“No one is coming to the table to say, ‘Yes, we want you to stop this hunting, but here is a budget and an alternative plan you can follow instead.’”Ĭalls for blanket bans, Dr. “Zimbabwe is on its knees because of economic downturn, yet the international community expects our poor country to look after elephants and lions when we can’t even feed our nation,” said Victor Muposhi, a zoologist at Chinhoyi University of Technology in Chinhoyi, Zimbabwe. (The price would be higher were it not for the American trophy ban.) Hunters pay $65,000 to $140,000 to hunt lions in Zimbabwe, for example an elephant hunt can run $36,000 to $70,000. Nor do the countries that issue trophy bans typically provide financial assistance sufficient to make up for the shortfall when hunting income goes away. “Like everything else in life, it’s all about the money - money to combat illegal wildlife trade, and money to prevent the much more serious problem of wildlife’s replacement by the cow or the plow.”Ĭritics of big-game hunting seldom offer viable alternatives for the communities that rely on these funds to protect wildlife, Dr. “While the noise in the press is all about morals and entitled white men killing innocent animals to hang obnoxiously on their wall - all of which I agree with - this actually has very little to do with pragmatic conservation,” said Brian Child, an ecologist at the University of Florida. Yet many experts also believe that the proceeds from hunting are all that prevents many poor communities from turning against local wildlife.
0 kommentar(er)
