The Professional Hunters’ Association of South Africa in November disavowed those operators offering “canned” hunts.  Unclear definitions like “canned” are a godsend to spin doctors. (It’s worth remembering that the colonisation of South Africa began in the 17th century - Bartolomeu Dias made a landfall in present-day Namibia in the 15th - and so most of the land there has been “domesticated” over time.  With an area off 221 square miles, the Pilanesberg Game Reserve contains over 10,000 large mammals, including the Big Five, and it is entirely fenced.  Operation Genesis, to reintroduce vanished species into the area has been well-documented. A fence does not necessarily a canned hunt make.)

 

Noted South African professional hunter and outdoor writer John Coleman comments “PHASA has as of now distanced itself entirely from captive bred lion hunting and breeding. We have integrity again. It is not a victory because it’s a hollow victory; human lives have been affected by this, but nonetheless it is a victory. The battle was the greatest and most respectable battle at a PHASA annual general meeting that I have ever seen”.

 

Canned hunting of any species is not hunting. It is collecting a trophy irrespective of truly experiencing anything in the African bush. It’s for those “hunters” whose existence is dominated by checking the boxes on their to-do lists, and PHASA’s stand is as it should be. The operators and PHs have to be guided here, because in some truly canned hunts, the client may not be aware what is going on.

 

Looking to the forums, many are wondering how effective PHASA’s policy statement will be. One comment on Accurate Reloading was “Not everyone is a member of PHASA. PHASA doesn't do much for clients anyway being an organisation for outfitters”. This is true of all industry associations, like SOAZ in Zimbabwe, but the flip side of the coin is that if hunters (clients) work through the associations when they make their choices they should be assured of higher standards. If Walter Palmer had done his due diligence through SOAZ, would anyone have ever heard of Cecil? This whole question is about standards.

 

The whole  issue of engineered colour variants also comes up, and while for me the whole idea of “designer” lions or designer anything else is just plain ludicrous, whether it is actually wrong would I suppose have to depend on whether or not a species is negatively impacted genetically in the wild. You customise your Jeep CJ-5 or your Colt 1911, but your lion? Really? I suspect there are those of us who would ask that and those of us to whom it would never occur.

 

In South Africa, because the land has been domesticated for so long, there will generally be a land owner involved in any hunting equation, whether he is the outfitter, operator, PH or himself a client of sorts. If game ranching is the land owner’s raison d’etre, then he has to be able to make a living out of it or he will do something else (rhino conservation on private land is suffering for this very reason, mainly as a result of costly government regulations).

 

Looking at the trophy baggers, who are not really hunters, their values aren’t like yours and mine. They probably have a place in the economic equation of whether or not a game rancher sinks or swims, but that place must be regulated lest the hunting industry becomes the terrestrial equivalent of a trout farm. I do not believe they have a place in any of the record books - let them start their own. PHASA is trying to define what is hunting and what isn’t.

 

What seems to be just dawning on the hunting community now is that even the guys in the white hats have to be mindful that their actions can be manipulated by the activists and misrepresented to the governments of the countries that have to sanction the importation of trophies.  Even sustainable harvesting may have to be curtailed in some cases so we can safely put our best face forward.

 

The old look-at-how-the-hunting-ban-has-led-to-the-decimation-of-Kenya’s-lions-as-opposed-to-Tanzania-where-they’re-OK-because-of-hunting is so hackneyed - even by me - that I thought I’d cast around for another example. I found one right on my doorstep. The Bubye Valley Conservancy (www.bubyevalleyconservancy.com).

 

Oxford’s Dr Byron du Preez, who studied zoology at Rhodes University and was awarded The Beit Trust Scholarship to study the impact of lions  on leopard behavioural ecology at the Bubye Valley Conservancy in 2009 says “Sustainable trophy hunting, based on an old-fashioned respect for ethics, provides the incentive and revenue to achieve this amazing conservation success – and for that the Bubye Valley Conservancy makes no apology because without this then none of those animals would be there.”

 

Bubye’s emergence as one of Africa’s true conservation success stories in the face of daunting odds is well-known. Started in the late nineteenth century as Liebig’s Extract of Meat Company, the area comprised a large  cattle ranch in the Rhodesian lowveld, which took a heavy toll on the indigenous wildlife. Herbivores had to compete with the cattle, the spread of disease was an ever-present problem, and predators switched from dwindling wildlife to cattle for survival. LEMCO was hard-hit by severe droughts in 1983 and 1992, and the viability of the cattle operation evaporated. The land became the Bubye Valley Conservancy in 1994.

 

Today, the BVC has the world’s third-largest black rhino population and Zimbabwe’s largest lion population along with significant numbers of elephant and lesser game species.

 

Two things are worth noting here - things which will never be acknowledged by the animal rightists. Firstly, Bubye Valley Conservancy  generates the revenue necessary to maintain this fabulous conservation area through the proceeds of sport hunting. That’s right, ethical and scientifically-managed hunting pays the bills - to pay for the conservation of, especially, the critically-endangered rhinoceros, which cannot even be hunted. And secondly,  Bubye Valley Conservancy is also responsible for maintaining Zimbabwe’s largest lion population, which now exists at one of the highest densities in Africa.