lion conservation succeeds when it provides incentives for local people to protect lions and their habitat. In other words, if it pays, it stays. When done responsibly and legally, trophy hunting is a way to ensure African lions are here to stay.
  
  Mr. Anderson is a senior fellow at the Property and Environment Research Center (PERC) in Bozeman, Mont., and at Stanford University’s Hoover Institution. Mr. Regan is a PERC research fellow.
  
  Correction
  
  An earlier version of this article mistakenly said the Field Museum is affiliated with the University of Chicago.
Leon

August 12, 2015, 5:28 pm


Great article, and exactly why I will not hunt in these “canned” profit driven environments. South African game farmers beware, you are pulling the piss out of this
Jaco Human

August 12, 2015, 11:08 am


Paul I must compliment you on this article. It is about time that we as professionals in the industry start speaking about what is dear to us. I fully support you in your views and as you know I am 100% behind you with the shooting of captive bred predators. More of us should take a stand on unethical an immoral hunting practices. We need to stand up against greed that is busy ruining our industry.

Kind regards
- Peter Flack
  
  August 13, 2015, 5:18 pm
  
  
  Thanks, Jaco.
  Hopefully someone somewhere will start or convert a hunting and conservation association based on unashamedly ethical principles we all can support.
  Kind regards,
  Peter
Peter Flack

September 09, 2014, 4:19 pm


This post arose from a discussion amongst Paul, Neels Geldenhuys, the editor of African Outfitter, and I at Huntex in Johannesburg in April this year. To the best of my knowledge, it is the first time a professional hunter, let alone a highly experienced PH and long standing member of the Professional Hunters Association of South Africa (who served on their executive committee for many years) and a member of SAMPEO, South Africa’s Most Proven and Experienced Outfitters, has publicly nailed his colours to the mast. In my humble opinion, he should not only be commended for his stance but us amateur hunters should actively encourage him by booking our hunts through him and others who follow suit. And is it not time for others to do so when hunting and the conservation it supports is under such growing threat from such reprehensible practices?

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