Letter to the Editor: Opposition to trophy hunting is a major social movement for good By Judy Malone
People around the world, including Africa, are now actively challenging the killing of endangered wildlife for pleasure and profit. They are educated, progressive and they travel. Many among them are conservationists, scientists and journalists. The opposition is science-based, informed, and driven by the inarguable reality that the world wildlife populations are in precipitous decline. The iconic endangered wildlife that populates Africa is of particular interest to trophy hunters.
They maintain the myth that they, and only they, fund wildlife and habitat preservation. In instances where the hunting industry does, in fact, contribute to wildlife well being, the motive is purely to help ensure game stock. When the game is depleted, so are they and so is their funding. But they are well placed in government, and they have enjoyed success in facilitating their blood sport, largely because the non-hunting public has been unaware of their exploits.
The Namibian government has been heavily under the influence of the trophy hunt industry and now gives wishful reports of the abundant wildlife that no one locally seems able to locate. When it concedes to mild losses, drought is referenced as the cause. But as conservationists and journalists there report, it was not drought but poaching and overhunting that left Namibia in this state. And rain will not bring the once teeming wildlife back.
We need to ditch this human-centric view of the natural world as an “asset” and recognise ourselves as part of the community of nature, not outside or above it. There is a big attitudinal change happening, and among other things, it does not support unethical, unscientific and unsustainable use of wildlife.
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