Big game hunters are not pantomime villains

Telegraph

5 days ago

When it comes to social derision, big game hunters are right up there with paedophiles and traffic wardens. There are few things that have the potential to ruin one's life quite as effectively as a picture of you, rifle in hand, standing next to a dead elephant. Those who can afford to go to Africa to hunt 'big game' now tend to agree that the first rule of trophy hunting is no photos.
It was not surprising when the death, last week, of Asher Watkins, a big game hunter from Texas, was cheered on social media by those who would self-identify as progressive and kind.
Mr Watkins, a Texas rancher was gored to death by a Cape buffalo while hunting in South Africa. Over on the socials, thoughtful animal lovers have weighed with hopes that it 'was slow and agonising'; somebody identifying as 'a dad' and a Mancunian football lover notes cheerily that there's now 'one less piece of sh-- on the planet.'
It's worth thinking about the impact of these big game hunters. To be clear, big game hunting is not poaching – it is immensely expensive, it tends to be very well organised, and annoyingly for those who condemn, it is a vital contributor to the conservation of some of the world's most impressive species.
It might seem paradoxical but where big game hunting is managed well, the local community sees species such as elephants as having value. People will pay a lot to hunt them, in order for them to prosper, the habitat needs to be maintained. Where they aren't seen as having value, they are often just felt to be crop-destroying pests.
There's no getting away from it, where big game hunting flourishes, animal populations flourish too. In Zimbabwe for instance, just this summer, they had to cull elephants because the population has become too large – the reason they are doing so well is because of people like Mr Watkins. Its important to note that big game hunters target old bulls which often actually prevent younger animals from breeding – for the herd to thrive, the old buffalos must go. 'The dugga boys', the Zulus used to call them.
Botswana's elephant population is some 130,000 and a decision was taken, after consultation with local people whose farms were being destroyed, to lift the ban on hunting, which meant a sustainable number to be shot.
Absurdly, this was met with opposition from that brilliant naturalist Joanna Lumley who lobbied the-then president to keep the ban in place. Alright for Joanna, who has precisely no farming interests in the country and plenty of money.
Over the border in Namibia, hunting brings the 82 community-owned game conservancies an average of £5.5 million a year and the hunting sector has created 15,000 jobs. Rather than poaching animals, locals take paying hunters out to track them through the bush.
The conservation argument and the economic one are frankly irrefutable – in a sense the more interesting thing about it all is the way that people like Lumley appear to feel that they should be able to dictate the way that Africans live their lives. It's a sort of neo-colonial outlook that privileges western feelings above all else. Sure the trackers might be out of a job, sure the elephant population might plummet, but Lumley will be able to say she's won.
A London lawyer who makes trips to Africa to hunt big game when he can afford it told me that the difference between land managed for hunting and land where there is no managed hunting 'is night and day'. The wildlife in the former thrives whereas in the latter it can be dead. 'How many species', he put it to me (having returned recently from a buffalo hunt), 'benefit from that post-breeding age buffalo being shot'. But the thing he really wanted me to understand is that after he'd shot his 'buff', everyone from the village came to get the meat. They even smoked the hooves together.
What hunting gives him is an understanding of a culture and a community that going on holiday simply can't. He didn't want to put his name to his words because it would possibly ruin his career.