Cecil the Lion: Why do we care?

From July 2015 . . . Remember this cat? 

By "cat," I mean Dr. Walter Palmer, who paid $54k in July of 2015 to bow hunt for a lion in Zimbabwe. Just to be clear, I am not a hunter, but I am not against hunting either. I couldn't survive in my wife's family if I was!

I am just against hunting animals that are cute and cuddly. (It is open season on boars . . . seriously, who mourns the loss of a warthog?) Lions, tigers and bears may be vicious top-of-the-food chain predators, but they do sure make huggable stuffed animal toys. Hunters who proceed risk the wrath of Jimmy Kimmel, so tread lightly.

Ol' Walt had to close down his dental practice after being demonized in the press, having his family harassed, and receiving death threats . . . for doing something completely legal. Because according to PETA types, (which I learned does NOT stand for People Eating Tasty Animals), first-world country humans matter less than cute animals.

Where did that $54k go? In fact, what does any of the money big game hunters pay in Africa do?

Besides putting people to work supporting these hunts, there is upkeep of the land, habitat maintenance, funding of protected parks, management of facilities, security from poachers, fees to governmental agencies, etc.

And that was just for the hunting package. There are also things like accommodations, travel, shopping, and the other non-hunting related spending that happens while there. Not that money outweighs perceived morality, but simply to state that there is a huge economic impact to the locals.

Conservation hunting

The above rhino, RIP, was an ideal candidate for removal as it not only had reproduced often enough that inbreeding becomes an issue, but it was reaching an age where the bull would no longer reproduce. And also, it killed younger rhino bulls; so this dude was parasite, only taking from the community wood pile. So instead of simply culling, this type of removal gave rise to another type of paid hunt called "conservation hunting."

Namibia designates removal of such animals to enhance the rest of the population, and it so it put the cross hairs on 18 of those (out of 2000) in 2015. Was this a good kill? A poacher didn't shoot it for the horn, and a game warden didn't take it down, but they had a Texan pay $350k to hunt it. Doing the math means its is a win-win, even if that Texan gets lambasted on Facebook.

In the eight main African countries that engage is both conservation hunting and trophy hunting, there are 53k people that are put to work, and in 2015, (the year of the Lion,) there was an overall economic benefit of $426 million.  For many animals that will be put down anyway.

Back to Cecil. I have read that local villagers viewed the demise of that toothy cuddler differently than us on this continent, whose opinions matter for some reason. Over there, villagers personally know people who have been killed by lions, at a rate of over 100 people per year, but those people somehow don't merit the same concern as poor, old, lovable, chocolate-covered Cecil.

Unfortunately, opinions over here carried some weight on what happens over there. Many countries will not allow the import of the trophies post-Cecil, which means fewer paid hunts, less money to Africa, and more "creative" ways to cull those same animals by locals and poachers. Way to go.