Abstracts of Recently Published Wildlife Papers

[AFRICAN INDABA]

TROPHY HUNTING IN NAMIBIA: A CASE OF AN UNETHICAL IMAGE THAT IS UNJUSTIFIED?

Tom McNamara, Irena Descubes and Cyrlene Claasen

Technical Report – The ESC Rennes School of Business January 13, 2016

The purpose of this paper is to examine the discourse of organized trophy hunting providers, mostly operating in Namibia. With the increasing pressure from opponent groups such as animal rights activists as well as from hunters themselves, trophy hunting operators are increasingly facing questions about the responsibility and sustainability of their activities. This study explores the role of a marketing discourse used in the online marketing communications of one hundred Namibian safari providers. The results of our discourse analysis show that the vast majority of information provided on the sites investigated dealt with the richness of the fauna available for hunting, the quality of the service provided and the competitiveness of the prices of safari packages. Only a minority of safari websites had statements regarding ethics is it relates to trophy hunting. Where cited, ethics was usually spoken of in terms of the tradition of family run business having a social and economic responsibility to the land and local community as a result of the multi-generational nature of their operations. The results of this exploratory study suggest that the conventional wisdom of contextualizing trophy hunting as a cruel and resource destroying activity is simplistic at best and erroneous at worst, and should be further challenged and studied.

Download at https://www.researchgate.net/public...ase_of_an_Unethical_Image_that_is_Unjustified



BANNING TROPHY HUNTING WILL EXACERBATE BIODIVERSITY LOSS

Enrico Di Minin, Nigel Leader-Williams, and Corey J. A. Bradshaw

Trends in Ecology & Evolution 2037 (2016 – article in press)

International pressure to ban trophy hunting is increasing. However, we argue that trophy hunting can be an important conservation tool, provided it can be done in a controlled manner to benefit biodiversity conservation and local people. Where political and governance structures are adequate, trophy hunting can help address the ongoing loss of species.

Download at http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/26746807

Also to be read http://conservationbytes.com/2016/0...-trophy-hunting-could-do-more-harm-than-good/



BUSHMEAT, WILDLIFE-BASED ECONOMIES, FOOD SECURITY AND CONSERVATION: INSIGHTS INTO THE ECOLOGICAL AND SOCIAL IMPACTS OF THE BUSHMEAT TRADE IN AFRICAN SAVANNAHS Lindsey, P., Taylor, W.A., Nyirenda, V., Barnes, L.

1. FAO/Panthera/Zoological Society of London/SULi Report, Harare. 58 pages. ISBN: 978-0-620-68624-2

This publication gives an overview of bushmeat, wildlife-based economies, food security and conservation in African savannahs. The bushmeat trade is a serious but underappreciated conservation threat in African savannahs. While bushmeat hunting has been practiced by humans for subsistence for millennia, increases in human populations mean that harvests are often no longer sustainable. Furthermore, hunting for bushmeat is increasingly conducted on a commercial basis to obtain meat for sale. Illegal hunting for bushmeat constitutes one of the primary threats to wildlife conservation in Africa today. Many wildlife areas are now suffering from the dual threat of illegal hunting for bushmeat and illegal hunting for non-meat trophies such as ivory and rhino horn, with catastrophic consequences for the ecology of those areas, and for the potential for deriving long-term economic and livelihood benefits from wildlife. The report looks at the ecological, economic, and social impacts and at the challenges that make the bushmeat issue so difficult to address.

THE (INTER)NATIONAL STRATEGY: AN IVORY TRADE BAN IN THE UNITED STATES AND CHINA

Morgan V. Manley, 2015. Fordham International Law Journal [Vol. 38:1511 to 1585]

An objective analysis of the debate over the ivory trade and its relationship to elephant poaching, where Daniel Stiles from Kenya is quoted in the introduction with “We should remember that the ultimate objective is to stop elephant killing for ivory, not killing ivory trade. The anti-trade movement seems to have lost sight of that fact . . . .”

Download at http://fordhamilj.org/files/2015/08/6.Manley-TheInternationalStrategy.pdf

Compiled by Gerhard R Damm