It’s still an abhorrent thing to want to do from a personal perspective. Guided hunts on game preserves are the most unsporting hunting imaginable. Go hunt a deer on your own if you need a shoot a big animal that bad.
I have a lot of doubts about where the money for conservation is going when corrupt African govts and foreign businesses are involved. Seems like the money would just go to keeping big game reserves running for animals to get hunted in. How much of it goes to national parks where the animals aren’t threatened? How much goes to actual habitat restoration? How much goes to stopping poaching?
If a big male giraffe needs to be put down because he’s not fertile anymore and running off all the other males, and there’s no possible sanctuary or zoo that will take him - then just do it humanely with a dart or something. Don’t let the animal die in pain and fear and create a huge potential moral hazard with massive sums of money involved.
I bet you there’s a zoo that would take that animal. But it just comes down to the cost of shipping him from a game preserve to a zoo vs. the huge potential payday that some asshole dentist from Ohio is willing to shell out to take the potshot that kills him.
I wonder the same but several of the very large conversation groups I am a member of support it. One of them has an auction each year that raises $30-$40,000 for one license to hunt a preselected, normally past breeding age, animal. That money funds all kinds of conservation work, some of which I help with. Last year it was used it to fund a sage grouse transfer program which is a nearly extirpated species here.
Like it said my knee jerk morality says it’s bad but it is a complex issue.
That because we are applying our sense of death to animals which can lead to really muddled conservation. Removing these animals can sometimes have positive ecological benefits for the region.
The conservation group negotiates a license with some game reserve in Africa. Sometimes this is reciprocal. We offer one here for say a bear they can auction. We collect the money, sometimes it’s shared with them and the part we keep is used for research and conservation here.
I’m not saying it can’t. I’m saying it costs money to ship an animal to a zoo or sanctuary whereas you get paid money to let someone shoot it. This would seem to create a moral hazard. Until I see receipts, I have zero faith that money is going to towards anything but lining pockets and creating more situations for big game hunts, with a token amount thrown at some high-profile cause - especially in Africa.
Your worry happens for sure. Poaching is the biggest threat by a wide margin to big game in Africa. Nevertheless, as I’ve said there are some benefits to the practice.
It weird defending it as I am often one of the people questioning them every year we run it cause it doesn’t sit that well with me.
I just wanted to point out it’s not a simple as all Trophy hunting is evil which is most people surface level reaction.
I am aware of the arguments for trophy hunting. I just have my doubts about where the money goes. Unless there’s some very capable and powerful govt body demanding say 80% of all proceeds go to legitimate non-hunting-related conservation, I’d bet that most goes towards profit, bribes, and perpetuation more big game hunts. Otherwise you’re basically relying on the altruism of people who run these things.
Mobil Oil donated the 2,300-acre property, near Galveston Bay, to the Nature Conservancy in 1995, in a bid to save the Attwater’s prairie chicken. That bird, known for its colorful mating dance, was once widespread on the Texas coastal prairies, but was devastated by hunting and destruction of its habitat.
Gas and oil were being produced on the Texas City property at the time the land was donated, but relatively far from the breeding grounds of the prairie chicken. In 1999, the Nature Conservancy’s Texas chapter decided to permit new drilling there, with the idea of dedicating the money to prairie chicken conservation. It sought out a deal with an energy company and a new well was drilled, about a half-mile from the primary breeding grounds.