The African Nation of Zambia is smart. They simply calculated, and came to the result, that photo and safari tourists coming to Zambia to watch lions brings more money into the country than hunters paying to kill lions for fun.
Quote from the BBC/Reuters:
“Zambia’s tourism minister said there was more value in game-viewing tourism than blood sport, which brought in just $3m (£1.9m) last year.
Sylvia Masebo said the country did not have enough cats for hunting purposes.
“Tourists come to Zambia to see the lion and if we lose the lion we will be killing our tourism industry,” she told Reuters.”
So Zambia decided to give out no more hunting licenses and concessions for the hunt on big cats. What a smart and lovely move! Thumbs up, Zambia! After Botswana decided to ban trophy hunting with the end of 2013 in their country, Zambia is the second country in southern Africa to do the same.
If I would be mean, I could say that the trophy hunting market for fat-bellied, white old men with no penis is now reduced to the following countries: Namibia, Tanzania, Mozambique, Zimbabwe and South Africa. But as these African nations are at least as smart as the Zambians, they will start calculating, too.
Photo by DC Loew
From a conservationist point of view, I am not against hunting at all – I am against this silly and stupid and embarrassing so called sport- or trophy hunting. What is the kick of driving into the bush on a pick-up (like seen in this documentary by BBC´s Louis Theroux) and killing all sort of animals from the very distance, from the back of the car? What is the kick in killing a dikdik? Or a wonderful animal like a lion?
And afterwards, have a trophy picture, with the heroic hunter behind the dead animal? This has nothing to do with hunting, and this has nothing to do with conservation whatsoever. This is purely pathetic.
There is a lot of people making a living in the trophy hunting business, but as usual: The wrong sorts of people is making the big money, with the local people working for peanuts as trackers, drivers and so on.
As Zambia just proofed: the calculation to convert trophy hunting business into real conservation- and eco tourism – business can be made by other countries, too, and it will work for them as well as it worked for Zambia and Botswana.
