Thirty-eight severed lion heads have entered the United States as “keepsakes” over the past two years. Despite overwhelming public opposition to trophy hunting, big game hunters have found a complicit ally in the Trump administration, which has been willing to quietly approve requests to bring the corpses of threatened African animals. Earlier this year, the […]
Tag: hunting
A ‘perfect policy storm’ cuts puma numbers by almost half near Jackson, Wyoming
Like many places in the American West, the region is a patchwork of land that’s under the control of different government agencies with differing opinions and management goals. “It makes that part of our country really unique,” Mark Elbroch, a biologist with the wild cat conservation group Panthera and one of the study’s lead authors, […]
How many hippos are too many? Proposed cull raises questions
The hippo — really? That’s the common response when tour guides in Africa tantalize travelers with this question: “What’s the most dangerous animal on the continent?” Lion? Rhino? Elephant? No, no, no. Eventually, the tour guide delivers the answer with a twinkle in their eye: the hippo, yes, that water-loving, one-tonne mammalian oddity. Despite their […]
Going on a bear hunt: the animal activists signing up to ‘shoot’ grizzlies
Jane Goodall, the renowned conservationist, and a group of wildlife activists are some of the unexpected entrants in a lottery to hunt up to 22 grizzly bears near Yellowstone national park. Their goal is to infiltrate Wyoming state’s first grizzly bear hunt in 44 years by acquiring licenses they have no intention of using. “We […]
‘Better and better’: Thermal cameras turn up the heat on poachers
Nearly 2 million animals, mostly wildebeest and zebra, migrate roughly 800 kilometers (500 miles) each year between Serengeti National Park in Tanzania and Maasai Mara National Reserve across the border in Kenya. Their joint search for fresh green grass is an ecological phenomenon and a major tourist attraction in both countries. But along with tourists, […]
POLL: Should there be a global treaty on biodiversity based on the Paris climate deal?
How is that fun?” asked US talkshow host Jimmy Kimmel in a segment about trophy hunting aired after Cecil, a well-known lion tagged by researchers, was killed in Zimbabwe by Minnesota dentist Walter Palmer in 2015. Kimmel choked up as he asked viewers to donate to Oxford University’s conservation research programme, and his shame and […]
POLL: Should trophy hunting of lions be made illegal?
On June 7th, a trophy hunter shot a male lion in Umbabat Private Nature Reserve in South Africa, a part of the Greater Kruger National Park. Nothing surprising about this: around 500 lions, usually males, are killed every year by trophy hunters on the African continent. What’s made this different is the suspicion that the […]
Wildlife Tourism May be Killing off Cheetahs
It’s estimated that just 7,100 cheetahs remain in the wild, thanks to years of habitat loss and poaching. Wildlife tourism can often help endangered animals flourish again, but new research suggests that may not be the case for heavily endangered cheetahs. To make matters worse, they often find it difficult to thrive in captivity, meaning […]