I recently contacted a friend of mine, Sam Wasser, about ivory poaching. Sam is now Professor of Biology and Director of the Center of Conservation Biology at the University of Washington, and conceptualized and coordinates the ivory DNA forensics project.

First, Sam had to collect DNA samples from living elephants and did this by extracting DNA from scats to create an extensive reference library of populations across Africa. Next, by extracting DNA from tusks seized by customs and police in various parts of the world, Sam can now trace back where the tusks came from, and with increased numbers of reference samples, can pinpoint locations of where the ivory was poached to within a few hundred kilometres. This means, even  given the extensive movements elephants are capable of, Sam is able to identify with increasing accuracy the populations exposed to poaching pressure.

But let’s back up a bit. Between 1979 and 1989, at least 700,000 elephants were killed for their ivory across Africa, and 70,000 of those were poached in the Selous Game Reserve in southeastern Tanzania alone. The proceeds from the ivory ended up in many pockets and even funded the needs of armies engaged in civil wars. In 1989 Tanzania declared its own war on poaching, and with the combined forces of the army, the wildlife department and the police was able to put an end to most of the illegal offtake. That same year, six African elephant range states including Kenya and Tanzania submitted proposals to CITES that resulted in the ivory trade ban. With most importing countries enforcing the ban, the trade in illegal ivory practically stopped, and western nations contributed substantial sums of money to antipoaching efforts. In a 2009 article in Scientific American (July 2009: 68-76), Sam called this “probably the most effective act of international wildlife legislation in history, and public pressure was instrumental to its success”.

Since then, however, the illegal trade has revived spectacularly. Sam believes this resulted from a diversity of factors – the Western aid dried up, southern African nations opposed the ban as they felt they had done well to protect their elephant populations and should not be penalized with a trade embargo, demand from increasingly wealthy individuals in Far Eastern nations grew, and a number of one-off ivory sales were agreed by CITES.  In the Scientific American article, Sam mentions that by 2006, poaching had arguably reached levels exceeding those before the ban. International crime syndicates had become involved as ivory smuggling was relatively easy and driven by very high prices – rising from perhaps $200 per kilo in 2004 to an estimated $6,500 in 2009. Based on the amount and number of seizures made, it was estimated that 8% of Africa’s elephants were being poached every year, higher that the 7.4% rate that led to the ban in 1989.

So where did all these elephants come from? Such information, Sam argues, can bring pressure to bear on the nations with poor records of antipoaching operations. He and his team analysed DNA from ivory made in three 2006 seizures – 5.2 tonnes in a harbour in Taiwan, 2.6 tonnes in a Hong Kong apartment, and 2.8 tonnes in a harbour in Japan. Despite numerous requests, the Japanese authorities did not allow Sam to sample their confiscated ivory, but the Taiwan and Hong Kong seizures were analysed.

All came from the Selous ecosystem, with spillover from Niassa in northern Mozambique.  Previous (2002) shipments seized in Singapore came from Zambia. PIKE, an index of poaching threat, rose from 22% in 2003 to 63% in 2009 in the Selous. The same measure climbed to 88% in 2008 in Zambia.

Tanzania applied to CITES to downlist their elephants to Appendix II in 2006 (allowing trade), withdrew the application, but resubmitted in 2009. Tanzania (and also Zambia’s) applications to CITES were defeated at the 2010 CITES Conference of Parties in Doha. Currently, all African elephant populations remain listed on CITES Appendix I, except those of Botswana, Zimbabwe, South Africa, and Namibia, which are on Appendix II.

In a 2010 article in Science (327: 1331-1332), Sam and co-authors point out a number of failures of monitoring programmes, lack of data needed for scientific assessments of levels of poaching, and a continuing reluctance within CITES to place science above politics contributing to overall uninformed decisions on trade. The inference is that Tanzania and Zambia’s abilities to address the challenges of illegal poaching are compromised despite their claims of conserving elephants. 

Clearly, a renewed effort is needed to ensure the proper protection of elephants. There is considerable disagreement whether the legal ivory sales from national “stockpiles” (natural deaths and elephant culling) allowed by CITES and campaigned for by some elephant range states (with proceeds often promised to assist elephant conservation) has led to increased poaching. Such debates often lead to acrimony, but clearly, the legal trade cannot satisfy the demand generated in the Far East. Sam argues that if the data is not available or made available, a precautionary principle should be applied before elephants are downlisted and legal trade is allowed.

Recently, we have seen worrying levels of rhino poaching, and some would argue that the way to end this trend is by allowing nations like South Africa to sell their stockpiles, and for private rhino owners to sell horns as well. The rationale is that by flooding the market with legal products, the poaching will stop. South Africa is similarly defending the right to sell lion bones to the Far East. We do not believe that such measures can begin to supply the demand by legal means; indeed it seems to stimulate further demand and thereby encourages poaching. There are just too few rhinos, lions, and elephants left to supply a booming market that does not discriminate between legal and poached products. Poaching must be stopped by using scientific information like Sam is gathering to pinpoint hotspots followed by enforcement and court cases to break up the syndicates and their local supporters. And the public must continue to play a significant role in calling for the necessary reforms. 

 Image: 2002 Singapore ivory seizure, Benezeth Mutaboya

But now we are alerted to something quite alarming. According to the official CITES website, Zambia exported 193 lion trophies in 2010. In the past five years leading up to 2010, Zambia exported an average of 65 trophies each year.  So where did all the trophies representing a 300% increase over past years go?

CITES official records indicate that 42 suddenly went to Canada (average over the past five years = 0.6 lions) and 105 trophy lions to Russia (average over the past years = 1.2 lions).

What is going on here? The IUCN in 2006 estimated that Zambia had between 600 and 1,400 lions of all ages and sexes. There is no way that an export of 193 lion trophies in a single year is by any means sustainable given those population estimates.

Is CITES wrong? Were old skins perhaps mistakenly labelled as hunting trophies by Zambia?  Or was there a Russian and Canadian joint hunting convention in Zambia in 2010? Questions posed to the Zambian CITES authorities have not been answered, but we will keep you informed as to progress. 

In a recent article Emerging Viruses in the Felidae: Shifting Paradigms in the journal Viruses (7 Feb 2012, v4, pp 236-257) Steve O’Brien and his colleagues indicated a rather big shift in their previous paradigm about the effect of FIV on lions. For many years, O’Brien had been a foremost proponent of FIV infection being inconsequential among lions – after all, his research group had shown that the virus had most likely infected lions for many thousands of years, and despite high infection rates in places like the Serengeti and the Okavango, lions did not seem to be displaying negative effects. This view ignored some important pathological data gathered from an Italian zoo lion infected with FIV (Poli et al, 1995, J. Wildl. Diseases 31(1): 70-74) and immune system information from lions provided by Kennedy-Stoskopf since 1994. Basically, those studies contested what O’Brien and colleagues had been saying and were repeating, and indicated similar pathologies and consequences of infection to those among domestic cats that should have been taken seriously.

Niels Pedersen, a friend at the University of California School of Veterinary Medicine, was the first to discover the Feline Immunodeficiency Virus in 1986. He was able to isolate this “new” virus from a domestic cat brought in to the Veterinary Hospital presenting symptoms and signs he recognized from monkeys infected with Simian Immunodeficiency Virus. Once the cat immunodeficiency virus was described, it became clear that the infection showed a similar progression of immune system compromise as had been noted among humans affected with HIV. Consequently, with an animal model, a great number of experimental protocols could and were designed with domestic cats to determine outcomes of infection with an immunodeficiency virus. Niels never believed that infection with such a virus could be inconsequential among lions.

Meanwhile, O’Brien and his co-workers (including virologists and veterinarians) seemed unaware of the very many journal articles detailing a great diversity of consequences of infection with FIV among domestic cats. Instead of using such information as a possible model of infection consequence among lions, they felt that lions had worked out some sort of “truce” with the virus. Why did they take this track?

First, O’Brien and his colleagues looked at the divergent genetic sequences of the FIV strains infecting lions, and came to the conclusion that this was an old association between this virus and a big cat (perhaps over 300,000 years?). Making another leap, they decided that all long-term associations between a virus and host inevitably resulted in a compromise – and used examples like measles and smallpox for example. There are of course elements of truth in this, as selection works on host immune systems to become better resistant to viruses and also on viruses to diminish the lethal effects on their hosts so the viruses have the opportunity to spread. But that is not the way immunodeficiency viruses operate – they mutate rapidly, shuffle parts of genomes among co-infecting FIV strains, and are not in themselves immediately lethal. Selection on an immunodeficiency virus has more to do with better avoidance of immune responses than accommodating longevity of the host. That is already built into the virus modus operandi (see below).

Second, O’Brien et al were looking for an immunodeficiency virus/host association that was not greatly negative to the host to perhaps decipher genetic mechanisms for resistance. This would then lead to a better understanding of how HIV infection among human populations could perhaps be mitigated. Direct studies of human populations had already led to an understanding that western Europeans had higher levels of resistance to HIV infection than, say, African populations. O’Brien and colleagues attributed this to possible effects of exposure by Europeans to a great diversity of pathogens in the past – for example the numerous outbreaks of plague in the Middle Ages that perhaps fortuitously selected for a particular genetic makeup among survivors -  that then provided a better chance of surviving the future challenge of HIV centuries later. But any hopeful level of accommodation with FIV was not to be found among lions.

Third, researchers wrongly interpreted the way immunodeficiency viruses actually affect their hosts. Proof of infection via antibody analyses proved to be at very high levels in some populations – close to all adult lions in the Okavango and the Serengeti for example. But lions were not dying in huge numbers, and infected individuals seemed perfectly healthy for years after they had been diagnosed positive. Surprise, surprise?  Not really, as that is the way the virus works. After an initial illness following infection, the virus then settles down to work slowly (it is after all a lentivirus) but inexorably to erode the immune system. Animals and humans can indeed seem apparently healthy for years after first infection as the immune system remains largely functional and is perhaps supplemented by a variety of secondary defence mechanisms (e.g. hormones, B-cell activation mechanisms independent of T-cells). FIV infection among lion populations thus did not present as an epidemic. This should have been expected, but instead it was used as evidence for co-adaptation and justification for misplaced hypotheses.

In hindsight, it was compromised science. After negating the consequences of FIV infection among lions for many years, and therefore significantly supporting the hopeful view that the infection was inconsequential, O’Brien and his colleagues finally acknowledged some cracks in the façade. In the paper mentioned above, O’Brien admitted that their past conclusions were premature and oversimplified. He refers to a study undertaken by Melody Roelke (a veterinarian in his group) among Botswana lions and added the following remarks:

a) “A marked depletion of CD4 bearing T-lymphocytes was apparent in FIV infected lions, a prelude to immune collapse in well-defined AIDS [Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome];

b) In addition, there were multiple elevations of opportunistic infections… further, spleen and lymph node biopsies from nine free-ranging lions revealed evidence of lymphoid depletion, a hallmark of AIDS in human[s], cats, and macaques [a primate] … these findings strongly suggest FIV is contributing to the loss of immune competence among these lions;

c)  These observations would suggest that infection with FIV … might have increased the risk of mortality upon secondary CDV [Canine Distemper Virus] infection [during the CDV outbreak in the 1990s];

d) … the striking influence of FIV on lion immune function … clinical disposition, and a potential ancillary role in CDV mortality … affirms that FIV is likely pathogenic among lions … FIV is a potentially harmful agent in free-ranging lions, as for housecats, and deserves further scrutiny in the other free-ranging species afflicted with FIV.”

