What a president will do for wildlife has never been much of a campaign issue. Debates focus on national security, trade, economics, and to a lesser degree in this election cycle, on the environment. Wildlife, however, plays a part in all those concerns. Take, for example, the illegal wildlife trade. It’s a multibillion-dollar business that […]
Tag: trophy hunting
Cecil the Lion: Charges dropped against professional hunter
A court in Zimbabwe has thrown out charges against the professional hunter who helped Minnesota dentist Walter Palmer hunt Cecil the lion last year. The court ruled that the charges against Theo Bronkhorst “were too vague to enable him to mount a proper defence,” BBC News reported. He had been charged with failing to stop […]
POLL: Should lion canned hunting be banned?
Some 8,000 lions bred for the sole purpose of being hunted are kept on game ranches in South Africa. Every year thousands of hunters – mostly Americans – pay handsomely to kill these lions within the confines of walls and fences, a practice known as canned lion hunting. But starting today they’ll no longer be […]
Romania bans trophy hunting of brown bears, wolves, lynx and wild cats
Romania has banned all trophy hunting of brown bears, wolves, lynx and wild cats in a surprise decision that gives Europe’s largest population of large carnivores a reprieve from its most severe and immediate threat. The move on Tuesday reverses a trend which has seen the number of large carnivores being shot by hunters grow […]
POLL: Should all countries worldwide ban the trade in elephant ivory?
A bid to give the highest level of international legal protection to all African elephants was defeated on Monday at a global wildlife summit. The EU played a pivotal role in blocking the proposal, which was fought over by rival groups of African nations. But the Convention on the International Trade in Endangered Species (Cites), […]
POLL: Should trophy and big game hunting be banned?
Around 1.7m animal “trophies” have been exported across borders by hunters in the last decade, with at least 200,000 of them endangered species, according to a new report. US hunters are by far the largest killers of trophy animals, including half of all the 11,000 lions shot in the last decade, the report found. The […]
Will Zimbabwe Sell Off Its Rare ‘Painted Dogs’?
Last week Zimbabwe announced that because of the drought that’s ravaging the country—and leaving four million Zimbabweans in need of food aid—it will “destock” its national parks and reserves by selling off wildlife. The announcement by the Parks and Wildlife Management Authority (also known as Zimparks) doesn’t say when the sales would begin, nor does […]
POLL: Should all ivory stockpiles be destroyed?
We are often told that wildlife conservation should make economic sense, and so it should. In my previous article I outlined some of the economic arguments in favour of burning ivory stockpiles. Wildlife conservation should make moral sense as well. Winning the moral argument is probably even important than good economics for saving elephants and […]