1. THE COLLECTION MAGAZINE – PAGE ° 23THE COLLECTION MAGAZINE – PAGE ° 22
Ma Cho cooking the family meal using the five minute stove.
THE FOCUS
C
AS HUMAN POPULATIONS KEEP ON GROWING AT AN
ALARMING RATE, ENCROACHING ON ANIMALS’ HABITATS,
FORESTS ARE BEING DESTROYED, LEAVING THEM ISOLATED
WITHIN SHRINKING POCKETS OF WILDERNESS. POACHING IS A
MAJOR THREAT, RAPIDLY DRIVING SOME ANIMAL SPECIES TO
EXTINCTION. BUT RECENTLY, QUESTIONS ABOUT THE
SUSTAINABILITY OF TROPHY HUNTING AND ITS IMPACTS ON
THE AFRICAN WILDLIFE IN PARTICULAR HAVE ALSO BEEN RAISED.
AS I APPROACH THE BOMA, the huge grayish shape of a white rhino fills my vision.
Our eyes meet and the majestic creature lets out a long sight and starts rubbing against the
poles. He then runs away and comes back, again and again, playing as any youngster would.
I feel overwhelmed and privileged to be so close to him, yet utterly powerless. In a few
days time, this white rhino will be transported to a private game reserve where it might get
poached, or even possibly hunted.
In May this year Texas hunter Corey Knowlton, who paid USD350,000 for the right to
hunt a black rhino at an auction by the Dallas Safari Club last January, travelled to Namibia to
shoothisfirstrhino.Whenhistargetdiedofnaturalcauses,CNNreported,hesimplyshotanother.
In July, a 13-year-old black maned lion who was being studied through the Hwange Lion
Project operated by Oxford University’s Wildlife Conservation Research Unit (WildCRU)
for eight years was brutally killed by American dentist Walter Palmer who allegedly paid
USD50,000 to shoot that particular lion. “They lured him out of Hwange National Park by
dragging a dead animal behind a vehicle”, chairman for Zimbabwe Conservation Task Force,
Johnny Rodrigues, explains. “Palmer shot him with a bow and arrow while he was eating the
bait but this didn’t kill him. They followed him for three days and when they found him,
Palmer killed him.”
Barely two months later, in early September, 98 animals were massacred on three farms
in the Limpopo province in South Africa where 13 wealthy Europeans took part in a highly
controversial and widely criticised “driven hunt” organised by a Dutch businessman Anton
de Vries, a fruit exporter and owner of SAFE & BONO, the WildHeart Foundation reported.
Terrified animals were forced into a clear area by beaters where so-called “hunters”
were waiting to shoot them from wooden platforms. “Not only is this a really unethical way
of hunting, but they were shooting at random at these animals and most females would have
Written by wildlife journalist Mahina Perrot.
A wildlife
in crisis.

2. THE COLLECTION MAGAZINE – PAGE ° 25THE COLLECTION MAGAZINE – PAGE ° 24
been pregnant”, wildlife expert, author and public speaker, Gareth Patter-
son sadly recalls. “The whole thing was an atrocity.” The hunters paid about
aboutGBP8,000(USD12,200)eachoveran8-dayperiod.Thishuntingmethod
is legal in South Africa and has been used by hunting lodges for years.
The hunting of wild animals in Africa has been an attraction for the elites
and wealthy tourists since the 1800’s. In April 1860, Patterson reports, a
massive driven hunt was organised for Prince Alfred, the 16-year-old second
son of Queen Victoria, in the newly declared Boer Republic. More than
5,000 wild animals were killed mercilessly.
In 1909, Theodore Roosevelt, the former president of the United
States, visited Kenya with his son and shot no less than 500 animals of more
than 80 different species. In 2012 Spain’s King Juan Carlos was under fire
after it was revealed he had been on an elephant hunting trip in Botswana.
More recently, pictures of young Prince Harry posing over a dead water
buffalo in 2004 have emerged.
Those who can afford it tend to favour Africa as a trophy hunting des-
tination where the “Big 5” in particular make ideal trophies to bring back
home. This is a multi-million-dollar industry which pro-hunting advocates
argue benefits wildlife conservation and supports rural communities.
“Hunting generates millions of dollars in revenues. It supports conser-
vation efforts, provides jobs and meat for the African communities, and
is done within strictly adhered to and monitored harvest quotas,” Steve
West, a hunting consultant and the owner and CEO of Steve’s Outdoor
Adventures, enthuses.
The IUCN (International Union for Conservation of Nature) has also long
recognized trophy hunting as a form of wildlife use that may assist in fur-
thering conservation objectives by creating the economic incentives for
the management and conservation of animal species and their habitats, as
well as supporting local livelihoods. Trophy hunting is a high value activity
where“peopletravelandpaylargeamountsofmoneytokillasmallnumber of
animals and in some places (e.g. Namibia), 100% of the benefits are retained
by communities”, says Dr Rosie Cooney, the chair of the IUCN Sustainable
Use and Livelihoods Specialist Group.