While this is good news for a belated recognition of the importance of FIV infections among lions and their resulting fragility, it also places FIV back in the mainstream of concerns for the future survival of lions. There are perhaps five or six populations of lions that number over 1000 individuals of all ages. On these populations rests the hope for the future survival of the species in Africa, and they largely occur in protected areas. Such populations are not protected from disease, and cannot be cured of FIV. Future conservation and management of the species can now move on to incorporate disease components with the brave admission from O’Brien’s research group that what they said in the past about the consequences of FIV infection among lions was “premature and oversimplified”.

We now need to move forward in a united determination to design the best conservation plans for this greatly threatened species. The threat from disease can finally unanimously be taken seriously among FIV compromised populations (basically all the five or six large populations mentioned above), and must be included in all conservation programmes as now there can be no more distractors.

 Picture:  Science Photo Library

In the case of rhinos, this scheme of private ownership has been hailed as a great conservation success. There is frequent mention made of the great increase in both black and white rhino numbers since they were placed on game ranches. Indeed, the overall rhino numbers in South Africa now exceeds 22,000 animals, and a significant percentage of these animals are in private hands.

However, it is questionable to what extent such “private” rhinos contribute to conservation of the species. These animals are virtually all bought, sold and traded much like domestic cattle, and only exist because of the commercial value they represent to their owners. Owners had in the past two main options to profit from rhinos on their land – photographic tourism and trophy hunting.  Now, however, there is the option of selling horns, and there is a move among private owners to call for legal trade in horns given their rising monetary value in Asia.

South Africa already has an established legal trade in rhino horns and trophies;  for example, CITES trade records indicate an increasing trend in SA horn exports (17 in 2007, 16 in 2008, 90 in 2009, and 158 in 2010 – note that 2010 numbers are all preliminary at this stage since records are still being compiled). Where are the horns exported to? Many different countries, but increasingly to Vietnam (2 in 2007, 2 in 2008, 62 in 2009, and so far 93 in 2010). It should also be noted that Vietnam is becoming a major destination for rhino hunting trophies. This is strange as Vietnam (unlike let’s say the USA, Spain, Russia, and France) is not known as a country with many avid trophy hunters. It should have been clear long ago to those who issued the permits that these were all “pseudo” trophy hunts – the price that could be fetched for the horns once they arrived in Vietnam far exceeded the trophy hunting costs. Indeed, it has been reported that many of the “trophy hunters” who arrived to collect their rhinos on permit had never shot a gun before and relied on the accompanying “professional” hunters to shoot the rhino for them.

Basically, South Africa opened the floodgates by engaging in legal commercial trade of rhino horns and hunting trophies with countries like Vietnam. At a very basic level, economic theory involves supply and demand. We all know the situation is more complicated than that, and we can also say that fuel feeds a fire. Indeed, there is a direct relationship between the increased trade in rhino horns and “pseudo” trophy hunting with an increased level of poaching (83 rhinos poached in SA in 2008, 122 in 2009, 333 in 2010, and 448 in 2011). Once a supply is established, the demand grows by whatever means of delivery.

So how does this affect lions?  Well, what we are seeing now from CITES, SA lion export records are parallel to what was seen for rhinos a few years ago. Lion bones are increasingly important to the Asian traditional medicine trade – largely because the tigers that used to supply bones are now a bit thin on the ground. In recent years, South Africa has replied to this demand. In 2009, 250kg of lion bones were exported to Laos, followed by 556 bones in 2010. As these are CITES export records, we cannot tell you how 566 individual bones correspond to 250kg of bones, but only report to you that very few bones were exported to Laos before this date.  In 2010, 14 live lions were exported to Vietnam – why? In 2010 (so far- see above for reliability of these recent numbers) 29 skeletons went to Laos and 19 to Vietnam. Laos received 90 lion teeth and 6 skulls in 2010, and the numbers will increase.

Also worrying and similar to the rhino scenario – Laos has now become a lion trophy hunting country. Yes indeed, Laotians have discovered a very recent desire to go to South Africa to “hunt” lions – 43 trophies so far were exported in 2010 versus zero trophies in all previous years. Reminiscent of the Vietnamese rhino hunters?

The South African authorities at the Department of Environmental Affairs tell us this is all above board and largely represents bones from lions in captive breeding programmes (canned lions). We say the demand has been fuelled, and since history tends to repeat itself, we might begin to see an upsurge of lion poaching incidents parallel to current rhino poaching.

Our message to South Africa? Please do not allow yourself, legal as you might claim it is, to get engaged in exports to Asian countries demanding lion bones and derivatives.  It will stimulate an illegal market involving wild lions in all African range states. It will promote poaching of lions as it has stimulated poaching of rhinos by allowing exports to fuel Asian markets – and that market for African wildlife products is insatiable. It might be said the bones derive from captive bred lions, an industry promoted to satisfy trophy hunters by shooting lions in enclosures. Well done for commerce. 

 Asian markets used to be supplied by Asian species. Those are now gone, lost, poached to extinction, and Asia has turned to Africa. Asian markets put a premium on wild animal products as they are “stronger” than captive raised animals. Remember that the “tiger farms” in China raise animals under deplorable conditions to be killed for the medicine market much like  lions are raised under deplorable conditions to be killed for the hunting market.  And finally, remember that there are as few lions on the African continent as there are rhinos in South Africa alone.

Since the UK Parliamentary debate on the conservation status of African lions in November 2010, LionAid has made considerable strides in alerting the public and decision-makers to both the great decline in lion numbers over the past 50 years and the additive effect that trophy hunting has made on these populations. Support is growing in Europe and among African range states to place lions on Appendix I of CITES. This move will not by itself stop trophy hunting, but will place the practice under much more careful scrutiny and impose greater limitations. Also, since import permits are required for Appendix I species, a diversity of countries are now free to make their own assessments of the trade.

In addition, we expect that the IUCN will officially designate western and central African lions as “regionally endangered” in line with their small, fragmented, and declining populations (that are still trophy hunted in Cameroon, Burkina Faso, Benin, and the Central African Republic). The IUCN has been inattentive to this deserved designation, especially now that researchers at Leiden University have conclusively shown that western and central African lions are substantially genetically distinct from those in eastern and southern Africa.

Suddenly, we are perhaps therefore seeing a flurry of calls to persuade that trophy hunting is of benefit to the species. For example, USA Today reported on a recent scientific article claiming that “limited lion hunting [is] better than [an] outright ban”. The article was written by Peter Lindsey, Guy Balme, Vernon Booth, and Neil Midlane.  Peter Lindsey has written a number of articles on trophy hunting since 2006, all of them calling for hunters to amend their ways and make lion trophy hunting more transparent and sustainable.  Lindsey always makes economic arguments, and the recent one is no different.

What is different is that Lindsey now acknowledges a bit of pressure. For one, he mentions that a consortium of what he calls “animal welfare organizations” in the USA has called for a listing of lions on the USA Endangered Species Act, and also mentions that LionAid is progressing towards import bans in the EU.

Lindsey et al’s arguments are based on finance rather than conservation. They threaten that by taking lions out of the equation, trophy hunting would become unviable across 59,538 km2 of currently designated hunting concessions, would result in massive expansion of “ecologically unfavourable” alternatives (livestock and agriculture), and would therefore result in greater mortality than trophy hunting. This is all supposition. Lindsey et al then predictably  produce the worn-out mantra that restrictions on lion hunting “may reduce the perceived financial value of lions, encouraging increased retaliatory killings for livestock depredation”, but then come up with something equally outrageous - “…over-hunting is likely to pose little threat to the long term persistence of lions so long as interventions are made to address excessive quotas where they occur … precluding lion hunting may therefore be a greater long term risk to lions than over-hunting”. So basically, over-hunting is fine according to them; better to over-hunt than not hunt at all.
 
To give Lindsey credit, he acknowledges that lions have been hunted at unsustainable levels (“… current profits from trophy hunting in some parts of Tanzania are probably unsustainable due to excessive harvests of lions”), and that “… a short-term moratorium on lion hunting could be considered to allow lion populations to recover…”. Also, he admits that “The trophy hunting industry is not dependent on lions for viability in most areas…”. The fact that his arguments have not made one iota of difference with the hunting industry does not seem to bother him overmuch.

Lindsey et al place too much trust in an arrogant and corrupt industry working with the support of corrupt government officials. The three major lion trophy exporting countries (excluding South Africa where there is clear evidence that captive bred lions are very significantly substituted for “wild” lion trophies) - Tanzania, Zambia, and Zimbabwe - have an average ranking of 2.7/10 on the Transparency International corruption index. Lindsey might be pushing for a kinder and gentler approach by the hunting community, but ignores the fact that such reform has hardly ever come from within the hunting industry -  it has to be imposed. Lindsey should carefully read very critical reports by Nigel Leader-Williams et al (2009) about corruption and trophy hunting and one by Baldus and Cauldwell (2004) on tourist hunting in Tanzania. The latter have this to say about the reasons for conservation failures in trophy hunting concessions:

• Non-effective control by the Wildlife Department;
• A lack of professionalism among the hunting operators;
• A lack of ethics and the absence of standards;
• Disregard of quotas;
• Lack of respect for environmental standards (especially in the camps);
• A decline of wildlife populations in hunting areas;
• Misplaced influence being exercised by the operators and highly placed officials in government;
• Resistance to make positive changes and truly involve communities.

Undaunted, Lindsey et al also drag out once again the magical figure of $200 million per annum that trophy hunters supposedly spend in Africa. He neglects to inform that half that figure applies only to South Africa, where game ranch hunting and captive bred hunting are greatly profitable. Lindsey and his co-authors also (conveniently?) neglect to mention a 2009 economic analysis of trophy hunting by the IUCN entitled “La grande chasse en Afrique de l’Oest: quelle contribution a la conservation?”.

Among many other conclusions, the IUCN report mentions the following:

• On average in 11 countries, 14.9% of the land area has been set aside for hunting, and the average contribution of hunting to GDP is 0.06%. This means they are the least economically productive lands in the country. Trophy hunting does therefore not represent economically valuable land use, especially in the context of the need to abate [rural] poverty and hunger.

• In total, 7 countries (Namibia, Tanzania, Botswana, Cameroon, Central African Republic, Burkina Faso, and Benin) have set aside 696,708 square kilometres (an area 2.8 times the size of the UK) for trophy hunting for a total employment of 9,703 people. It should be noted that for many, the employment does not exceed the six-month hunting season.

• In Zambia, returns from hunting in 2006 to the local population were about $1 million to use 22% of Zambia’s land. In Zimbabwe, each household (average 10 people) intermittently received between $1 and $3 per year. In Tanzania, 42 district councils received a grand total of about $1 million per year for the use of 250,000 square kilometres of land. In Benin, 300,000 people shared $70,000, so about $0.23 per person. The African country in which communities earned the least for land set aside for hunting was Tanzania, with an income of $4 per sq kilometre per year while the hunting companies earned about $110 per sq km/yr.

• Good governance is largely absent from the trophy hunting industry, and those in charge are not ready to share any level of control. Lack of transparency does not serve the State, local communities, or conservation.

