Trophy hunting – can it really be justified by ‘conservation benefits’?

Exposing the Big Game's avatarCommittee to Abolish Sport Hunting Blog

https://phys.org/news/2019-10-trophy-benefits.html

Trophy hunting – can it really be justified by 'conservation benefits'?
Cecil the lion, before he was a trophy. Credit: Shutterstock/paula french

Killing animals for fun is an activity which divides opinion. It can also be a highly emotive issue, with high profile cases like the death of Cecil the lion sparking global media coverage and outcry. There were even calls for the American dentist who admitted killing Cecil to be charged with illegal hunting.

But despite the strong feelings it occasionally provokes, many people may be unaware just how common trophy hunting is. The International Fund for Animal Welfare (IFAW) reports that between 2004 and 2014, a total of 107 countries participated in the trophy hunting business. In that time, it is thought over 200,000 hunting trophies from threatened species were traded (plus a further 1.7m from non-threatened animals).

Trophy hunters themselves pay vast sums of money to do what they do (IFAW…

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