However a 2013 report by Australian company Economists At Large
called “The USD200 million question: How much does trophy hunting really
contribute to African communities?”, found hunting companies only con-
tributeamere3%oftheirrevenuestolocalcommunitieslivinginhuntingareas.
In Zambia, Bangweulu Wetlands park manager Mike Wadge says all of
the hunted meat is distributed to members of the community. In Zimbabwe,
Johnny Rodrigues, the chairman of the Zimbabwe Conservation Task Force,
says “all the money is taken by the professional hunter and the landowner”
andthat“thecountrydoesn’tbenefitatall”. OwnerandoperatorofMelorani
Safaris Stewart Dorrington, on the other hand, confirms concessions in Zim-
babwe do get lease fees that go to government but that from there this
money never reaches the communities. “Corruption and poverty are our
biggest enemy”, he says.
But hunting, as currently practiced, may take a far greater toll on
animal populations than people realise. Where poorly managed, Dr Rosie
Cooney says, trophy hunting can have negative ecological impacts in-
cluding altered age/sex structures, social disruption, deleterious genetic
effects and even population declines.
In Zimbabwe for example, 500 elephants are earmarked for hunting
every year, while another 100 to 500 more get poached. “We also lose
between 30 and 50 male lions to trophy hunting (per year)”, Johnny
Rodrigues continues. “It’s very bad, there is too much hunting going on”,
he says.
Hunters usually target males in their primes but the killing of an adult
male lion in a pride for example will throw the whole group into chaos
and the next male to take its place will usually kill all the cubs. And it’s
not just the lions or the elephants. Vulnerable species such as cheetah,
leopard and rhino are also being hunted in many African countries.
CITES - the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species
of Wild Fauna and Flora – an international organisation that regulates
the importing and exporting of wildlife, allocates quotas for animals
to be hunted every year. In 2015, some of the CITES quotas included
1,000 tusks as trophies from 500 African Elephants in Zimbabwe, 300
Leopard skins and trophies in Zambia, 10 Lions and 50 Leopards as tro-
phies in Ethiopia and 250 Leopard trophies in Namibia.
“It is important to recognise that just because a quota is, say 50
Leopards, it does not mean that number will actually be hunted - it is
just the maximum quota a particular country will allow”, says Dr Richard
In Zimbabwe for example, 500 elephants are earmarked for hunting every year, while another 100 to 500 more get poached. Photo ° Mahina Perrot.
Poached elephant in Garamba National Park. Photo ° African Parks.

3. THE COLLECTION MAGAZINE – PAGE ° 26
killing animals in excess of agreed quotas, get fraudulent permits,
hunt outside designated areas, use pseudo hunting, or when trophies
enter commercial trade”, Dr Richard Thomas explains.
Steve’s Outdoor Adventures’ CEO claims some hunters may
make mistakes but that this is simply “oversight”. “Sometimes a
hunter may unknowingly need three permits to do something
and accidentally only have two”, he says. “But that is not poaching.
Ninety-nine per cent of hunters not only respect the animals they
are hunting but they also love them (…) 0.1% of so called hunters
give all real hunters a bad name.”
If too many hunters are this careless, however, this can easily
get out of hand. Overhunting, for example, has decreased the
number of lions in some countries such as Tanzania, according to a
2012 study by researchers affiliated with universities and the US
group Panthera.
There are also concerns that trophy hunting is being used as a
way to supply the black market with illicit wildlife products. In
Vietnam and China, for instance, rhino horns are an expensive com-
modity, where consumers wrongly believe the substance, which
is made up of keratin (the same material as human finger nails) has
medicinal properties. Recently it has also become a status symbol
for the wealthy.
In the last fifty years, rhino populations have decreased from an
estimated 70,000 to less than 25,000 individuals in Africa. In 2014
alone, 1,215 rhino were butchered for their horns, according to
the Rhinose Foundation, and so far this year over 800—or one rhino
every eight hours—have already been killed.
While any trade in rhino horn is illegal, the personal transport of
rhinotrophiesshotandharvestedbyregistered huntersforperson-
al use is allowed. And records of rhino hunting permits show Asians
are the largest group of applicants. In 2011, two senior South Af-
rican wildlife officials came come under scrutiny for having issued
permits to Thai-born Chemlong Lemtongthai, the head of a rhino
poaching syndicate who was using Thai prostitutes to pose as hunt-
ers to “shoot, cut, weigh, pay” and smuggle horns abroad, the Mail
and Guardian reported.
Out of 41 legal hunting rhino permits granted in KwaZulu-
Natal province, which is home to much of South Africa’s rhino,
from 2009 to 2011, 13 were issued for hunters from Vietnam
while the majority went to Chinese, the Associated France Press
(AFP) wrote in 2013. This fake “permit scenario” has probably been
played out countless times, making legal hunting a “conduit for illegal
horn laundering”.
Stewart Dorrington, who was the president of Phasa (Profes-
sional Hunting Association in South Africa) remembers noticing
a massive increase in Tawainese asking for hunting permits at the
time. Today, he says, “tighter regulations have been put into place
to ensure the hunters are genuine”.
Thomas, TRAFFIC (the wildlife trade monitoring network)’s Global Com-
munications co-ordinator.