While Lindsey et al speculatively contend that removing lions from the hunting menu would cause a collapse in the trophy hunting industry, this should not cause much concern. It is already an industry that functions only for the benefit of the operators and country elites to the disregard of communities, conservation of wildlife, and land management. That small group has until now had a monopoly on dictating how they want to (mis)utilize wildlife resources for their own benefits, but such activities no longer stand conservation scrutiny. To be effective in campaigning for the positive role of trophy hunting, Lindsey and his co-authors, as well as the Panthera Foundation (supposedly supporting the conservation of big cats worldwide, who employ Lindsey and co-author Balme, and who paid for the study) need to perhaps publish fewer vested-interest articles and actively engage in making changes to current trophy hunting malpractices.

Picture credit : http://bit.ly/Ac3aJh

• Myers (1975) wrote “Since 1950, their numbers may well have been cut in half, perhaps to as low as 200,000 in all or even less.”
• In the early 1990s, IUCN/SSC Cat Specialist Group members made educated “guesstimates” of 30,000 to 100,000 for the African lion population (Nowell and Jackson, 1996).
• Ferreras and Cousins (1996) developed a GIS-based model to predict African lion range and numbers; based on their data sources on extent of agriculture and pastoralism they selected 1980 as the foundation year for their predicted African lion population of 75,800.
• Chardonnet et al (2002) estimated an average total of 39,373 lions.
• Bauer and van der Merwe (2004) estimated an average total of 23,000 lions.
• The IUCN (2006) estimated a total of between 29,995 and 36,495 lions, or an average of 33,245 lions. It must be noted that since those numbers were published, new estimates have reduced IUCN numbers by 60 – 70% in western Africa alone based on actual counts. 

By whatever method of estimation, lion numbers clearly have susbstantially decreased in Africa. There is no doubt that expansion of human and livestock populations, reduction of prey and habitat, and conflict issues have historically contributed to the great declines.

However, despite these declines, lions continue to be trophy hunted in 11 African lion range states (Botswana currently has a moratorium in place, but allowed lion trophy hunting in the past). Over the past ten years ending 2009 when reliable records end a total of 6651 trophies were exported according to CITES. These do not include numbers of lion trophies shot by resident hunters and thus not exported. Lion mortality by trophy hunting should thus be considered a major contributory component to their overall decline in numbers, but this is largely ignored by the IUCN and CITES. In addition, this source of mortality is only peripherally considered by “experts”.

Historical declines in lion populations doubtless were due to all the factors listed above. But we are now at the point where lion populations are so decreased that we should consider carefully the more current relevant threats to their populations. And trophy hunting mortality statistics figure prominently, especially as they include an exclusive percentage of the population – adult and subadult males. Such animals are crucially important to the reproductive potential of lion populations, and high rates of male turnover in lion prides can significantly affect lion cub survivorship. 

So let’s look at some statistics of lion problem animal control versus trophy hunting mortality. This information is based on numbers provided by informed individuals as well as official numbers from wildlife department records. This is the same quality of data used to provide continental and national lion population numbers, and therefore should be as relevant as similar data presently guiding IUCN and CITES evaluations to conclude trade in lions (trophy hunting) is sustainable.

An overview for four countries from which information is available is presented in this table and details of the entries are discussed below:

Past statements about the primary causes of lion mortality:

1. IUCN 2006: Many in the cat conservation community, including the Cat SG and its affiliated African Lion Working Group (ALWG), did not consider the primary causes of this suspected decline to be trade-related (Nowell, 2004), and priorities for lion conservation have been identified as resolving human-lion conflicts and stemming loss of habitat and wild prey.

2. IUCN 2006: Indiscriminate killing of lions and depletion of their prey are the most prevalent and serious threats in Eastern and Southern Africa, followed by small lion population size. Habitat conversion and livestock encroachment also rank as significant threats. This Strategy emphasizes that lion trophy hunting is an important management tool that can provide benefits to local people and revenues to government conservation authorities, but stipulates that best practices should be implemented in the industry to ensure sustainability.

3. IUCN 2006: The top threats identified were indiscriminate killing of lions, hunting of lion prey for subsistence or bush meat trade, small population size, and livestock encroachment. Improperly managed trophy hunting was also considered to be adversely affecting several lion populations. The technical session … ranked a set of factors according to expected impact on the viability of all lion populations in the region. Trophy hunting was excluded from this analysis due to the difficulty of separating potentially negative biological impacts on lion populations from improperly managed offtakes from potentially positive socio-economic impacts on lion conservation. Properly managed trophy hunting was viewed as an important solution to long-term lion conservation.

4. IUCN Red List: A species population reduction of approximately 30% is suspected over the past two decades (= approximately three Lion generations). The causes of this reduction (primarily indiscriminate killing in defence of life and livestock, coupled with prey base depletion), are unlikely to have ceased.

5. Packer 2004: By far the most important threat to lions comes from problem animal control, and by putting lions on Appendix 1, the Kenyans would do much more harm than good. Tanzania has more lions than any other country in the world, and the majority of these animals live outside the national parks. If lion trophy hunting were stopped, they would have no economic value, and there would no longer be any incentive to conserve the lions. Opponents of trophy hunting have provided no alternative mechanism for funding the large-scale conservation efforts required to protect the species.

6. Frank et al, 2006: One report has blamed a local population decline on poorly regulated trophy hunting (Loveridge and Macdonald, 2003), but this problem appears to be restricted to Zimbabwe  and extensive retaliatory killing, snaring and habitat loss in the surrounding area are likely to be the major conservation risks to lions. Our opinion is that retaliatory and pre-emptive killing of lions by rural people, particularly livestock owners is the single greatest threat to lion populations.

7. Lion Conservation.org: The most urgent threat to lions today is the widespread use of poison in retaliation for depredation on livestock.

8. Whitman et al, 2007: Control of problem animals, antagonistic killing, poaching, and loss of habitat are more serious threats to lion conservation than legalized hunting. Control of problem animals represents the single greatest factor responsible for lion decline outside protected areas today.

9. Packer, 2010: Greatest threats to lions: Loss of prey, persecution in retaliation for cattle killing and man-eating and sport hunting.

But to what extent is retaliatory killing a major factor in overall lion mortality? Certainly it occurs, and apart from the actions of official wildlife department problem animal control units, it is illegal in most African countries (though rarely prosecuted  - and a troubling phenomenon in some countries (e.g. Namibia, Zimbabwe)  is the legalization of problem animal hunts sold by trophy hunting operators to clients, an issue that has little to do with problem animal control). Illegal killing is therefore kept secret, and accurate numbers are all but unavailable. Nevertheless, estimates can be made of the scope and extent of such retaliations. There are two means of evaluation – the actual threat lions pose to livestock, and the numbers and estimations of retaliatory and cultural killings from a variety of sources.

Livestock depredation by lions with real data

How important is the threat from lions in terms of cattle depredation that would result in such retaliatory killing? A study by Laurence Frank in the Laikipia region of Kenya where livestock, wild herbivores and predators co-occur is instructive. In 1998, Frank estimated that predator (lions, leopards, cheetahs, hyenas) depredation killed about 0.8% of livestock on large scale ranches, and an average of 1.7% of pastoralist herds. In contrast, disease killed 2.4% of herds on large scale ranches, and 8.9% among pastoralists’ herds. Frank did not mention effects of drought. In another study, Maclennan et al (2009) examined a compensation scheme established on the Mbirikani Group Ranch, also in Kenya. There, 55% of claimants attempted to be compensated by the predator fund for livestock lost in the bush. The pastoral grazers on the group ranch lost an average of 206 cattle, 22 donkeys, and 503 sheep/goats per year to predators, or about 2.3% of the herd. Eighty percent of the kills were attributed to hyenas, leopards and cheetahs, and 7% to lions – equivalent to losses from jackals (7%) and buffalos and elephants (6%). Despite compensation, about one lion was killed in each year of the study, and no mention was made of hyenas, leopards, or cheetahs being killed.

Other studies show similar trends – depredation specifically attributable to lions is low, and is far exceeded by other sources of mortality and loss like disease, drought, stock theft, and just wandering off. In addition, pastoralists are notoriously capricious when identifying sources of mortality. A study conducted by Christian del Valle (MS Thesis, University of Kent) showed that in Botswana, reported attacks by lions rose from 21% to 61% 1995-2003, those by leopards from 11% to 29%, and those by crocodiles from 0.7% to 8%, while hyena attacks declined from 52% to 2%. These increases and decreases were solely based on a decision by the Botswana government in 1997 to exclude hyenas from compensation and only allow payments for depredations by crocodiles, lions, and leopards. The livestock owners took note and significantly altered their reporting to only include “compensatable” predators. Similar over-attribution of livestock depredation to lions in other countries is highly likely.

Overall, better herding practices and the building of stronger night enclosures for livestock (bomas) would alleviate many problems. At present, especially in semi-arid countries like Botswana, the current free-range approach to livestock upkeep is begging for consequential depredation by any predator. In Tanzania, Packer and Ikanda (2008) noted a substantial difference in mortality among livestock herded by children versus adults. Simple and straightforward practices could reduce much predator/livestock conflict and therefore reduce retaliatory killings. However, with increasing human and livestock populations, the long-term viability of any co-existing predator population must be considered slim. 

Human/lion mortality

Much has been made by Packer and others about the estimated number of human deaths in Tanzania from lion attacks. In total, Packer recorded 563 human mortalities from 1990 to 2004, or about 37 per year, translating to about 8 people per 10 million in the Tanzanian population. The attacks were registered from numerous districts in the country. Without diminishing the tragedy of those deaths they have to be put into perspective as they have led to a demonization of lions and a strange justification for trophy hunting – essentially the sport hunters are doing the rural communities a favour by keeping man-eaters under control. Not only is this complete nonsense, but human deaths caused by lions are actually miniscule when compared to other sources of annual human mortality in Tanzania.

For a short list, in Tanzania 193 to 1499 people per year die of rabies-infected dog bites, 600 from snake bites, 1,900 from falls, 4,700 from drowning, 6,000 from asthma, 13,000 from road accidents, 14,000 from violence/homicide, 21,000 from malaria, 23,000 from diabetes, 35,000 from diarrhoea, and 122,000 from HIV/Aids/tuberculosis.  Tanzania ranks 21st highest among 220 countries in terms of an infant mortality at a rate of 6.7 per 1000 live births as of 2010. The number of humans killed by lions in Tanzania per year (37) is equivalent to the number of people killed in the USA per 100,000 inhabitants by lightning strikes. Lion attacks might make the news much as shark attacks do (over the past 50 years, only one person has been killed by a shark each year in Australia compared to 87 people who drown at beaches annually), but in reality the number of people killed by lions in Tanzania is miniscule compared to the hyperbole that such attacks have generated.

Most people killed by lions are out at night and unprotected. Packer and colleagues were able to assign specific times to such attacks – after sunset and between 6pm and 10pm in the evening on moonless nights. People were out at such times protecting their crops from elephants and other herbivores, and were attacked either in the fields (lion were also hunting crop raiding animals like bush pigs at the time) or on their journeys back and forth from their villages. As with livestock depredation, there would seem to be practical solutions available to avoid such mortality. But as mentioned above, the long-term probability of a dangerous predator population continuing to live in close contact with humans must be considered insignificant .  

