Advert
Advert – scroll down
Displaying the 5 latest comments.
-
-
- Conservation Funding: Trophy hunting generates significant, vital revenue that is directly reinvested into anti-poaching operations, habitat maintenance, and wildlife ranching programmes.
- Habitat Protection: Allowing a financial return on dangerous game incentivises private landowners to keep their land wild and populated with these species, rather than converting it to agriculture or commercial developments.
- Population Management: Targeted hunting acts as a population management tool, particularly for elephants whose growing numbers can devastate local ecosystems and biodiversity if left unchecked.
- Removing Surplus Males: Harvesting older, surplus male rhinos or leopards can boost population growth rates by reducing competition and territorial killings of younger, breeding males.
- Strict Regulation: The quotas are heavily regulated, science-based, and comply with strict international CITES frameworks.
-
-
-
- Conservation Status: Leopards are listed as “Vulnerable” on the IUCN Red List, and black rhinos remain critically endangered globally; permitting hunting of these species sends a contradictory message regarding their conservation.
- Eco-Tourism Alternatives: South Africa’s wildlife is worth more alive than dead. Photographic safaris and eco-tourism generate more sustainable, long-term employment and revenue than the extractive trophy hunting industry.
- Cruelty and Ethics: Trophy hunting is an outdated, cruel practice driven by ego rather than genuine, modern conservation needs.
- Enforcement Flaws: The mechanisms for monitoring hunts in the field (such as ensuring a leopard is strictly a male over 7 years old) are incredibly difficult to enforce, leading to potential abuses of the quota system.
- Ecosystem Disruption: Removing dominant males can cause chaos within social structures, leading to infanticide (especially in leopards) and an increase in human-wildlife conflict.
-