But the problem, according to Rodrigues, is that in most places “they
don’t know how many animals there are in the first place because no counting
has been done since 1997”. “If you don’t know how many there are, how
can you allocate a percentage to hunting?”, he points out.
Stewart Dorrington says it’s important to separate countries like
Botswana, Zimbabwe and Zambia where all animals belong to the state
and Namibia and South Africa where animals are privately owned. “They
are not going to go and wipe out their own game so they manage their
reserves in a sustainable way and actually increase animal populations,” he
adds. In Namibia five permits to shoot black rhinos who are old and can’t
breed anymore are issued every year. “To remove one of those bulls would
not have an impact on the population,” he says.
However, legal trophy hunts should take place in accordance with
all the relevant national legislations and any activities outside of that is
deemed illegal. Illegal hunting incidents involve people who are “using the
wrong weapons, killing animals that are not selected as trophy specimens,
THE COLLECTION MAGAZINE – PAGE ° 25
“LEGAL TROPHY HUNTS
SHOULD TAKE PLACE
IN ACCORDANCE
WITH ALL THE RELEVANT
NATIONAL LEGISLATIONS
AND ANY ACTIVITIES
OUTSIDE OF THAT IS
DEEMED ILLEGAL..”
A 2015 paper by TRAFFIC International and WildCRU reported in-
stances of other illegal activities such as attempts at smuggling rhino horns
by wrapping them in lion skins from trophy hunts, incorrect and/or forged
documentation, re-used permits, and exporters offering to courier missing
documentation.
The same paper also found African lion bones are being substituted for
Tiger in “bone strengthening wine”, and suspects that the rhino-lion-tiger
trades may be interlinked, after they discovered representatives of a Lao-
tian export-import company, known for its involvement in wildlife trade
and the illicit trade in rhino horn, had visited South Africa to purchase lion
bones from game farmers in 2008.
There are approximately 15 to 20,000 lions in Africa and only 32% are
free-roaming in reserves while 68% are in captivity the TRAFFIC and Wild-
CRU study states. “South Africa alone has somewhere between 2,800 and
3,200 lions in the wild and of these, about half are occur in the smaller
private wildlife reserves. There are also more than 6,000 captive lions in
South Africa, bred in small enclosures or smallholdings”, adds Ian Michler, a
wildlife guide, journalist and renowned conservationist.
These “canned” lions are bred for a variety of commercial uses from
cub petting to hunting as well as for the lion bone trade, a new multi-mil-
lion dollar industry booming in Asia. As the study puts it: “The value of lion
bones generated as a secondary by-product of the trophy hunting industry
have allegedly motivated farmers to exhume carcasses that were discard-
ed after past trophy hunts and captive mortalities. And, whereas a lioness
African lion bones are being substituted for Tiger in “bone strengthening wine”. Photo ° Pixabay
Poaching is a major threat, rapidly driving some animal species to extinction. Photo ° Mahina Perrot.

4. Rose & Born
formerly had little or no value to breeders from a trophy hunter’s
perspective, the emergence of the lion bone trade has generated a
previously unexploited value for females”.
Michler hopes his latest film “Blood Lions” (produced with Nick
Chevalier), that was due for release at the Durban International Film
Festival on 22nd July, will educate people about the full extent of the
notorious industry, “which serves no conservation purpose of the
species whatsoever”.
No less than 60% of people who come to Africa to hunt are from
America, and 40% are from Europe, two continents with longstanding
sport hunting traditions. Yet trophy hunting is “very un-african” and is
“almost like a form of colonialism that is still being imposed on Africa”,
Gareth Patterson insists.
“And for that reason alone it should be stopped,” he says. “This is a
colonial relic that’s been imposed on Africa. Take the demand for ivory,
that is not an African demand. That is demand in the East and in the
West. Same with rhino horn, that is an Eastern demand. The demand for
our hardwood for example is again not an African demand. Slavery was
also a foreign demand (…). Africa is just being raped, to put it bluntly, by
foreign demand.”
THE COLLECTION MAGAZINE – PAGE ° 26
Trophy hunting remains highly controversial, especially since the
killing of Cecil the lion which caused outrage around the world. But
“because of the internet, overnight, Cecil the lion became the most fa-
mous lion in the world and the dentist hunter became the most wanted
or the most hated man in the world,” Patterson says. All of a sudden
the whole horror of trophy hunting was “in the face of people who
normally wouldn’t have known anything about it”.
A great believer in the power of civil society, he adds: “we’ve never
had so much power and again that is driven by the internet (…) I think
this is actually quite frightening to governments and big corporations
because civil society has never had so much power as it has today”.
Another recent and hugely popular event was the march for
elephants, rhinos and lions, on October 3, where tens of thousands of
people in cities around the globe took to the streets in no less than
133 such events staged around the world to force nations’ leaders to
take action.
As I leave the boma, I feel a flicker of hope in my heart. I promise
myself not to give up and to continue inspire people to protect our
wildlife. Animals might not disappear if enough people care. °
Trophy hunting remains highly controversial, especially since the killing of Cecil the lion which caused outrage around the world. Photo ° Mahina Perrot.