Cultural/traditional lion killings separate from lion/livestock issues

In Tanzania, Ikanda and Packer (2008) recorded incidences of cultural lion killings (Ala-mayo) by resident Maasai in the Ngorongoro Conservation Area. Maasai morani (warriors) engage in such killings, though outlawed in the 1970’s, to demonstrate their courage and strength. Ikanda and Packer note that such killings are illegal and therefore not readily disclosed, but were able to document a minimum average of 2.2 lions killed annually for purely cultural purposes in the Conservation Area between 1985-2005. The authors noted an increase in such killings conforming to periods of time when new age classes were inducted as morani.  Such cultural killings not only pertain to the Maasai, and could be widespread across eastern and some parts of southern Africa. These cultural killings have little to do with retaliation, though Ikanda and Packer claim that stock-raiding lions can be killed for both cultural and retaliatory purposes.  They also note that such cultural killings, 2.2 lions per year, are much lower than trophy hunting quotas (24 males per year) in neighbouring hunting concessions.

Problem animal killings of lions – the available estimates

• Mozambique – Chardonnet (2009): 45 lions killed as problem animals 2006-2008, 15 per year.

• Namibia – Stander (2000): 30 lions killed per year as problem animals based on data from 1965-1994 collected by the Etosha Ecological Institute. These data are not particularly relevant to current problem animal offtake and trophy hunting rates as very few lions now survive outside Etosha National Park. Based on skin sales (likely all derived from problem animals), an average of 22 lions per annum were killed 1975-1994. 

• Kenya – Wildlife Extra: 18 lions killed/poisoned in 2010. Kenya has imposed a trophy hunting ban since 1977. Media attention to each death by poisoning is high, but the overall numbers of lions killed in Kenya in recent years for retaliation for livestock depredation is decreasing.

• Tanzania – Ikanda 2008: 73-77 lions persecuted in high human-lion conflict areas in 2007.

• Tanzania – Tarangire lion project: 13 lions killed per year in Tarangire region 2001-2004.

• Tanzania –  Tarangire lion project: 37 lions killed annually January 2004-July 2007 in Tarangire area.

• Tanzania – Personal communication : between 100-150 lions per year

• Botswana –  Rutina 2000: 19 lions killed per year as problem animals 1992-1998 in zones bordering protected areas in northern Botswana, most of them on the southern perimeter of the Delta.

• Botswana – Personal communication: 1999-2000, approximately 25 lions per year in the Okavango region.

Again, a picture very different emerges from that painted by those who feel trophy hunting is a minor source of lion mortality.

In Mozambique, 15 lions are killed as problem animals per year versus a minimum (data suggest several lions shot in Mozambique per year are declared for export in South Africa) of 21 trophies taken each year 2005-2009.

In Tanzania, numbers vary considerably, but 73 -150 lions have been proposed as a yearly problem animal control offtake versus an average of 196 lions taken as trophies taken on average between 2000-2009.

In Namibia an adjusted average of 22 lions is proposed per year for 1975-1994 problem animal mortality versus an average trophy yearly offtake of 25 lions 2005-2009. Lion trophy hunting is increasing in Namibia (by decade, 1975-1984: 12 lions, 1985- 1994: 127 lions, 1995- 2004: 121 lions, 2005 – 2009 (5yrs): 123 lions already and thus a projected decade total of 246 lions ). Few lions now remain outside strictly protected areas in Namibia (Stander 2010). 

In Botswana, 19 lions were killed per annum as problem animals 1992-1998, and perhaps 25 from 1999-2000, but during the same time 59 lions on average were exported as trophies. 

Overall, trophy lion exports exceed problem animal control numbers per annum in all those countries.

Conclusion

On the whole, the decrease in lion numbers in Africa could in past years have been correctly attributed to loss of habitat, loss of prey, and conflict. More recently, however, it is becoming increasingly evident that the remaining lion population has decreased to the point where other sources of mortality are becoming ever more significant. In their current small numbers, lions have negligible effects on actual livestock losses and threats to human lives. Lions, however, are perceived with past prejudices and are still subsequently killed out of proportion to the actual depredation they inflict on livestock. For some countries it is difficult to disentangle cultural killing from retribution.

In summary, sport hunting is now becoming the major source of lion mortality, and as the majority of trophies taken are from adult and subadult males, the practice is expected to have significant consequences on reproduction among hunted populations. The more relevant data becomes available, the more that this increasingly anachronistic practice should cease for the overall conservation benefit of the species.   

References

http://www.wildlifeextra.com/go/news/lions-poisoned011.html#cr
http://www.cbsnews.com/2100-18560_162-4894945.html?tag=contentMain;contentBody

http://bit.ly/w4HedH
 http://www.conabio.gob.mx/institucion/cooperacion_internacional/TallerNDF/Links-Documentos/Casos%20de%20Estudio/Mammals/WG5%20CS1.pdf
http://www.alessandrasoresina.com/allegati/progetti/updatereport2005.pdf
http://www.lionconservation.org/ScientificPapers/Living-with-lions,Frank.pdf
http://vh2q.com/no2-4.pdf
http://www.lionconservation.org/lion-poisoning.html
http://www.conservationforpeople.org/tarangire-lion-project/
http://www.time.com/time/world/article/0,8599,1989669,00.html
http://news.sciencemag.org/sciencenow/2011/07/man-eating-lions-attack-by-the-d.html

http://bit.ly/vu3JnX

 http://www.conservationforce.org/pdf/LIONS,%20CONFLICT%20AND%20CONSERVATION.pdf

http://bit.ly/veepDo
 http://www.worldlifeexpectancy.com/cause-of-death/
http://historylist.wordpress.com/2008/05/29/human-deaths-in-the-us-caused-by-animals/
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/12075367
http://www.wildlifemanagementinstitute.org/PDF/18-Managing%20HumanLion%20Conflicts.pdf
http://www.indexmundi.com/g/r.aspx?c=tz&v=29
http://bls.gov/iif/oshwc/cfoi/jeh5_05_45-50.pdf
http://edition.cnn.com/2011/10/27/opinion/australia-shark-attacks/index.html

Image: http://cb3communications.com/?attachment_id=1168

The article was based on selective use of information, a lack of understanding of introduced diseases on susceptible carnivore populations, and evident unfamiliarity of evolutionary relationships among carnivore species. In short, it is no more than a series of assumptions.

But let’s start with a bit of history. In 1994 a canine distemper virus outbreak swept through the Serengeti, killing an estimated one third (1000) of lions in the population. The outbreak also killed lions in the Masai Mara and in the Ngorongoro Crater. The virus was isolated and genetically typed – but then compared to a South African strain in claims that it was a genetic variant of possibly higher virulence. The outbreak, according to authors in the journal Nature (Roelke-Parker at al, 2006), also affected hyenas, bat-eared foxes, and leopards. In the Masai Mara, an earlier outbreak resulted in local extinction of the African Wild Dog population (Alexander et al 1993, J. Zoo Wildl. Med; Alexander & Appel 1994, J. Wildl. Dis;  Alexander et al 1995, J. Zoo Wildl. Med), and a subsequent outbreak in the northeastern Serengeti killed more Wild Dogs in 2007 (Goller et al 2007, Vet. Microbiol). The outbreak also likely affected carnivores like jackals (Canis adustus, Canis mesomelas, and Canis aureus) at least. Canine distemper has a very wide host range, extending from Lesser Pandas to raccoons, canids to felids.

In response to the 1994 outbreak, Project Life Lion was established to vaccinate domestic dogs in the area, the source and maintenance host population for further epidemics. Was this necessary? I believe so. Canine distemper is an introduced and emerging disease among African carnivores. The virus, like the most prevalent form of rabies in Africa, comes from domestic dogs, a carnivore introduced by humans to sub-Saharan Africa and Tanzania not much more than 500 years ago.

After the distemper outbreak with high mortality among lions, subsequent sampling among a number of survivors indicated that 85% had antibodies. In other words, not all infected lions died, another widely observed consequence of canine distemper virus among a diversity of susceptible carnivores. With that level of protective antibodies among survivors, was the vaccination programme necessary among domestic dogs? The answer is again yes, as that maintenance host population will probably spawn repeated epidemics, and apart from lions, very many other carnivores will be affected.

Now let’s return to the paper by Cauvenet et al. Their assertion is that the vaccination programme (despite the evidence of protective antibodies among lions) was responsible for a resurgence in lion populations in the Serengeti, much to the disadvantage of sympatric cheetahs. They say that this “unintended” consequence of protecting one species (lions) with a vaccination programme of domestic dogs could lead to the demise of another species (cheetahs) – because lions kill cheetah cubs and adults.

 Not only do Cauvenet et al ignore the fact that a great number of other species were negatively affected by the distemper outbreak, they also ignore three other important pieces of information. First, lions and cheetahs have probably been interacting negatively on the African savannahs for tens if not hundreds of thousands of years. Lions also cause mortality among other sympatric predators like hyenas, Wild Dogs, and leopards. Lions are apex predators after all, and the composition of the entire predator and prey community is shaped by their presence. Second, tacitly accepting that an unchecked and introduced disease should alter this ancient formula to the benefit of a single species (cheetahs) is nonsensical. And third, their naïve acceptance that cheetahs are not themselves affected by canine distemper is unsubstantiated.

For example, studies in Namibia by Munson et al (2004 – J. Wildl. Dis) indicate that 24% of a sample of 81 free-ranging cheetahs in an area of likely contact with domestic dogs had canine distemper antibodies. They say “Antibodies against CDV were detected in cheetahs of all ages sampled between 1995 and 1998, suggesting the occurrence of an epidemic in Namibia during the time when CDV swept through other parts of sub-Saharan Africa. This evidence in free-ranging Namibian cheetahs of exposure to viruses that cause severe disease in captive cheetahs should direct future guidelines for translocations, including quarantine of seropositive cheetahs and preventing contact between cheetahs and domestic pets.”  Given the wide host range of canine distemper, it is very likely that cheetahs will also be susceptible, and suffer population consequences of an epidemic.

In summary, introduced and emerging diseases among wildlife populations should be actively addressed. Assertions that one species (cheetahs) might benefit from unchecked outbreaks among competitors (lions) are specious. Especially when such outbreaks could affect cheetahs themselves, and also have significant consequences on a great number of other sympatric carnivores. Cauvenet et al’s paper should  have been more vigilantly reviewed.

Picture: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Cheetah_portrait_Whipsnade_Zoo.jpg

The major trophy exporting countries were Tanzania (29% of total African exports), Zimbabwe (27%), Namibia (14% - with an increase of about 150% in exports over the last five years), and South Africa (11%). A few export surprises – Central African Republic with 340 leopards for example. The major trophy importing countries are the USA (49%), France (10%), Spain (8%), and South Africa (7%). Germany and Mexico trail with 5% each. Smaller numbers of imports were recorded by Austria, Belgium, Canada, Denmark, Italy, Portugal, Russia and Sweden.

Throughout Africa, the major threats to leopard population numbers are said to be habitat conversion and intense persecution, especially in retribution for real and perceived livestock losses. But trophy hunting is a highly significant added source of mortality. Perhaps even the highest source of mortality as with lions. Leopard males are infanticidal, and constantly removing reproductive males from the population by trophy hunting will have a cascade effect on future leopard reproduction. The IUCN and CITES list African leopards as “vulnerable”, essentially placing them in their convenient but inappropriate and irresponsible category of “don’t pay much/any attention”. 

What can be done? African leopards have few supporters, they are the “silent cats” in more ways than one. Trophy hunters have benefited. Time for all to pay some due attention. 

