‘We offer… a Grant in aid program that contributes millions of dollars each year to programs and projects promoting our mission to conserve wildlife and wilderness lands.’ [Dallas Safari Club 2015]
‘For the third straight year, DSC has granted more than $1 million for wildlife conservation,’ [Dallas Safari Club 2015]
‘We are strategically focusing on conserving critical places and critical species that are particularly important for the conservation of our earth’s rich biodiversity.’ [WWF 2015]
Given the human centricity inherent within the epoch that is ‘The Anthropocene’, it is to little surprise that when Latour remarks, ‘There is a war for the definition and control of the world we collectively inhabit’ [Latour 2013, p. 9] he is referring to a war between two human parties. This war, though not fought by soldiers or nations, is gripping the earth and all that inhabit it, plants, animals, humans, landscapes; this is the war for conservation. However, this war does not manifest itself in the way in which we would assume it to, with a trophy hunter wanting to take an animal’s life and a conservationist desiring to save that life; it is far more complex.
Hunting organisations around the world, such as the Dallas Safari Club, have been using controlled and regulated trophy hunting as a means to conserve critically endangered species across the world. Initially, such a statement seems to contradict itself. How can you conserve life by hunting it? But upon further investigation, quite a compelling case for conservational trophy hunting materialises.
This is perhaps most clearly evidenced in the black rhino, who is listed by the World Wildlife Fund (WWF) as critically endangered [WWF 2015]. Between 1970-1992 about 96% of the black rhino population was lost due to ivory poaching, reducing the population from 70,000 to 2,475. [WWF 2015] However, despite being the cause of such endangerment, hunting has also been responsible for one of the most effective, yet controversial, conservational solutions.
As a male black rhino gets older, it becomes aggressive, attacking and killing younger males who are vital for reproduction. In Namibia, who has one of the largest black rhino populations in the world,[WWF 2015] the government auctions to hunting parties hunting tags which allow you to hunt one black rhino, yet it must be one deemed detrimental to the growth of the population. The Namibian government, and other African governments, then use this money to protect other rhinos from poaching, simultaneously generating a great influx of funding for conservation, approximately US$201 million/year Africa wide [Lindsey et al. 2007, p. 1], and removing the post-reproductive ‘problem’ rhinos.
Although this controlled and regulated form of trophy hunting appears to have succeeded in increasing the black rhinoceros population in Namibia (estimated 30% rise [Adler 2015]), there is an evident ethical compromise involved in funding animal conservation directly through the suffering and death of another animal. Leading anthropologist, Richard Leakey, avidly opposes the implementation of such a conservation scheme, believing it sends the wrong message. ‘If a father cannot afford to pay school fees for his children, does he say to somebody, “You can rape my daughter so I can get the money to pay for her school fees”?’ [Leakey 2015] This confronting imagery exemplifies the ethical hypocrisy involved in killing rhinos to keep rhinos alive and the detriment such an act has on our perception and value of wildlife, forcing us to consider whether or not the ends justify the means.
Corey Knowlton, who paid $350,000 for a hunting trip to Namibia to shoot and kill a black rhinoceros, has an equally challenging question for us to consider,
‘How do we on an individual basis value this animal’s survival on earth? Do you really value it? Do you value it past making 75 characters on your iPhone and tweeting about it?… To me I know and I care, and I placed a extreme value financially, physically, emotionally on the survival of the black rhino.’ [Knowlton 2015]
Whether you agree with Corey Knowlton or with Richard Leakey, there is a war being waged and it is important to know this because ‘The real advantage of making the state of war explicit instead of undeclared is that it might be the only way to begin to envisage peace.’ [Latour 2013, p.10] And as my fellow class mate, Megan Wong, reminds us in her blog [Wong 2015], ‘it is clear that humans are inextricably linked to the planet and it’s organisms, and it will be our choice of action that determines what future we will arrive at.’ So let us imagine, design and act upon schemes that will cultivate peace for our world, our planet, our home.
References
Adler, S. 2015, ‘The Rhino Hunter’, audio podcast, Radio Lab, WNYC Radio, New York, 7 September 2015, viewed 8 September 2015, < http://www.radiolab.org/story/rhino-hunter/ >
Dallas Safari Club 2015, ‘Who we are’, DSC, Dallas, TX, viewed 6 October 2015, < https://www.biggame.org/who-we-are/ >
Dallas Safari Club 2015, ‘Grants’, DSC, Dallas, TX, viewed 6 October 2015, < https://www.biggame.org/who-we-are/grants/ >
Knowlton, C. 2015, ‘The Rhino Hunter’, audio podcast, Radio Lab, WNYC Radio, New York, 7 September 2015, viewed 8 September 2015, < http://www.radiolab.org/story/rhino-hunter/ >
Latour, B. 2013, ‘Telling friends from foes in the time of the Anthropocene’, in C. Hamilton, C. Bonneuil & F. Gemenne [eds], The Anthropocene and the global environment crisis – rethinking modernity in a new epoch, Routledge, London, p.145-155.
Leakey, R. 2015, ‘The Rhino Hunter’, audio podcast, Radio Lab, WNYC Radio, New York, 7 September 2015, viewed 8 September 2015, < http://www.radiolab.org/story/rhino-hunter/ >
LINDSEY, P.A., FRANK, L.G., ALEXANDER, R., MATHIESON, A. & ROMAÑACH, S.S. 2007, ‘Trophy Hunting and Conservation in Africa: Problems and One Potential Solution‘, Conservation Biology, vol. 21, no. 3, pp. 880-3.
Wong, M. 2015, ‘Sustainability and the human population’, From Here On, weblog, Sydney, viewed 24 August 2015, < https://ksmbs.wordpress.com/2015/08/24/sustainability-and-the-human-population/ >
World Wildlife Fund 2015, ‘What we do’, WWF, Gland, Switzerland, viewed 7 October 2015, < http://wwf.panda.org/what_we_do/ >
World Wildlife Fund 2015, ‘Black Rhino’, WWF, Gland, Switzerland, viewed 7 October 2015, < http://wwf.panda.org/what_we_do/endangered_species/rhinoceros/african_rhinos/black_rhinoceros/ >
World Wildlife Fund 2015, ‘Rhino conservation in Namibia’, WWF, Gland, Switzerland, viewed 7 October 2015, < http://wwf.panda.org/?uProjectID=NA0016 >
Image
Mongia, A. 2015, ‘The Rhino Hunter’, Radio Lab, viewed 8 September 2015, < http://www.radiolab.org/story/rhino-hunter/ >
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