It’s worse than Walter Palmer and Cecil the Lion: Inside the sick, bizarre world of trophy hunting
When clients pay thousands to kill exotic species, guides face pressure to deliver the goods--even breaking the law
MEG BROWN
salon.com
Minnesota dentist and trophy hunter Walter Palmer ignited worldwide outrage after killing the beloved Zimbabwe lion named Cecil. Hundreds have left angry reviews of his dental practice on Yelp and a Care2 petition condemning his actions has racked up more than 200,000 signatures. Focusing this rage on Palmer overshadows the bizarre practices and unscrupulous conduct that are a big part of business as usual throughout the trophy hunting industry. When wealthy clients pay thousands to kill exotic species, professional hunting guides face enormous pressure to deliver the goods even if that means breaking the law. Trophy hunters maintain that they hunt for the benefit of nature, but when the interests of profit and animals collide, abuse is inevitable.
The practice of trophy hunting originated as a way for humans to demonstrate power over large, dangerous animals, but now that modern high-powered weapons can subdue even the largest animals, the trophy hunter’s focus has shifted from animals that are dangerous to those that are rare. Several game preserves in Africa specialize in breeding mutant versions of popular big game animals, such as white lions or the so-called golden wildebeest. Killing a golden wildebeest costs $50,000, 100 times as much as a wildebeest of a typical color.
Like the “great white hunters” on safaris of the past, today’s trophy hunters are corporate types who may spend tens of thousands or even hundreds of thousands to kill a single animal. And the bigger and rarer and more beautiful the animal, the more a trophy hunter wants to kill it: An African lion hunt starts at around $39,000. For $60,000, power brokers can bag a bull elephant.
Palmer issued a statement claiming that he regrets killing Cecil and that the hunt was, to his knowledge, legal. “I had no idea that the lion I took was a known, local favorite, was collared and part of a study until the end of the hunt,” he said. “I relied on the expertise of my local professional guides to ensure a legal hunt.”
That’s one of the problems with the trophy hunting industry: Exorbitant prices can pressure hunting guides to deliver a “successful” hunt no matter what. Hunters want to feel that their experience is real and that the hunt has not been staged, but when a hunt costs as much as a new luxury car, guides must practically guarantee that clients will take home the trophy they want. This leads guides to undertake unscrupulous and even unlawful methods to tilt the odds in their favor. Palmer’s guides allegedly used bait to lure Cecil away from the safety of Hwange National Park and illegally disposed of the lion’s radio collar. American hunting ranches use bait stations to concentrate animals and cameras to monitor their whereabouts. On African big game safaris, some hunting guides use bush planes to herd animals into firing range of a waiting hunter.
Nonetheless, the myth of an even playing field is attractive to hunters. Hunting guides market the animals as dangerous game, though very few hunters in recent memory have been harmed by their quarry. One outfitter warns potential customers to “use premium grade ammunition only as your life could depend on it.”
Palmer’s website, which has since been taken down, described him as someone who enjoys “anything allowing him to stay active and observe and photograph wildlife.” Trophy hunters argue that their pastime helps to conserve wildlife, but the reality of trophy hunting’s success as a tool of conservation has been mixed: The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, for the first time in history, may list the African lion as an endangered species—a move that could ban American hunters from importing lion trophies—citing overzealous hunting as one reason for the big cat’s decline. Hunting outfitters are urging clients to kill the animals while they’re still around to kill: “The time to book your South Africa Free-Range Lion Hunt is NOW while you still can!”
Yet after Kenya banned trophy hunting in 1977, big game numbers in that nation plummeted by more than 70 percent and have yet to recover. After the ban made big game preserves unviable, landowners sold these properties or converted them into farms. In his book “Game Changer: Animal Rights and the Fate of Africa’s Wildlife,” Glen Martin blames animal rights activists for spearheading the short-sighted ban: “If African wildlife is to survive—let alone thrive—local people must value it,” he wrote. “In other words, they must be allowed to gain both income and meat from it in a sustainable fashion.”
Some trophy hunters argue that hunting will never pressure desirable animals into extinction; as animals become rarer, so the argument goes, the privilege of hunting them becomes more and more expensive, until not even a vast purchasing power can buy it. But rarity itself makes animals more desirable and causes collectors to value killing them even more, a phenomenon Franck Courchamp calls the anthropogenic Allee effect: “The human predisposition to place exaggerated value on rarity fuels disproportionate exploitation of rare species, rendering them even rarer and thus more desirable, ultimately leading them into an extinction vortex.”
Wealthy hunters don’t need to travel to Africa to shoot exotic big game animals. Hunting preserves in the U.S. offer the chance to kill a dizzying array of species, including fallow deer, antelope, zebras and even exotic breeds of domestic goats. Most were bred specifically to be killed, but some game farms purchase animals from exotic animal auctions and even zoos.
In 2014, the Indianapolis Star conducted the first comprehensive investigation into America’s trophy deer hunting industry. A team of three investigative journalists submitted public records requests to all 50 states and the federal government, examined a mountain of peer-reviewed research, and conducted more than 100 interviews with biologists, wildlife officials, deer breeders and trophy hunters. They concluded that the trophy deer hunting business “costs taxpayers millions of dollars, compromises long-standing wildlife laws, endangers wild deer, and undermines the government’s multibillion-dollar effort to protect livestock and the food supply.” |