Picture: www. huntingreport.com

Let’s start with South Africa first, that bastion of wildlife conservation that has given us “canned” lion hunts and white rhino hunts that have doubtless had a tremendous contributory effect on the current wave of rhino poaching. Kruger National Park (KNP) is bordered by four Associated Private Nature Reserves, and with an agreement to create a “Greater Kruger”, fences were taken down and wildlife is now free to move between the APNRs and the Park. Kruger is also bordered by community wildlife areas to the north and in Mozambique by the Sabie Game Reserve. Trophy hunting takes place in APNRs like Timbavati and Klaserie, and in 2009 the following quota was assigned: elephant 55, buffalo 144, impala 5003, lion 2, zebra 7, kudu 19, white rhino 7, leopard 1, etc. A safari operator, Thormalen and Cochrane advertises trophy hunting in Timbavati, mentioning that wildlife flows freely in from Kruger.

South Africa National Parks (SANParks) denies this, or at least attempts to. They would not like to be seen as condoning trophy hunting of animals that one day are protected in the National interest in Kruger and the next available to hunters in Timbavati. Undaunted, Gerhard Damm, board member of Conservation Force, a man highly cherished in hunting circles, and Editor of "African Indaba", a newsletter for sport hunters, recently came up with this solution for the financial woes of South Africa's National Park system:

"I understand that KNP must be run as a profitable business venture, especially in view of ever diminishing government subsidies and should not depend on taxpayer handouts. Hotels are a potential solution but come with an enormous ecological footprint and high capital and running costs. Strictly regulated conservation hunting operations, if conducted in restricted wilderness/remote zones of suitable parks, would probably far surpass the monetary profits of hotels, have negligible ecological footprints and most of all would be sustainable through the years without incurring any significant capital expenditure. David Mabunda, CEO of SANParks said not so long ago that “SANParks needs to find sustainable methods to fund the operations and protection of the entire national parks system and hence SANParks views responsible tourism as a conservation strategy.” Maybe it is time to evaluate conservation hunting as one more option. SANParks could produce sustainable NET PROFITS in the region of 40 to 50 million Rand annually from very limited and strictly controlled hunting without compromising the SANParks Conservation Strategy. The National Treasury could apply the subsidies paid to SANParks in the past to service delivery on many fronts. My proposal will be challenged with all kind of moralistic assertions that hunting simply cannot take place in National Park; but those who argue against should please consider that successful and sustainable conservation strategies rest on THREE pillars: Ecology, Economy and Social Politics."

Already hunted in the APNRs, Gerhard now wants to bring wildlife under the rifles of hunters within the Park as well, as it would add income. Seductive to cash-strapped KNP, but is it justifiable according to the statutes of a National Park? We shall have to see how this develops.

Now let’s consider Zimbabwe. As in South Africa, hunting concessions border directly on National Parks, and no pretence is made about luring animals like lions out of the protected areas with baits. No pretence is either made about shooting within protected areas, although this is “officially” illegal. Zimbabwe condones “ration hunting” in protected areas – the rations being provided to Park staff and perhaps some surrounding communities. Zimbabwe can barely pay their game scouts, but has opted to feed them with the animals they are supposed to protect. Such ration hunts are sold to clients by operators as “non-trophy hunts”, but at least one operator advertises a 5-day buffalo hunt where trophies are listed as non-exportable…but for a 60% additional fee a deal can be made. The company also mentions that the trophies make great photo opportunities.

In addition, and this is particularly worrisome, the wildlife authorities now apparently see the National Parks as a “source area” for the neighbouring hunting concessions. The purposes for which national parks are constituted under the Zimbabwe Parks and Wildlife Act is to “preserve and protect the natural landscape and scenery therein, and to preserve and protect wildlife and plants and the natural ecological stability of wildlife and plant communities therein, for the enjoyment, education and inspiration of the public”. Nothing in there about providing hunting opportunities? But this is what is now happening. Why? One could confidently assume that the hunting concessions have been shot out in the past, so that now they are dependent on an influx of animals (lured, attracted, enticed) from the protected areas to satisfy the hunting clients. Andrew Loveridge of Oxford University wrote about the great impact lion trophy hunting on borders had on populations within Hwange National Park, but this now seems to be condoned despite his observations of highly negative impacts.

Short-term and misguided profit taking is not conducive to long-term conservation programmes. But this is what seems to be happening in South African and Zimbabwean National Parks. We cannot have much influence on national policies in African nations about what is clearly a mining attitude towards their wildlife. But we can do something to prevent trophy imports to our nations, and seek more enlightened alternatives to the present reliance on income from trophy hunting. Gerhard Damm is not wrong to invoke economic factors in conservation. But that does not necessarily have to come from destructive utilization of wildlife resources, especially in their last mainstay of the protected areas.    

Picture credit: Rembrandt van Rijn

He starts out full of vigour, reports that lion populations in Africa are declining, reports that they are increasing in Namibia (?), reports about the petition to the US Secretary of the Interior to put lions on the USA Endangered Species list, and reports on the community initiatives where concessions in Namibia have been given rights of ownership over the wildlife. So far so good.

He then says this: “I’m not a hunter, and turning lions into trophies has always struck me as a strange enterprise. But I was inclined to approve of it, in part because of the unequal character of such encounters—we are on foot, in their territory, with animals that can easily kill us”. Immediately he reveals how naïve he is – he has no idea that a lion “hunt” is conducted with baits, the hunter transported in a vehicle, the hunter equipped with a high-powered rifle with a telescopic sight allowing him to shoot the lion from distance, the hunter with odds stacked incredibly high in his favour. Does he really think hunters track lions on foot, slog around Namibian deserts and dunes, and that hunting is “fair chase”? To have done his research well, he should have joined an actual lion hunt.

Coniff then interviews a bunch of people – as journalists do. Craig Packer first, who trots out information from Tanzania to show that lions have been grossly overhunted –  “the only lions left out there with a mane and testicles are youngsters. A male lion needs six years to establish himself in a pride and rear a new generation. Overhunting leads to continual turnover in the pride: when a new male takes the throne, he tends to kill the old crop of cubs so he can father his own”. But when Coniff asked if Packer would support a ban on trophy hunting, he demurred.

Next on the interview list were Garth Owen-Smith, Namibia’s “leading conservationist” and Greg Stuart-Hill, a senior conservation planner for the World Wildlife Fund. Both were in support of lion trophy hunting, as it brings in a trophy fee of $10,000 or so in addition to the hunting fees – money talks and the communities would not kill lions eating their livestock anymore, as they now had “value”.

The article then fizzles out with a suggestion that photographic tourists might pay an extra fee to photograph lions.

Now let’s get to the nitty gritty about Namibia shall we? Things that Coniff should have mentioned but did not?

First, Namibia exported 188 trophy lions from 2000-2009 according to CITES. With a rising trend – 65 lion exports during the first five years of that period (2000-2004), and 123 lions during the latter five years (2005-2009). An increase of about 90%. The IUCN estimated in 2006 that Namibia had a lion population of 415-795 lions (all ages and sexes), some shared with Botswana. In the north, where almost all the hunting takes place, the IUCN estimated 315-595 lions (all ages and sexes), but Etosha National Park takes up over 50% of that area and protects most of those lions. Same old story in Namibia as all over Africa – the lions available in hunting concessions are over-harvested. So desperate are the lion hunters that they shoot males radiocollared by research projects (see below).

Second, Dr Philip Stander has a long-term research programme called the Desert Lion Conservation Project in northern Namibia outside the protected area of Etosha. “Flip” as he is known, has this to say about trophy hunting  – “The regularity, especially since 2004, at which male lions were shot or hunted, and the selection of adult males for trophy hunting, have resulted in a significant reduction of males in the population. It also contributed to vastly different age-specific mortality rates between males and females, that serves to illustrate the negative impact on the population. Increasingly skewed sex ratios, favouring females, have reached critical levels (2010 -  1 adult female : 0.18 adult male). Six of the nine major prides [in the research area where they are trophy hunted] are currently without a pride male”. Flip Stander was not interviewed by Coniff, rather a big journalistic faux pas.

Third, the Bush Warriors website had this to say - “It is with great sorrow that we report that the world, Namibia, and community-based conservation organization, Desert Lion Conservation (DLC), has lost an entire pride of rare, unique, desert-adapted lions over the span of just one year. Two days ago, the pride’s last remaining members—three females—were intentionally poisoned and found dead, putting an end to the genetics of a distinctive line of lions and wasting enormous conservation efforts, especially from the regional tourism industry. Tourists and conservationists are stunned over the news and extremely frustrated with the fact that an entire pride of these big cats have all been lost at the hands of man. DLC’s Dr. Phillip ‘Flip’ Stander calls it “the end of an era”. Bush Warriors also report that two of Flip Stander’s radiocollared males were shot by trophy hunters. This came out in July 2011,and completely ignored by Coniff. Bush warriors conclude – “The current situation of unsustainable hunting of adult male lions and the correspondingly negative impact on the non-consumptive tourism industry in Namibia is a serious problem.”

So – is the trophy hunting of Namibian lions conserving them? No in two important ways. Lions are being harvested at unsustainable rates from a small population, causing considerable disruption in pride structure and future reproduction. No also, because the communities supposedly so convinced of the “value” of lions are still poisoning them. At the end of the day the lion “conservation hunting” programme in Namibia has to be seen as the failure it is, and a big re-think is necessary. And please, no more “insight” from reporters like Richard Coniff who attempt to address complicated issues with superficial and badly researched articles. 

Picture credit: didimalasafari.com

Please bring this report to the attention of members of Congress, Senators, Members of Parliaments, and Members of European Parliament who represent you. It is a document that all decision makers need to see to end lion sport hunting. We need your active participation to circulate this report. Thank you.

Picture Credit : Chris Harvey

South Africa, according to various reports, has anywhere between 2130 and 3852 wild lions. In case you should be worried, all these lion populations are behind fences. There have been a number of “private reserves” established, one of them next to the Sun City entertainment resort, where lions have been introduced from Namibia to add entertainment to game drives. Then there are a few National Parks with lions - notably Kruger that boasts over 2000 lions within the very large reserve. And then of course there are “game ranches” that offer lion hunting, but these are all derived from a captive population of well over 4000 lions specifically bred for trophy hunting. CITES (the Convention on Trade in Endangered Species of Fauna and Flora – a watchdog organization that is supposed to strictly regulate trade in endangered and vulnerable species and that is about as effective as an umbrella in a hurricane) therefore has two categories of lions exported as trophies from South Africa: “ranched/captive bred” and “wild”.

Now if you should happen to peruse the CITES trade website (perhaps when there is nothing good on TV) you will see that South Africa exported a total of 2651 “wild” lion trophies between 2000 and 2009 when reliable records end. This is a puzzlement. You see, South Africa just does not have that many wild lions in hunting concessions. Sure, some of the concessions directly bordering on Kruger Park allow trophy hunting (good deal, they took down the original border fence between Kruger and the concession, so wildlife flows in and out – one minute in a hunting area, next in a protected area). Also, some of the private reserves allow trophy hunting of their excess lions (not advertised to the tourists). But that, really, is about it.

There is not much of a price difference between hunting a canned lion versus a “wild” lion, but “real” hunters turn up their noses at any lion that has a sniff of captive breeding – they want what they are promised – a wild one, and not a “wild” one within the past 2 or 3 days. South Africa has fast and loose designations – according to their regulations, any captive bred lion turned loose in a field with a few antelopes is “deemed” to be wild. So last week it was a captive animal and a few days later it is wild. Quite convenient.

