Mounted trophy heads in the museum collection
The topic of big game and trophy hunting can be contentious.
Big game hunters hunt and kill animals for sport, and often the meat, while the focus of trophy hunters is to take some form of evidence of their kill such as a head, claws, horns or a whole skin for display.
Hunting wild game for human recreation is not new.
In medieval Europe rich landowners set aside vast areas of forest and land for sports hunting.
Poaching was punishable by castration, banishment, copping the ears or having the eyes torn out.
Foxhunting was legal in the UK until the passing of the Hunting Act in 2004.
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Trophy hunting as a sport became popular in the late 19th century.
In 1887 Theodore (Teddy) Roosevelt, later president of the United States, founded the Boone and Crockett Club which advocated fair chase hunting in support of habitat conservation.
The club, named for American hunting heroes Daniel Boone and Davy Crockett, still manages a system of scoring and collecting data on North American big game kills.
In 1892 British taxidermist Rowland Ward established the Big Game series of books with a system of measuring and documenting trophies worldwide.
Trophy hunting is an expensive sport.
Hunters pay for travel expenses, lodgings, meals, hunting guides, permits, weapons and taxidermy.
There are many international hunting clubs and associations which, as well as keeping records, encourage killing animals through competitions that offer rewards and prizes.
Probably the most famous is the African Big Five Club which requires killing an African lion, an African elephant, an African leopard, a Cape or Southern buffalo and an African rhinoceros.
Other groups include Cats of the world, African 29 and a Diana Award given to women who hunt.
The real threat to endangered animals however, is not trophy hunting, but ever decreasing habitat from farming, poaching and demand for animal parts for medicine.
Trophy hunting has both firm supporters and staunch opponents.
The pro-hunters maintain that trophy hunting can benefit local people and economies via employment, money and meat; in Namibia, for example, 100 per cent of funds from hunting and fishing now goes back into the local community.
Revenue generated helps fund conservation efforts.
Trophy hunting can provide an anti-poaching presence.
The killing of one animal helps fund the conservation of an entire species when the money is used ethically.
On the other hand, many consider that shooting animals for sport is in itself unethical.
Trophy hunting targets high-quality males with the best genes (biggest tusks, darkest manes), thus skewing and disturbing the gene pool.
Restrictions on age are not always followed and immature animals do not get a chance to reproduce. The money generated from trophy hunts does not always go back to the right people due to corruption and disorganisation.
The 2015 hunting and killing of an aged lion in Zimbabwe by Dr Walter J Palmer, an American dentist and recreational game hunter, became the target of the anti-trophy hunting lobby.
Cecil the lion was shot with a bow and arrow and wounded, tracked, and 12 hours later, shot and killed with another arrow.
He was then skinned and his head removed.
The lion was part of a long-term scientific study, and world-wide approbation descended on Palmer, his Zimbabwean guides and a system that allowed this sort of hunting to occur.
This is an emotive issue but we need to be knowledgeable and balance the need for conservation with the reality of the demands of societies and people.
Animals and humans have to co-exist.
The western world's demand for meat drives farmers to deforest large areas, making animal habitats smaller and smaller.
Museums world-wide, including our own in the past, have contributed to the problem by actively or passively acquiring large animals for taxidermy specimens.
• Kathy Greensides is collection assistant at Whanganui Regional Museum.
“Relying on overseas doctors to fill our rural workforce gaps is not sustainable."
