If the Minnesota dentist, who has become Public Enemy No. 1 in animal-rights and anti-hunting circles, indeed killed Cecil the lion in circumstances that have been reported, he gets little sympathy from me.
As a lifetime hunter and fisherman, I have never felt the slightest impulse to engage in the kind of baited hunt — in sketchy margins between wild area and game farm — merely to make a trophy of a big-game animal. As a hunter who has always taken pride in working hard to learn terrain and movements of game, while planning my own hunts, I have no conception of how any true hunter can take satisfaction in killing a less-than-wary game farm or refuge animal.
But as outrage is expressed worldwide over the slaying of Cecil — mostly from city and suburban folk who long since have lost true touch with the natural world — it’s important not to get too carried away.
Certainly, the killing of an animal like Cecil, unchallenged and secure in his safety from man on a game reserve, deserves condemnation. But to condemn and even call for the end of all hunting — even the kind of big-money trophy hunting that occurs in Africa, for little reason than for rich, privileged Westerners to brag about their exploits — is an irresponsible overreaction.
It must be understood that the safari hunting industry in Africa, not just for lions, but for elephants, leopards and all sorts of hoofed animals such as kudu and Cape buffalo, brings millions of dollars of badly needed currency into the economies of several poor nations. In Zimbabwe, where Cecil was killed for a reported $55,000, an economic meltdown has, according to the Associated Press, forced two-thirds of that nation’s residents to subside in an informal economy.
Meat from hunts is distributed in villages that badly need the sustenance, and there remains issues of conflict between wildlife, particularly elephants, and villagers who lose crops to foraging herds. Hunting remains a management tool in attempting to maintain the balance of existence between agrarian villages and elephant herds.
Money from licensing and fees related to the hunting industry helps pay for acquisition of protected lands as well as wildlife conservation programs and rangers, who attempt to combat poaching and the worldwide wildlife trade, a far more implacable threat to any number of African species than overly monied, self-absorbed nimrods from America. The World Wildlife Fund, a respected conservation organization, supports regulated hunting in Africa as a source of funding for management programs and overall conservation of wild areas and wildlife.
It is argued that eco-tourism — in particular photo safari excursions — is supplanting the economic impact and value of safari hunting in African nations. While that is possible, there is no evidence that the transition has been made to the point that regions can afford to ban trophy hunting. As so often is the case, Western conservationists, animal-rightists and celebrities have little trouble telling people of remote lands how they should live. It’s just that when holding forth from places like Hollywood, New York and London they neglect to offer feasible alternatives of survival.
In any case, hunters and their supporters in North America should be very leery of the emotional groundswell that has resulted from Cecil’s killing. His majestic face has quickly become a compelling symbol for the anti-hunting movement — a movement that can make little or no distinction between revulsion over the killing of an almost-celebrity African lion to a whitetail deer in an American woodlot.
Social media posts and protest signs have made it clear that many people believe that ALL hunting — for any game, anywhere — is wrong and should be ended. Here in America, there have been notable cases of people from all walks of life facing social media firestorms — many might call it cyber-bullying — after posing for photos with legal game they have taken and posting them on Facebook.
“Cowardly” is a word often associated with hunters by those who assume all hunters are more interested in collecting a trophy for the wall than they are about testing their woodcraft skills, answering a natural call to the hunt that lies within many humans and putting their own hard-won, wholesome meat on the table.
Perhaps there is a measure of preoccupation with, in the case of whitetail deer hunting, antler size determining the value of a “trophy.” But every hunter I know makes every effort to ensure that the meat from his or her kill doesn’t go to waste — indeed, most hunters will tell you that they enjoy venison chops or a roasted spring turkey with far greater relish than any plastic-wrapped supermarket meat they ever purchased.
Meanwhile, no one — NO ONE — in the world has provided more support and funding for wildlife and land conservation efforts than the North American hunter. From license fees to special taxes on hunting-related items and ammunition, hunters and fishermen provide BILLIONS of dollars that is used for wide-ranging purposes that go far beyond the simple maintenance of game-animal populations. Sportsmen’s money is used for studies and efforts to save endangered species, for acquisition of lands to maintain habitats and to preserve or reclaim vital wetlands.
There are more deer, black bears, turkeys, beavers, wolves and other species on this continent than there were a century ago. Hunters and fishermen have almost single-handedly funded many of the great wildlife reclamation stories the world has ever seen.
Cowards? The modern-day, ethical hunter is the greatest champion of wildlife on the planet. A high-profile, media-driven blemish on the hunting community does not change that.
(Eckstrom is executive editor of the Olean (N.Y.) Times Herald and Bradford Publishing Co. His email is jeckstrom@oleantimesherald.com.)
