Peter Jackson, editor, The Northland Age
August 4, 2015
IT MIGHT be too late to save some endangered species, but the uproar that has followed the shooting of a reportedly iconic lion in Zimbabwe could well make a major contribution to putting an end to trophy hunting.
Minnesota dentist Walter Palmer was still in hiding late last week as outrage over his latest exploit continued to build, but he would seem to be bearing the brunt of anger that should properly be shared with many others. Wealthy Americans reportedly shoot some 600 lions every year, more than half an annual toll that some put has high as 1000 or more, helping in no small way to edge the species ever closer to extinction.
The vitriolic response to Palmer's contribution can partly be attributed to the manner of his lion's death. Cecil, as he was apparently known around the world, was initially shot with a crossbow, but did not die until he was finally dispatched with a rifle 40 hours later. His death is now widely expected to be followed by the demise of his small pride, or at least the cubs he most recently fathered.
It should be remembered that Walter Palmer is hardly unique. Many Americans, and others, are prepared to pay handsomely for the right to kill wild animals, often in the least sportsmanlike manner. The farming of game animals, specifically for shooting by wealthy clients within a confined area, reducing the need for any degree of skill to almost zero, is reportedly widespread. Years ago there were stories of American 'hunters' pursuing game with military weapons, including bazookas.
Cecil will not have died in vain if the furore leads to an end to trophy hunting, and perhaps a greater appreciation by some African countries that wild animals can generate greater revenue alive than dead, but it's all very well for wealthy countries to preach to poor ones. Just as First World countries that have cleared their forests now exhort poor ones not to exploit theirs, there is no shortage of people who are happy to tell poor countries to protect their wildlife when the options for generating income for their people are extremely limited.
The waters are further muddied by claims that selling rights to trophy hunters helps raise the cash needed to preserve wildlife, including the hunted species, although it isn't clear how much of the money paid is actually spent in that manner. It has been revealed that one prominent lion researcher had been kicked out of Tanzania, where trophy hunting is allowed, for suggesting that only older, unattached animals should be available for shooting.
However, the fact that Tanzania allows hunters to kill its wild animals is regarded as playing a valuable role in preserving their habitat. Distasteful as the industry might be to Western animal lovers, it makes sense that Tanzania would do its best to ensure that the golden goose continues to lay eggs.
It's also worthy of note that Americans with a penchant for killing other countries' wild animals are not, apparently, the major threat against lions. The wild population in Africa has reportedly declined by more than 50 per cent since 1980. Numbers in East Africa fell by 59 per cent, and those in the east by 66 per cent, between 1993 and last year. In the last 35 years the continent's total lion population is believed to have tumbled from 75,000 to somewhere between 20,000 and 32,000, which makes an annual toll of 600 at the hands of Americans significant in terms of the cat's survival, but experts claim that the biggest threats are farmers protecting their livestock and the loss of habitat. The last wild lion is more likely to succumb to starvation or at the hands of an African farmer than it is to provide a foreigner with a trophy.
Incidentally, Cecil was shot in southern Africa, where numbers in the wild have risen slightly thanks to preservation efforts.
Hopefully countries that see wildlife as a financial asset, and they are by no means all in Africa, will come to regard live animals as more valuable than dead ones. Certainly distaste for killing animals simply for the sake of killing them is growing in the West, and the response to Walter Palmer's latest foray might well give others of his ilk pause for thought. It might also give heart to animal activists in this country, who are once again girding their loins to call for a ban on rodeo.
Their cause has been done no harm by recent images of bulls being goaded with cattle prods and having their tails twisted behind the rodeo scenes. Two bulls reportedly died in the last New Zealand rodeo season, and others, along with horses and calves, reportedly suffered injuries including broken bones.
Those who indulge in the sport are having none of that. Chris McGarry, who stages the annual Wild Out West event at Umawera, was quoted in this newspaper as accepting that calf roping could be "a bit on the hammer," but described his bulls as pets. Weighing up to a tonne, they were less likely to be hurt than the people trying to ride them, he said.
Rodeo supporters have also long argued that the animals are well and truly compensated by lives of relative luxury, but the critics aren't buying that. Save Animals from Exploitation (SAFE), which has been joined in the new campaign by the SPCA and Farmwatch, reckon the Animal Welfare Act gives legal protection to animals against unreasonable or unnecessary pain or distress, and that rodeos are in total contradiction to that. They are now calling for signatures for a petition to the government calling for the sport to be banned.
Like so many global issues, cruelty to animals in this country can't hold a candle to what goes on elsewhere, but the day is probably coming when rodeo will be banned. Public opinion tends to have its way eventually, and has never been more powerful than it has become with the advent of social media. It can be highly selective though.
Few of those who believe that lions have the right to live as nature intends and that bulls and horses deserve to be spared the horrors of rodeo would have visited an abattoir, where thousands of New Zealand sheep and cattle are dispatched on a daily basis.
The vast majority of people would find that process horrific, but continue to eat the meat that it provides. The argument that farmers generally try hard to make life as good as it can be for their livestock prior to slaughter would only hold so much water for most who prefer not to make too much of a connection between the sight of lambs gambolling in daffodil-bedecked fields and the chops that are about to go under the grill.
The difference, perhaps, is that the exploitation of animals is acceptable if they are to provide sustenance for human beings. Increasingly that acceptance does not extend to using animals for sport, whether that be making them perform for an audience or allowing those who wish only to display their prowess as great white hunters to kill them.
Thomas Hobbes was talking about man when, in 1651, he described life as ' ... nasty, brutish and short', but that applies to the lives of countless millions of animals, wild and domesticated, around the world more than 350 years later. Sparing lions from hunters and banning rodeo might be just the first shots in a very long conflict.
News snippets from the Far North.