"The consequence of killing one male — whether legally or illegally — is that it weakens the male coalition he was part of, often a brotherhood. A larger, stronger coalition comes in and usurps them, often leading to the death of the surviving brothers. The incoming males will generally kill the cubs of the incumbents. A simple-minded approach might have thought one less lion is one less lion. The reality is that one less lion can lead to the deaths of many other lions, as well as a reshuffling of their local spatial organization and society."
Says David Macdonald, director of the Wildlife Conservation Research Unit at the University of Oxford, in an interview in Nature whose team has been tracking Cecil and hundreds of other lions since 2008. No lion is an island.
Trophy hunting of Lions in Zimbabwe didn't begin nor will it end with Doctor Palmer. Hunting of lions is legal in Zimbabwe and elsewhere in Africa and lions are not considered endangered at this time although their numbers have declined along with that of their prey. Yes, like all creatures great and small they are part of an ever-changing ecosystem and Africa is steadily moving in the same direction as the rest of the world and allowing less and less room for wildlife.
Carefully avoiding any political statements, Macdonald opines that hunting of lions is sustainable if strictly regulated and actually might be the best way of attributing value to lions that could accrue to the benefit of those who live alongside them amd perhaps to promote toleration of these creatures among the local population who see them as dangerous to life and property. Wildlife parks bring in tourist dollars after all.
Macdonald goes so far as to suggest that the death of this lion may have a beneficial effect if it promotes "enthusiasm for the value of nature."
"That’s the sort of enthusiasm that I hope will influence the way that policy is formulated as human enterprise strives to live alongside biodiversity. That would be a suitable memorial for the apparently illegal death of this particular, charismatic and unusually fascinating individual lion."
Unfortunately some of this "enthusiasm" results from misinformation, oversimplification and hyperbole in the sensationalist press and such enthusiasm tends to be short lived, producing less than helpful action if any at all.
The overall goal of conservation is the maintenance of sustainable populations rather than sentimental attachments to Bambi or even Cecil and that sometimes involves direct intervention. Hunting is sometimes necessary if sometimes sad and upsetting to squeamish people like me. Poaching is of course the enemy of regulation and population control and it's a far, far larger problem than the occasional rogue trying to relive the 18th century White Hunter experience can be. It would be good if he can be made and example of, but will the public then forget while hordes of poachers continue to hunt with machine guns, flaunting a death penalty because of huge rewards for selling animal parts in Asia?
Madonald shares my hope that the current furor will bring some further attention to what's really going on; to the bigger and long term problems of conservation and to helping African nations to see the value of wildlife and its preservation despite the cost. Much has been done with the help of wealthier European nations. Much more needs to be done.
“The killing of the lion was deplorable.”
ReplyDeleteThis sentence offers us a lesson in ambiguity, and the clue to it’s meaning is based on context: A hunter kills a lion for sport; the story makes headlines; this wasteful and wanton act is deemed deplorable.
Another reading: A lion ambushes someone or something in the bush; the victim of the ambush is killed; the act is deemed deplorable.
In the second reading, the word “deplorable” becomes a false attribution depending upon context. Who or what was killed? A Thompson's gazelle or Gizelle Thompson? Why did the lion ambush and kill the subject? Was the lion hungry?
When we attribute human motives to non-human events, we create false attributions. But there is nothing ambiguous or false about the human population explosion. At the beginning of the last century, the human population stood at one billion people. Today, it is 7 billion and projected to grow to 9 billion by 2030 and 11 billion by 2050. The relationship between rises in human population versus declines in animal population is inverse and unsustainable. Mass extinctions will follow, and the imbalance is truly deplorable.
A deplorable equivocation indeed, but of course you're obviously right that as human population rises, room for animals declines. That also means animals must be reduced in population and particularly competing apex predators other than humans. To sustain any lion population may require "thinning" them out as well as putting them into reserves. For "thinning" we can substitute selling off for hearth rugs and things to hang above the fireplace. In an increasingly Capitalist world, where only the ledger lives, is there any place for sentimentality any more than in a Communist world, where only the ledger lives? As space shrinks, there is no place for anything that can't fit into the economic system. We try to make game parks profitable to make animals worth keeping, but it doesn't seem to work for a variety of reasons, the main one being lack of money and the greed of the few who have it.
DeleteIsn't equivocation grand, but of course language has to change so we can more easily get away with it.
Still I think trophy hunting of such animals as Rhinos and Lions and elephants, etc. is deplorable in the sense that I deplore, despise execrate, feel contempt and deep repugnance for the wanton and usually illegal practice of killing lions for sport.
But feeling a similar contempt for those featherless bipeds proliferating like a disease upon this once fertile planet I have to concur that the word "sustainable" when used in reference to the population of anything more than bacteria and cockroaches, can be only a temporary state. In the long run everything will be extinguished and extinct.
All resources will be irreversibly depleted and those depleted first are those that can be exploited for short term gain by greedy and unenlightened humans. Soylent Green may be a bad movie, but it's prophetic, unless of course, we can stop breeding or start more catastrophic wars: perhaps a plague or two.
Humans are neither wise or disciplined enough to enact on a global scale the solution to human overpopulation.
Deletegod stands in the way.
Sigh. Yes he does.
DeleteThis article in The Washington Post is pertinent to this discussion.
ReplyDeleteAs though to provide an exclamation point to that article, I just read that a brother of Cecil the lion has been killed by a poacher. No matter how strict conservation laws may be in Zimbabwe and elsewhere, they don't have the kind of money it takes to enforce them. There is plenty of money behind poaching and trophy hunting and the bribery and graft that go along with it.
ReplyDeleteWe can do a good job of protecting bald eagles in the US - alligators have made a big comeback from near extinction in Florida because of our ability to implement controls on hunting. What of a country that can't feed its citizens? Sorry, Mr. Lion and Mrs. Elephant -- We Gotta Eat.
Should we extradite people who violate such laws abroad? I think so. Will it help? Not enough, I fear. And of course we can't do much about foreign nationals breaking African Laws and Americans, for a change, don't lead the world in destructive exploitation of the world's resources.
So now I read that Jericho - the brother of the late Cecil the lion is alive and well. Perhaps that's evidence that where there's a demand for bad news, bad news will be created to fill that demand, but of course we're all pleased to hear that Jerry is around to protect Cecil's cubs and the offspring of his pride from attacks by other lions. It's not just humans who kill lions, you know.
ReplyDeleteI still support Dr. Macdonald's statement of hope that "enthusiasm for the value of nature" may be inspired by this furor about one man and one lion because no matter what happens to Dr. Crossbow, D.D.S there are plenty more to fill his shoes and fewer lions every day.
Will it spill over to other, even more threatened animals? Will it persist past the next media sensation? I'm not an optimist.