Article Content From The Daily Maverick
19, November 2013
Ivo Vegter (South Africa)
The outrage about an American hunter, Melissa Bachman,
who bragged on Twitter about bagging a splendid male lion, was terrifying to
watch. Terrifying, but also deeply troubling on many levels. Emotive outrage
and smug judgmentalism are no substitute for rational thought and pragmatic
policy.
Every year, game hunters travel to South Africa, pockets
stuffed with dollars. Most of them are men, who quietly come and go, leaving
behind them R6.2 billion in industry revenue, according to Environmental
Affairs minister Edna Molewa.
But when one hunter, an American television host named
Melissa Bachman, dared to boast about her wonderful African hunting safari,
posing with a dead lion, she got more than she bargained for. Her Facebook page
and Twitter feed were over-run with vicious hate mail. She was described as the
most hated woman in South Africa. Ricky Gervais was scathing, though cleverly
so: “Spot the typo”, he wrote, about her boast, “What a hunt!”
I don’t know Ms. Bachman, so I can’t speak for her
character. I’ve seen no suggestion that she failed to obtain a legitimate
hunting permit, complete with the required CITES documentation. The Maroi
Conservancy which hosted her seems legitimate too, although its website has
also been barged offline by angry internetters.
I can’t say I’m a big fan of hunting either. I’ve been
invited on hunting trips, but declined for two reasons: one, I prefer to avoid
media junkets, lest I be accused of being a shill for Big Hunt; and two, I
prefer to avoid killing animals personally, even though I happily eat meat.
It is quite reasonable to dislike sport hunting. It is an
emotional subject. But is it not curious that a perfectly legal hunt justifies
crudely insulting a woman in sexist terms?
Writer and artist Sarah Britten wondered if it would have
had as much impact if it was a male hunter with a lioness. She says she doesn’t
like hunting, but likes the reaction to Bachman’s lion photo even less.
The answer seems quite obvious. Loads of men shoot loads
of lions all the time. None of them make it to that interminable aggregator of
dodgy viral clickbait, Buzzfeed.com: “TV Presenter Melissa Bachman Angers
Entire Internet After Shooting A Lion”. None of them get called sexist names by
Ricky Gervais. (If you crave a glimpse at the vile misogyny that awaits women
who offend the smug left-liberal elite, read Rebecca Davis’s piece elsewhere on
Daily Maverick. I agree with her, up to where she calls the hunt “canned”, and
says the outrage is justified but ought to be directed at our government.)
But let’s stipulate, for the sake of argument, that we
don’t like hunting, and we don’t like Ms. Bachman. Does this justify the ugly,
hypocritical anger? If her hunt was legal, what did she do wrong? Should it be
made illegal?
In 1960, there were only three game farms in South
Africa. There were only half a million head of game. Changes in the law to
permit private ownership of game and commercialized big game hunting coincided
with the sea change that we see today: 10,000 game farms, supporting 20 million
head of game on as many hectares. By contrast, the government formally protects
only 7.5 million hectares as national parks.
The game farm industry employs 100,000 people, which is
reportedly three times more than employment in ordinary livestock farms. Income
from game breeding stock sold at auction rose almost 15-fold in just six years,
from R60 million in 2006 to R864 million in 2012.
Is that mere correlation, or is there some causation at
work here?
The knee-jerk reaction of the chattering classes is that
you don’t protect animals by killing them. That seems self-evident, but, as
Mark Twain said, “It ain’t what you don’t know that gets you into trouble. It’s
what you know for sure that just ain’t so.”
The notion that hunting harms the survival of species, or
the environment more generally, happens to be false, and demonstrably so.
Commenting on Botswana’s recent decision to ban
professional hunting in the hope that it would stop poaching, professor
Melville Saayman of the North-West University observed: “...the problem is that
it is going to have a reversed effect.”
Says Saayman: “Kenya followed the same path. They also
banned hunting and currently have a huge game poaching problem, so much so that
some of their species face total extinction. The strategy proposed by Botswana
is short-sighted and is not going to work. Game numbers will decline and this
will have a serious impact on the hunting and game farm industry in the
country.”
In Kenya, hunting was banned in the late 1970s, but it
has since lost 85% of its wildlife. Go figure.
“Case studies from South Africa,” says Saayman, “have
shown that as soon as the hunting of a species is allowed, it leads to the
breeding as well as conservation of the particular species. Botswana's policy
is definitely going to lead to job losses.”
In the early 1990s, I was on a guided tour of the
Pilanesberg Game Reserve. I looked around me at the devastated landscape, with
nary a tree taller than a man. The ranger told me the park had sixty elephants
too many, but that nobody wanted them, because they all had their own elephant
problems, and transport was too expensive.
“So what are you doing about it?” I asked.
“We hunt them, from the north of the park, out of sight
of the regular tourists, who tend to get terribly upset about it,” he replied.
“The revenue helps, but we can only host one hunt a month, which isn’t enough.”
The upshot of the misinformed anti-hunting and
anti-culling sentiment of the dinner party set was that an entire park
ecosystem was put at risk, just to “save” a few elephants, of which there were
plenty.