But let’s give the hunters the benefit of the doubt. Are there any “wild” lions to be hunted in South Africa? In any truly wild population, about 15% of the lions are adult males, about 35% adult females, and the rest subadults and cubs. So if you take the wildly optimistic figure of 3852 wild lions in South Africa, that means only 578 are adult males. Then say that optimistically that 5% of those males occur in hunting concessions (contiguous with National Parks) -  so 29 males provide an average trophy offtake over the past ten years of 265 “wild” trophies per annum. I should point out that South Africa also exported 3024 “captive/ranched” lion trophies over the past ten years to 2009.

You are by now beginning to get my point. A famous parallel could be made with Burundi, a densely populated country that perhaps had a handful of elephants (some say one). From 1973 to 1982, 300 tonnes of ivory were exported from Burundi to Belgium (before the 1990 ivory ban). Later, Burundi was allowed to export another 89.5 tonnes of stockpiled ivory by CITES. Quite amazing how so few can provide so much.

So where do all those “wild” lions exported from South Africa come from? There are three explanations. The first is that those lions are regularly placed in South Africa by aliens from a distant planet. We can sort of dismiss that possibility with apologies to those who firmly believe aliens walk among us. The second is that the lions are hunted illegally in neighbouring countries like Zimbabwe and Mozambique and declared in South Africa as resident lions. That has some degree of possibility. For example, there is evidence that in 2007 19 lions were shot but official CITES export numbers from Mozambique show only 15 exported from that country. In 2008, trophy fees were paid for 22 lions, but only 18 exported from Mozambique. The third, and most likely, is that captive bred lions are sold to clueless clients as “wild” lions. It’s quite easy really – bring a client to a hunting “concession”, let him slog around for many days, secretly buy a lion from a breeder, set it out in the area, and then lead the client to it. Presto chango and the rabbit comes out of the hat. Virtually every single lion hunted in South Africa was bred in captivity. Going home and boasting you went on a “dangerous game” lion hunt in South Africa and registering your “wild” trophy for the SCI record books is a fallacy and a delusion. 

It is a wonderment that CITES and other relevant authorities have not picked up on this discrepancy. I will surely lose sleep over all those poor clients (71% of South African “wild” lion trophies end up in the USA, a country seemingly stuffed with gullible hunters). South African operators and professional hunters have played you well. Caveat emptor for all you credulous clients who will doubtless flock to the next SCI convention in 2012 and sign up for some more “wild” lion hunts in South Africa. Those of you with “wild” trophies, perhaps consider a lawsuit for having been sold falsely advertised goods, and SCI – take all those “wild” lions hunted in South Africa off your record books, recall your awards and rings and whatever other honours you bestow. You have all been duped.

The journalist based his article on a published report in the journal Conservation Biology by Dr Murray Rudd, an environmental economist at York University, UK. Unfortunately, the journalist got Rudd’s message all wrong (hence the hype about tigers and pandas). This is an important subject that needs reporting accurately and should not be turned into a piece of sensationalist writing.

 The journalist focused on the concept of “triage” a medical term generally applicable for those wounded in wars, natural disasters, or terrorist events. A large number of wounded people all at once presented to hospitals are “triaged” – basically meaning evaluated in terms of their needs for immediate attention versus being able to wait a bit longer until the most urgent cases have been cleared by the limited number of surgeons and operating rooms available. It does not mean such other patients will not be attended to, only that they must wait a bit while given supportive care.

Perhaps it has to do with this triage word. It has come to take the meaning that patients – or species – with no hope are allowed to die, while those with a better chance of survival are given treatment with the limited resources we have available. In an emergency we cannot save everyone “triage” is meant to imply, and we must focus on those that have a chance. That is the unfortunate consequence of using such provocative words out of context.

The concept of environmental, and indeed species triage has a long history, and has started to take on a completely erroneous meaning. Murray Rudd is certainly not wrong to use the word, but perhaps he should have avoided it. His study asked very good questions, and never really mentioned abandoning tigers and pandas. That was an invention by the journalist.

An article in 2008 by a group of scientists from the University of Queensland in Australia (Is conservation triage just smart decision making? – Trends in Ecology and Evolution 2008 23 (12): 649-654) pretty much said the same thing:

  “Although often used implicitly by conservation managers, scientists and policymakers, triage has been misinterpreted as the process of simply deciding which assets (e.g. species, habitats) will not receive investment. As a consequence, triage is sometimes associated with a defeatist conservation ethic. However, triage is no more than the efficient allocation of conservation resources and we risk wasting scarce resources if we do not follow its basic principles”

They go on to say “In an ideal world, there would be enough money to save everything  but instead we are faced with a growing list of species at imminent risk of extinction, declining habitat extent and condition, uncertainty about the likelihood of our investment success and inadequate conservation budgets. Under these conditions, it is essential that scarce resources are allocated to maximise the persistence of valuable assets (e.g. biological features) that will disappear without treatment, that is, without conservation action”.  They acknowledge that human-induced extinction rates are “are up to 1000 times the natural extinction rate and progress toward the 2010 biodiversity target to reduce significantly the rate of extinction has been limited despite six years of concerted conservation investment and action”.

The Alliance for Zero Extinction took issue with this 2008 report, and said the amount of funding invested in bailouts of the US auto industry (and the later bank bailouts and Greece they were not yet aware of) were sums of money far greater than those needed to achieve zero extinction. But those are sad pipe dreams in terms of what we are willing to spend on conservation.  I cannot imagine the US Congress or the UK Parliament voting equivalent funds to bail out extinction of species?

But let’s come back to Murray Rudd at York University. Conservation organizations do not like economic assessments of effectiveness, but Murray was only trying to inject some timely realism. Basically it means that conservation biologists need to be willing to accept some (unfortunate) truths. In the paper, some of the following statements spring out:

a) Treating species and ecosystems as commodities was generally viewed negatively.

b) We need more rules, better monitoring, increased enforcement, and larger fines. Making damaging human behavior illegal and expensive is central to any strategy meant to protect biological diversity.

c) The majority of respondents agreed or strongly agreed that conservational professionals need to be willing to rethink conservation goals and standards of success.

d) We could be on the cusp of a period of evolution in thinking about how conservation goals might be redefined and realized as the effects of human activities and climate change escalate rapidly.

e) “Trade in wild species and their products can work as a tool for conservation” was one of Rudd’s questions – only 7.6% of scientists agree.  Beware trophy hunters…
 

So there you have it.

In a nutshell, and perhaps belatedly, conservation scientists are asking about money invested in the past versus progress to avoid further losses for endangered species. In that sense, perhaps the Tiger is a good example.

Estimates indicate it will cost $82 million per year now to protect tigers in 42 "source sites" that make up only about 6% of the tiger's current range, or about 0.5% of the area it used to span. John Robinson of the Wildlife Conservation Society (New York) is of the opinion that as tigers breed well in captivity, they can “bounce back” in the wild. That means $27,333 per tiger. They could each have individual bodyguards with that amount of money?

Tigers have been on the conservation agenda by organisations like WWF for at least a decade. All we have seen is declines despite great donor investment. “The need for open and objective dialogue on tiger conservation is pressing. Reputations need to be suppressed in the interests of identifying and testing new strategies to deliver sustainable conservation of the tiger before it is too late for the species” said Hank Jenkins in 2007.

In the same year, the Telegraph reported WWF Tiger projects failing - “The only vaguely silver-lining is that for decades, population figures for India's tigers have been the very definition of "lies, damned lies and statistics." In the past, a number of bureaucrats and forestry officials faked tiger tracks and colluded to claim that declining populations were stable, and avoid criticism or the sack”.

Grim. Yet more and more Tiger NGOs are now rushing to the fore (Tigers are “in” these days, even rather incongruent people like Vladimir Putin and Leonardo Di Caprio are apparently joining forces) and are calling for new funds. Yet there is still nothing new under the sun in terms of Tiger innovative strategies and solutions. What I would controversially suggest is a triage of conservation organizations based on a forthright assessment of past performance? Investment versus returns?

Conservation effectiveness needs constant assessments, new ideas, and progress?

Picture: http://trialx.com/curetalk/wp-content/blogs.dir/7/files/2011/05/diseases/Intensive_Care_Unit-2.gif

Someone arrested in Johannesburg airport for attempting to export illegal lion bones?

Sent as a “mule” to transport them to an import company in Laos well known for the similar mules sent to transport illegal rhino horns? Is there a link between the illegal rhino horn trade in South Africa and the illegal lion bone trade?

If so, lions are in deep trouble. We have on this site expressed grave concerns about lion bones taking over from tiger bones (in short supply these days) in terms of being used as a substitute for Asian traditional medicine concoctions.

South Africa has long been lauded (by some) for allowing private ownership of many wildlife species. These are placed on game ranches and either trophy hunted and/or hunted for their meat. It is a big industry, and has been hailed as a conservation success – South Africa now has many more previously endangered and vulnerable species like black wildebeest, bontebok, blesbok, and rhinos than before. We have also said on this site that such animals should not be seen as being conserved, as their only purpose on the game ranches is to be commercially exploited.

South Africa allows lions to be bred by private individuals for commercial hunting – the so-called canned hunting. South Africa has also allowed rhinos on private properties to be bred for the hunt. Apparently they did not notice the clamour among Vietnamese hunters to line up for such permits – the rhino horn legally taken to Vietnam and then illegally sold as a concoction was worth many times more than the price for a rhino hunt. It should be pointed out that Vietnamese (and Thai and Laotian) hunters only come to South Africa to shoot rhinos. Alarm bells? Not on your life. Blind eye by SA authorities and many in the international sphere.

Legal rhino exports, in my mind, fuelled a great explosion of poaching in recent years. 333 rhinos poached last year and 341 already this year. The “legal” exports could not keep pace with the demand. South Africa is reviewing whether legal rhino trophy hunting is connected to the increase in poaching and the illegal rhino horn exports. It is clear as day to me, but South Africa dithers and prevaricates, making the occasional announcement that the responsible Minister, Edna Molewa, is “concerned” and just might review “legal hunting” and impose some stricter guidelines. Might she just?

Not a chance Edna. You are as fenced in by the vested interests in rhino trophy hunting as you are by those breeding lions for canned hunting. Read the article above Edna. You might recognize the names of the SA game ranchers already involved with the rhino horn trade and now the lion bone trade?

I believe that history repeats itself. Perhaps because we allow it to. And perhaps we will now see the same pattern that we saw with rhinos – lions increasingly being poached from SA private properties, game reserves, and national parks?  And other places in Africa?

Illegal ivory mainly is exported from Tanzania according to intercepted shipments. Whether all those elephants actually were poached in Tanzania is a moot point. It is a convenient and corrupt facilitator that allows container-loads of ivory to be loaded onto ships for further destinations. It is estimated, as in the drug trade, that only 10% of shipments of ivory are intercepted. Worth the risk of sending a container of ivory at huge profit to an Asian port?

The illegal rhino horns and now the increase in lion bone exports virtually all originate from South Africa. Another convenient country for illegal wildlife exports from Africa? Worth the risk of sending one mule for nine that get through? The importers from Laos, Thailand, and Vietnam certainly seem to think so.

