Culling To Conserve: A Hard Truth For Lion Conservation

[Hoas]

Source: https://blog.nationalgeographic.org...-conserve-a-hard-truth-for-lion-conservation/


Culling to Conserve: A Hard Truth for Lion Conservation

People that don’t live in Africa tend to learn about wildlife conservation in easy-to-understand terminology. But safeguarding animal species like lions is often more complex than mainstream media sound bites would have their audiences believe.

The National Post recently reported that management from Zimbabwe’s Bubye Valley Conservancy was considering a controversial move to cull upwards of 200 lionsout of a rough population of 500 in order to ensure the reserve’s wildlife biodiversity.

It was also reported that since the growing calls to end trophy hunting, due in large part to the killing of Cecil the lion in Zimbabwe’s Hwange National Park last year, conservancies like Bubye are no longer seeing the funding necessary to adequately cover conservation costs, which includes fence maintenance, financing local schools and health clinics, and providing meat to local people.

Given the many challenges conservationists face in Africa, coupled with culling and trophy hunting being such contentious issues, I decided to reach out to Dr. Byron du Preez, a Bubye Valley Conservancy project leader and member of the Wildlife Conservation Research Unit (WildCRU), in the Department of Zoology at Oxford University.

Read more here: https://blog.nationalgeographic.org...-conserve-a-hard-truth-for-lion-conservation/

 

[IvW]

F... Cecil the Lion.

Get hunters to pay a reasonable fee and daily rates and hunt the 200 excess lions instead of just culling!

When will the greenies and the non hunting fraternity learn this? Hunting pays for conservation, period.

200 Lions male or female at the right price will sell like hot cakes and they will earn so much revenue that can help conserve the whole area and benefit the local community.

I get hot under the collar when I hear culling and not controlled hunting!

I shot many elephant, lion, hippo and buffalo in culling operations, it still goes on under controlled conditions even in SA. Yes I enjoyed the experience and opportunity to do so but always felt selling such hunts could generate so much foreign currency for conservation I could never understand why they still "cull" instead of controlled hunt excess or problem animals.

 

[leslie hetrick]

look at the ivory they burn to help save the elephants, the money from that ivory in the legal trade would fund the anti pouching forces who allways need more funds than available.

 

[IvW]

There is a game reserve where they cull 200+Buffalo a year(yes 200+), every year, to keep the numbers in check, the meat and skins get utilized but that is it. Now if you market those 200 buffalo(cows and bulls) you could earn a hell of a lot more from foreign hunters, you could offer them at real reasonable prices and also earn revenue from daily rates and accommodation and apart from a couple of tenderloins for the clients, still have all the meat and whatever skin is left to sell.

But no we rather go in just cull the 200 buffalo and that is that. What a waste. I been on a few of these and never declined the offer, I love hunting DG and be it hunting, culling or PAC work I never decline, but always looked at the dead buffalo, lined up and thought what a waste of a valuable resource....

 

[BRICKBURN]

Someone forgot about value added.