It is true that some lion populations in Africa are under
pressure. However, a recent academic study undertaken by Peter Lindsey and
others, finds that even in countries where the threat is severe, prohibiting
hunting – instead of just issuing fewer permits – would prove
counter-productive, by reducing habitat protection, reducing tolerance for
lions among local populations, and reducing funds available to combat poaching.
Some time ago, I wrote about a story out of Texas, where
hunting ranches host large herds of endangered antelope like addax and Dama
gazelle, which are extinct in the wild in their native Africa. The reason they’re
there? They pay their keep, by supplying the hunting industry. What will happen
if hunting these animals is banned? They will cease to exist. Entirely.
As it happens, that story also involved vile vitriol
directed at a professional hunter, Corey Cogdell. That hunter was also female.
Coincidence? I think not. It looks like Britten and Davis are right. Bachman’s
big mistake was not the hunt itself, nor even bragging about it, but being
female.
Let’s consider the story of the Maroi Conservancy, where
the hunt in question occurred. It consists of a number of private properties
along the Zimbabwean border in Limpopo Province, that have agreed to pull down
the fences between them.
A profile of the conservancy is quite clear about the
change that hunting has made: “In the past, parts of the conservancy were
intensively farmed for citrus and other crops, and some landowners tried
running cattle. None of them managed for game. Poaching was common, with people
cutting the fences to trespass. Now, all the meat from animals that are hunted
goes to the local community to encourage them not to poach.”
In other words, where there used to be a few crop farms
with poaching problems, Maroi is now a fully-functional breeding game
conservancy, supported by revenue from hunting.
Presumably, Maroi charged Bachman in the region of
$30,000, which is the going rate for a full-maned lion. By comparison, most
animals cost under $10,000. An elephant typically goes for $100,000, and a
rhino – yes, hunting them for trophies is legal – fetches even more. And here’s
one for the trivia buffs: What is the cheapest animal on a typical trophy price
list? Even cheaper than an impala female, a jackal fetches just $100. Poor
put-upon vermin!
In terms of their vulnerability, lions aren’t under
nearly as much pressure as rhinos. What has hunting done for the rhino
population? Extending full private property rights to the animals and legalizing
trophy hunting has arguably saved both the black and white rhino from going
extinct decades ago, according to a detailed study conducted by environmental
economist Michael ‘t Sas-Rolfes.
As we all know, rhino are not out of the woods, and the
recent spike in poaching is a grave concern. However, the solution is not to
continue the ban on trading in rhino products, which is failing, but to lift
it, and to let rhino farmers like John Hume breed the animals for their horn.
It is gratifying to see that minister Molewa thinks along the same lines, and
will apply – against all odds – to CITES to lift the ban on the trade in rhino
products.
As a child, on game viewing holidays, I remember learning
how rare the roan antelope, Bontebok, sable antelope and black wildebeest were.
Today, they are relatively common, and the Professional Hunters’ Association of
South Africa (PHASA) names them among the species that once were on the brink
of being wiped out, but are today thriving on private game farms supported by
hunting revenue.
“I am of the firm belief that the hunting industry and
the game farming industry are important partners, who play a key role in terms
of conservation, tourism, and economic development," Molewa told a hunting
indaba in 2010.
Earlier this year, she reiterated the government’s policy
to promote South Africa as “a destination of choice for hunting”.
David Mabunda, the CEO of SanParks, agrees: “As a
developing country, it would be suicidal to want to make trade-offs between
hunting and photographic ecotourism. We don’t have the luxury of choice. We
need both.”
In light of all this, does the massive outcry about
Melissa Bachman make sense? No, unless you’re a misogynist or simply dislike
American braggarts. Her public boasts about her kills may be tacky, and decidedly
ill-advised, but frankly, see appears to be someone who is passionate about the
hunt, and isn’t ashamed of her prowess.
This is not about her feelings. Anyone who dresses up
like Lara Croft in Tomb Raider is probably tough enough to handle the hate
directed at her by Internet trolls. If she’s at all typical of professional
hunters, she can comfort herself with the knowledge that she is more in tune
with nature and its conservation than most of the haters.
Her detractors might brag about “shooting” animals with
cameras, but if my safari-company contacts are any guide, most of them are
shallow tourists who demand to be driven about in air-conditioned luxury, to
see all of the big five in one day, as if that is a more informed reflection of
nature than a professional hunt.
South Africa officially considers Bachman a welcome and
valued visitor, and rightly so. Even if you disagree, and you arrogantly think
you have the moral authority to judge her arrogance, the real story is this.
Your smug superiority risks depriving South Africa of tourism revenue and
employment. It risks depriving the country of much-needed funding for
conservation. It risks reducing the value of our wildlife, which reduces the
incentive for private farm owners to breed and protect game. Hypocritical anger
is a greater threat to conservation than Bachman’s rifle will ever be.
Think about that, the next time you pen a bullying
comment, safely hidden behind your screen. Moral superiority cuts both ways.
Ivo Vegter is a columnist and the author of Extreme
Environment, a book on environmental exaggeration and how it harms emerging
economies. He approaches issues from the perspective of individual liberty and
free markets. He grew up in the deep south of Johannesburg, and learnt his
politics reading the Weekly Mail and Vrye Weekblad at Wits University during
the early years of the country's transition to democracy.
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