Much to think about South Africa. And do make some right decisions please if you want informed wildlife tourists to spend money on a safari to your country… 

Nothing but a ban on imports will make a difference, as sport hunters will not regulate themselves, despite their claims of being conservationists. To my mind, they only conserve the taxidermy industry and corrupt officials. All feed at the trough of commercial exploitation of wildlife, and pass gas about conservation. Harsh? No, realistic. The more that is exposed about these practices the better, and this is why LionAid is urging for the only possible alternative – an import ban imposed for trophies by the countries where the clients live. In the USA, let the resident hunters shoot, per annum, 16.5 million ducks, 1463 cranes, 12,628 swans, 24,465 bears, 12 million rabbits, 2.5 million raccoons, 3.1 million geese, 35 million doves, 26 million squirrels, 615,148 turkeys, 6.1 million deer and who knows how many cougars, wolves, elk, wild sheep, moose – they claim it is their right, so go at it. That’s your wildlife heritage, but please don’t come to Africa.

I have blogged before about a hunting website run by someone called Safaribwana. He organizes hunts for clients, and says he’s from Zambia while living in the USA. He’s a bit over the top in terms of his pro-hunting “massage”, but occasionally he gets it right. Please read this from his May 2009 post:  

“A good PH friend of mine was out on a hunt, far out in the western sands of Zambia in a vast and sparsely populated GMA. He was covering with another more fancy, flashy PH out of Zimbabwe, after Lion - a safari booked upon last seasons spectacular results. Day in and day out a young male would walk into the bait, big bodied but thin around the ears and shoulders, clearly a 3 or 4 year old boy testing his skills and territory. Other baits had strikes but the big one didn't show and as the safari started nearing its end the inevitable happened - the throw away youngster from day 3 now suddenly started looking like a shooter in the eyes of flashy pants and he started hinting to my friend that it may not be that young a male, perhaps it had a mane-less gene. Now, there are lions that don't grow manes, but you don't need a mane to clearly read the age of a male - it is clear if it is on the young side - and the much talked about black nose is not necessarily the indicator.
Here came the dilemma which we all face as PH's and it is one which is as variable as black and white from PH to PH. Your client has paid top dollar to hunt a lion, he wants success and there in front of you is a lion that is not considered dependant upon its mother, but it is young and is NOT a trophy male, it is merely a lion that will one day become great. What takes priority? Your client and their insistence that any male is OK, the safari operator insisting that the quota must be filled and trophy fee paid, or your gut that says this is not right, I will stick to my principals?
This report and its findings, whatever it may result in, highlights the fact that our hunting industry is far from perfect, it is something which sorely needs rethinking and hopefully a total restructuring! There are many conflicts, pitfalls and viable solutions. Some hunters have started out with the right principals in their areas from day one, some have never held wildlife at the core of their beliefs (almost as if it is not within their culture) and the rest fall somewhere in the middle, all under the same label and umbrella - African Trophy Hunting”.

Correct all “principals” as spelled to principles and you will get the picture. The young male was shot for sure!  And this is from a man who supplies clients to trophy hunting organizations?

Next comes this…

“Up until a few years ago, the principle [correct spelling!] of a community benefitting from the wildlife on their traditional land was but a pipe dream. However since 2003 it was formalized in the GMA lease agreements and now the community had a Resource Board who would represent their needs and see to the efficient and prudent allocation of funds from the hunting revenues. Today 50 percent of the revenue from the trophy fees and 20 percent of the concession fees are allocated to the community for various projects and priorities. The chief for example gets a 5% cut while the majority of funds are allocated to employ local village scouts for anti-poaching work. The problems that exist within this system is the filtering down of funds to the intended grassroots recipients and often the most important ones like salaries for the village scouts is non existent. The process is hindered from the top down starting at the disbursement from the wildlife authority but also gets mis appropriated at resource board level and often scouts wait 6-8 months for their salaries. What do they do to feed themselves and their families during this time? Should they carry on their essential duty to the GMA or should they sit idly by and wait until their salaries are paid?”

So they all know the problem but continue hunting… and the continued message from sport hunters is that they greatly assist African communities?

And then this:

“A couple of years ago existing GMA's [Game Management Areas] were suddenly split into two or three and the existing safari operators were told they had to pay for another hunting concession as well as another quota of animals. Essentially it meant a GMA of 3000 square kilometers with an annual quota of 180 animal species was now split into two 1500 sq km areas each with an annual quota of 180 animal species? In any man’s book, this does not make ecological or conservation sense, in fact it simply does not make sense. However it does make a whole lot of sense numbers wise to certain operators looking for more hunting land that they had perhaps missed during the initial GMA allocation and it makes even more dollar sense to the wildlife authority.”

So there you have it. All in the sport hunting community – the officials, the governments, the operators, the professional hunters – are looking for short-term profits. Not their conservation claims, not their community assistance claims- dollars and euros please. Will we stand up to them?

http://www.safaribwana.com/NEWSLETTERS/2009/May29.htm

Picture credit: BeCK/newtoonsontheblog.info

This is a blog that might be difficult for some of you to take on board, but it is the blunt truth about many highly endangered species in the world. My message is ultimately that we should not have let them become that way, and we still might have the choice to do right for many. But also for many species, we might have to accept, based on our complacency in the past, extinction in the near future because they are already dead as species. They are the ghosts of a world that once was, and while we might catch the occasional glimpse of an individual, we have taken away a defining characteristic of what it is to be a species – their future evolutionary potential.

We have come to accept that conservation is about saving individuals as that is all we have left. We have been led to believe that biodiversity is served by having a few Sumatran tigers and Javan rhinos clinging to individual survival, the hope that a few Ivory-Billed woodpeckers (pictured above) still elude eager spotters, and that we might just find a hidden stronghold among mammals for the Bawean deer, the Namdapha flying squirrel, the Blond Titi monkey and the Blonde Capuchin, the Black-bearded Saki and the Andaman white-toothed Shrew, the Social Tuco-tuco and the Wondiwoi tree kangaroo. Among plants,for the Pokemeboy, Brown’s Pigweed, Troodos Rockcress and the Maltese rock-centaury. Among birds for the Sulu Hornbill, the Honduran Emerald, and the sadly named Medium tree-finch. Among freshwater molluscs for the Ouachita Rock Pocketbook, the Tar River Spiny Mussel and the False Spike, the Shiny Pigtoe and the Cracking Pearly Mussel. Hidden strongholds? Not a chance. Extinction is not about the last individual, it is a process.

Our species, Homo sapiens, now numbers seven billion. We have effectively taken over the planet  some time ago in terms of our demand for natural resources. Those resources include wood from forests in existence for hundreds of years, bush meat, hunting trophies, fragile marine resources, fossil fuels. We have, and will increasingly contribute to climate change as carbon emissions are now ever more accepted as a necessity of economic growth instead of careful consideration of environmental consequences. Due to demand from our numbers, we increasingly and ceaselessly require an array of biological products that cannot (despite their supposedly “renewable” status) keep up with our demands. We destroy forests for wood, to open up temporary fields to grow a few crops, and to plant oil palms to fuel our cars. We believe in the biofuel concept (for those same cars) that fuels the expansion of sugar cane plantations at the expense of natural habitats.

Economic demands at present levels, and at probably increasing levels in the future, are completely out of synchrony with any means of supply from our wild species, whether they be tunas, deep sea corals, leopards, lions, mahogany trees, or any of the increasing number of species on the IUCN Red List of endangered animals and plants. Those of you who own Chippendale furniture are looking at wood from an extinct tree. It has come to the point that anyone who claims that sustainable offtake of vulnerable species is possible should gently be conveyed to an institution specializing in the treatment of delusionals.

Let’s face it. We have eradicated biodiversity on this planet to the extent that we are now faced (or actually have been faced for some time but nobody was paying attention) with a big and growing crisis. And now let me get to some meat some of you might find indigestible, but still needs to be served.

Darwin, a progressive thinker who struggled with his religious issues and potential competition from Alfred Russel Wallace, eventually published his Origin of Species. Darwin, truth be told, had no inkling of how inheritance actually worked, and it is said an unopened letter from Mendel was found on his desk after he died. But nevertheless he proposed a principle that still guides evolutionary thinking 150 years later.

Darwin was a proponent of “evolution by descent”.  That meant variation in species could lead to new varieties, hence evolution. Wallace opined that changing environments could select for new species, by implication again due to genetic variation present among populations.

Genetic variability is accumulated within a species by substantial numbers of individuals over many generations, and relies on a variety of different processes, not only the slow mutation as was once thought. We now acknowledge species “need” genetic diversity to ensure their survival in shifting environments, and also to allow speciation in the future.  Species are dynamic entities, and thus we must realize that we have by our past actions taken the evolutionary potential (at least) away from many species by destroying their numbers. Therefore, many species are now already evolutionarily extinct while some few individuals might remain. 

We do not seem to realize that by the time we classify a species as endangered, or critically endangered, that it is already dead in an evolutionary sense. Perhaps we need to accept that for those species evolution is dead, and that all we can do now is be concerned with the survival of a few remaining individuals. Maybe that is the best we can do given a dire situation. Maybe we should celebrate apparent success stories where numbers of individuals are somewhat resurrected by timely intervention. The black-footed ferret in the USA comes to mind. There are many programmes in zoos to breed animals in captivity either gone from the wild or present in such low numbers to cause great concern. Reintroduction into the wild is a pesky detail for such programmes, but some progress has been made.

Still, we have not learned from our mistakes. Endangered species are given special status by CITES and the IUCN, and once designated, trade and consumption is suddenly subject to a great number of regulations, guidelines, decrees and directives. The same should be best proactively extended to species currently listed as “vulnerable”, as those, in many cases, are still proper species in an evolutionary sense. We tend to wait until it is too late for species by saying “enough is enough”, and then we are down to numbers that cannot sustain evolution. The IUCN criteria to “become” an endangered species are rigid, and strictly speaking they only get on the list and get urgent protection when it is far too late.

A species is not a bunch of individuals in scattered and isolated populations added together. A species needs to be seen as a genetically variable and evolutionarily viable entity. We should put all species now classified as “vulnerable” on the endangered species list – after all, we should be talking about species, not individuals in terms of intelligent conservation.  Lions should not “wait” to become endangered, though those in western Africa and India already are. Time to pay attention to genetics, evolution, and intercede in a timely fashion. What’s more important to maintaining biodiversity - a species that is still viable or a sadly lingering ghost? It will require a sea change in our muddled thinking, but conservation needs to accept Darwinian principles if we are to be truly effective in the future.

Picture credit: http://training.fws.gov/History/Articles/IvoryBilledWoodpecker.html

This clip was filmed in the Kalahari Transfrontier Park between Botswana and South Africa. The young male lion is shown having a "grand mal" seizure typical of a canine distemper infection. The commentary on the clip reports that only one of five lions in the group survived, but that is unconfirmed. But what is confirmed is that canine distemper among lions is not confined to eastern Africa anymore. It is a spreading threat to all lion populations.

LionAid has long cautioned that lion populations are extremely fragile. 95% of lions in many populations are infected with Feline Immunodeficiency Virus that destroys their immune competence over time and renders them susceptible to domestic animal borne diseases like canine distemper and bovine tuberculosis. In South Africa, the latter is threatening to destroy one of Africa's major remaining lion populations in Kruger Park.

Yet lions are still being sport hunted at an unsustainable rate by those who falsely claim they will thus be conserved. When LionAid eliminates sport hunting by disallowing trophy imports into the EU and by corollary elsewhere, disease issues will be high on our following agenda to significantly address the conservation concerns of African lions.

