I wish more people could understand this. Hunters paying for high dollar trophy hunts are literally the only thing keeping African megafauna from total extinction at this point. It may hurt for someone who loves animals in a "Disney" sense to understand this, but most hunters have a far deeper love, respect, and appreciation for the natural world than any new age "environmentalist".
We (hunters) have been doing this work for generations now, and it's not pretty. Not everything can be turned into a touchy feely bumper sticker that agrees with your political stance. The reality is that wild animals are a natural resource which must be carefully managed if they are to continue existing.
Hunting is a necessary evil. In terms of US conservation locally, hunting is fairly highly regulated. It is actually needed in a lot of areas where people go hunting for deer due to natural predators no longer existing. If it wasn't for hunters, there would be large population growths of deer to the point where they begin to kill off other species that rely on the same food sources as well as starve themselves.
In the past, before things were so regulated, it wasn't unusual for populations to be decimated by humans. Passenger Pigeons are now extinct; Deer, Bison, and Elk in certain areas were killed off. Heck, in Ohio, Deer were reintroduced after being decimated, so they would run-a-muck if there was no hunting unless they were to reintroduce wolves to the area (good luck getting people to agree with this).
All of this is due to humans creating imbalances in nature that conservation is now trying to keep in check, and hunting is necessary for certain species which no longer have natural predators, or in the case of lions, to ensure males that will sire more children get a chance to.
Here's some Ohio History on Fauna: https://ocvn.osu.edu/news/ohios-wild-history-frontier-fauna-...
TLDR -- unchecked hunting bad, regulated hunting good
Maybe...but nature actually does a pretty good job of taking care of the old lions. But your point stands in other situations.
Are we to believe that these hunters are so ethical that they will stay around for months after they've shot their lions, to make sure the money they have already paid is used to benefit local villagers?
I fail to see why the same won't happen here.
The case of fisheries seems more complex because there you have multiple actors each of whose actions will have little effect on the overall fish population but who cumulatively can devastate it.
I’m all for any solution that doesnt involve hunting. But the fact is that altruism has its limits, and pretending like that’s not the case is threatening the existence of these animals.
Maybe I'm wrong, but I'd like to see hard numbers, not just some feel-good anecdotes about local people raising giraffes for hunting.
With the private game farms, some more context for people who are not familiar with them. They are generally facilities with 100's of acres of land and high fences around the perimeters to keep the animals in and the poachers etc out. Each animal has a dollar value associated with them. A Blesbok(type of Antelope) goes for about $400(what they charge a hunter if they get one) and it goes up to $50,000+ to get a Cape Buffalo.
Needless to say there is a lot of incentive to take care of the animals. For example one time I was visiting a family member that owns a Cape Buffalo farm in South Africa when someone left one of the gates open overnight. The herd of 50 got out and went a few miles down the road. That day was a "all hands on deck" to herd the ~2.5 million dollars of live stock back to the farm. There was a vet on stand by and they brought in a helicopter to do a survey and assist. The operation makes makes money for him, he employs a people and brings in money from tourists etc. and he is incentivised, by money he makes from his business, to take care of the animals.
This is in sharp contrast to the government of South Africa that has trouble taking care of the basics for the majority of the population, like education, at times maintaining reliable electricity (ask people there about the Escomm rolling power cuts when the grid is over capacity, or water in Cape Town... the water crisis has much more to do with poor utility management than climate change), most middle class people hire armed response private security services and don't rely on the police for security, etc..
Another relative works for a company the does municipal land valuations for tax assessments. It is not uncommon that they will get a contract, perform all of the things required for the contract, but then the municipality will hold off on paying (6+ months) until his company takes legal action, puts on lien on the municipalities assets and begins to seize them by going in and physically starting to take furniture, cars etc..
Some brought up a good point with the conservation efforts to hunt the older animals in the wild. Those permits can help to fund the conservation effort, but given how corrupt the government is there, someone with money could pay off a bureaucrat to look the other way with a permit etc... and then will the money actually be put into conservation efforts.
I could write a book on this (and have to an extent here) but this is in one of the larger, more developed economies in Africa that some refer to as “Africa Light”. Now imagine what is happening in African countries with even less functional governments.
Glad you asked. The power utility is called Eskom. I like in Tshwane and we don't experience 'rolling power cuts'. Not sure why you think making a comparison between a private game farm(er) and national govt service provision connects with giraffe conservation efforts