I’ve posted the link to a particularly interesting current topic below. It basically started out by some person called “Zimpatriot” revealing the excesses of South African “Professional” Hunters coming across the border with eager clients and conducting trophy hunts in more than a few of Zimbabwe’s national parks. Aided and abetted, it seems, by at least one warden.  The South African took umbrage at being revealed, and threatened retaliatory action by some of his “black” friends in Zimbabwe.

The fur began to fly, as the Zimbabwe professional hunters (some of whom also seem to have been complicit in this activity) expressed great outrage about what seemed basically about the South African PHs operating illegal hunts. And perhaps operating by dastardly stealing clients away from the Zim PHs. Sabres were rattled and promises made to involve the Director General of Wildlife in Zimbabwe, The Labour Department, and the Immigration Department. A wonderful opportunity enthusiastically seized to tell about confiscated trophies mouldering away in Zimbabwe warehouses while dejected American clients who had trusted South African PHs offered money to have them restored.  But then there was an interesting twist to the conversations.

We have all been told that trophy hunting operators, the professional hunters, and the clients all seek to conserve wildlife. Well, hunting in national parks is not exactly conducive to such aims, but it now appears official hunting areas are similarly exploited. Zimbabwe has some exclusive concession areas (one operator) and then there are others that will auction a quota, where anyone can bid. In those areas, there is also something called a “ration quota” to feed hungry citizens starved by Mugabe’s eccentric land allocation schemes. Ration quotas can also be sold directly  to clients it seems. In addition, operators can also be provided access in these “auction” areas, and often many operate at the same time. One hunter complained of being in one of twelve vehicles carrying eager hunters in one area. Queues on the equivalent of a bush M25 come to mind…

Concern was expressed by the accuratereloaders that hunting quotas, already pegged at “enthusiastic” levels, were consequently doubled or tripled or quadrupled according to the diversity of hunting operators.

Lions were mentioned of course, and a discussion ensued about what had been shot versus what was theoretically assigned on quota. A consensus seemed to be reached that three areas where four lions were on quota actually had harvests of six lions in 2010 and seven in 2011. As with the one remaining Bumi Hills lion baited and shot either within a private photographic area or inches outside it, another contributor told of having seen carcass drag marks well within a photographic area to lure a local male lion out. The same contributor told of a three-year old son of the remaining females now mating with his mother and aunts? Collapse of the lion population in other words. Due to the conservation efforts of the hunting community.

What should be noted is that a US based hunter, Aaron Nielsen of Littleton, Colorado, given all the information above, is still pestering the other members of the forum for information as he wants to hunt a lion in the very areas where lions have been overshot in the past. My advice? Don’t delay Aaron, book yourself onto a hunt for the last lion in those areas ASAP. Or maybe your professional hunter could entice a lion out of a protected area to ensure the effectiveness of the sport hunting conservation message?

Better yet Aaron, book yourself with Safaribwana who is now advertising lion (and leopard) hunts at a cut rate. Basically, the Bwana’s formula is that you pay $10,000 to slog around a shot-out hunting area, and if you do happen to encounter a remaining adolescent lion and leopard, you shoot it and then pay up to $43,000. A budget safari with the possibility of a chance encounter? At least that operator is dealing with the stark realities of hunter conservation efforts in the past. He even says you can work to maintain a few roads while you search for the non-existent cats, and will throw in a sable antelope and a buffalo to keep your spirits up while washing dishes.

Do take the time to read the Accuratereloading entries while sitting at your next airport. And do consider the wonderful world of conservation hunting as is revealed. Thanks to a wonderful LionAid supporter who digs in muck on our behalf, if I was Liz you would have an OBE. 

Sources: http://forums.accuratereloading.com/eve/forums/a/tpc/f/1411043/m/7981066461/p/1
http://www.safaribwana.com/NEWSLETTERS/2011/April7th.htm

Picture: BECK

The regional sheriff mobilized his forces and shot dead 49 animals including 18 tigers and 17 lions and many bears… He has come under criticism for his actions, but he basically had little choice. You don’t get much advice in law enforcement courses about how to deal with tigers and lions and bears running around neighbourhoods where you are supposed to protect citizens. The animals were released close to dusk, no dart guns were available, and the sheriff took what he felt was the only option open to him. 

So they were destroyed. But one does question that same sheriff and animal welfare associations as to why this man was allowed to maintain his menagerie. Especially since he had been cited for animal cruelty and even imprisoned for illegal firearm possession. Ohio is supposed to have some very lax rules about individuals owning exotic species, but surely having a huge number of lions and tigers and bears on a property might have caused a bit more than casual concern. Apparently and strangely it appears it did not.

Will Travers of the Born Free Foundation commented on the CNN website to correctly point out that such individual and irresponsible ownership of exotic species has no role in our society. His comments were overall good – keep wild species in the wild. But unfortunately you do have to read through an incredible amount of promotional statements for Born Free that frankly distract from what should have been a straightforward message. CNN, for example, allowed this paragraph:

“In Texas, the Born Free USA Primate Sanctuary provides permanent, safe, naturalistic and free-range accommodations for more than 500 macaques, vervets and baboons, many of whom have been rescued from captive lives of stress, deprivation and danger -- danger to both the monkeys and to their "owners." Relevant or self promoting? You decide.

But we agree with Born Free that private ownership of animals kept in often deplorable conditions should be banned immediately. Unlike animals kept in enlightened and progressive zoos, such captives are only there for the entertainment and perhaps commercial interests of their owners. The USA should very carefully evaluate animal welfare guidelines already well established in the UK. Time for the US SPCA and the HSUS to get a bit more active? And for the US and State Governments to pass some very strict laws about possession of exotic species? 

Source:
http://edition.cnn.com/2011/10/19/opinion/travers-escape-wild-animals-ohio/index.html?iref=allsearch
Picture:
http://edition.cnn.com/2011/10/20/us/ohio-animals-on-loose/index.html?iref=allsearch

Rhino horn has been commercially valuable for many years, either finding its way to Yemen where the elite find it attractive to be made into dagger handles and/or to the East Asian Traditional Medicine trade where it was supposed to relieve a number of symptoms such as fever. The Yemeni dagger trade has died down a bit, but the Traditional Medicine trade can only be described as a growth industry. Why? Well, apart from the long-standing ascribed medicinal value of ground horn, some years ago a high official in the Vietnamese Government announced that he had been cured of cancer by regular doses of a rhino horn potion. That single testimonial has now apparently blown the roof off the rhino horn trade, and there has been a great flurry of activity ever since.

Let me back up a bit and tell you about white rhinos. The name derived not from their colour (grey) but because as opposed the black rhino (again not the colour), the white rhino mouth is wide, or weit in German. White rhinos are huge animals, a sort of reminder of what was around in the Pleistocene era. They are grazers (hence the wide mouth) and pretty docile compared to the smaller but stroppier black rhinos that like to charge at anything irritating their day.

Now, because of the dagger handles, traditional medicine, and overhunting, white rhinos suffered great declines. Especially in the case of the northern white rhino, a subspecies now extinct. But the southern whites remained at relatively good numbers in South Africa in mainly Kruger National Park, and a number of game ranches have bought rhinos on auction to breed them. Not for conservation purposes, mind you, but for sport hunting. So, say the trophy hunters, another feather in our cap as there are now something like 20,000 white rhinos in South Africa, and we have saved another species from extinction by giving it a commercial value.

Not so fast boys and girls. The ranch rhinos contribute nothing to conservation, and their sport hunting has indeed contributed greatly to the current poaching drama. Let me explain, and let me also tell you why CITES and TRAFFIC (Mission Statement - TRAFFIC, the wildlife trade monitoring network, works to ensure that trade in wild plants and animals is not a threat to the conservation of nature) have not been paying attention. And I’ll also let you in on a worrying trend in Russia and Spain…

Vietnam is not known as a country with a great passion for trophy hunting. In fact, trophy hunters there are pretty much nonexistent, with the single exception of going to South Africa and hunting rhinos. CITES duly recorded this trend, and it should have raised some eyebrows among even their most dense staff members. From 2005 to 2009 (when CITES records end) Vietnam imported 207 rhino hunting trophies and 84 horns. Before 2005, there seemed to be no interest at all. Like zero. So why did Vietnam suddenly develop a great interest in rhino trophy hunting? You guessed it. Trophy hunts were sold at much lower prices than the horn was worth. Did anyone pay attention? Did the UK-based charity Save the Rhino International raise a question (in fact they support trophy hunting)? Did the UK-based Tusk Trust? Did the IUCN? No. Is it difficult to get this trade information from CITES? No, just go to the trade website and it is all there.

Sorry, but this level of inattention is just not acceptable. “Legal” hunting spurred the market for rhino horns and spurred the poaching market. It should be noted that a CITES rhino trophy is only allowed to be exported under the legal agreement that it will not be used for trade purposes. I’m sure that contravening that legality must have weighed heavily on the minds of the Vietnamese while they were grinding up the horns for medicine.

South Africa was complicit in the trade, as they knew where the horns were going and should have noticed the sudden influx of Vietnamese “hunters”. The hunters did not even arrive with guns and did not know how to shoot for goodness sake! Most recently, a bit of a scandal was raised when a bunch of Thai women arrived at a game ranch, equipped with the necessary licenses, and then sat and had lunch and tea while a professional hunter shot their trophies…

But now, under international scrutiny, South Africa is taking measures. Yes indeed. On September 30 it was published that Mr. Fundisile Mketeni, Deputy Director General of Biodiversity and Conservation in the South African Department of Environmental Affairs, and Dr. Ha Cong Tuan, Deputy Director General, Viet Nam Forestry Administration, announced technical agreement on promoting co-operation between the two countries to enhance wildlife protection, law enforcement and compliance with CITES.

“We are now on the cusp of proactive law enforcement collaboration that harnesses the political will of both nations to actively combat the illegal trade in rhino horns.  This can only be good news for Africa’s beleaguered rhinos and hopefully leads to a new era of diminishing rhino losses” said Tom Milliken, head of TRAFFIC’s Elephant and Rhino Programme.

And belatedly “the South African government is imposing new rules on hunters. All legal rhino hunts must be supervised by a conservation official or an environmental inspector, and training sessions will be organized for officials who issue permits.

To prevent the illegal export of rhino horns, trophy hunters will be obliged to have microchips implanted in any rhino horn that they want to take home, and the environmental inspectors will be required to register the microchip numbers with the government immediately after every hunt.

If any hunter or hunting operator is under investigation for violations, the new rules will allow authorities to deny them a permit.”

Shutting the stable door after the horse has bolted? You bet.

In closing, I would like to advise the South African government, CITES, and TRAFFIC of another worrying trend they will perhaps not have noticed from their own data. Russia has suddenly developed an interest similar to the Vietnamese in terms of rhino trophies and horns exported from South Africa. From 2005-2009, Russia imported 113 trophies and 16 horns. From 1995 to 2004, Russia imported 3 trophies. And also have a look at Spain, with 112 trophies and 28 horns imported form 2005-2009. CITES and TRAFFIC - nice to have LionAid do your investigative research for you is it not?

Sources:
http://www.traffic.org/home/2011/9/30/south-africa-and-viet-nam-to-co-operate-on-protection-of-wil.html
http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/world/africa-mideast/south-africa-hardens-its-stance-on-rhino-trophy-hunts/article2199740/
Picture:
http://relivearth.com/wildlifereporter/2011/02/02/technology-against-rhino-poachers/