via OSU
Researchers at Oregon State University are challenging the premise that trophy hunting is an acceptable and effective tool for wildlife conservation and community development.
They argue that charging hunters to kill animals and claim body parts should be a last resort rather than a fallback plan.
In a paper published today in Conservation Letters, the researchers label the practice as morally inappropriate and say alternative strategies such as ecotourism should be fully explored and ruled out before trophy hunting is broadly endorsed.
“Trophies are body parts,” said lead author Chelsea Batavia, a Ph.D. student in OSU’s College of Forestry. “But when I read the literature, I don’t see researchers talking about them like that. Nobody’s even flinching. And at this point it seems to have become so normalized, no one really stops to think about what trophy hunting actually entails.”
Furthermore, the authors point out, the notion that trophy hunting is imperative to conservation seems to have taken hold largely without compelling empirical evidence. Such an assumption is not only unsubstantiated but can also serve to squelch the search for alternatives.
“Rejecting trophy hunting could open up space for innovation and creativity,” they write.
Batavia worked with colleagues in Oregon State’s Department of Forest Ecosystems and Society and collaborators from Canada and Australia. The idea for the paper occurred to them over the course of a review of scholarly literature on trophy hunting.
“Conservation scientists commonly recognize strong public opposition to the practice, and at times even point to some sort of ethical tension, but they don’t really define or address it,” Batavia said.
She and her co-authors decided it was time to break the silence and highlight an issue they suspect may underpin the public discomfort around trophy hunting – that it involves a hunter paying a fee to kill an animal and subsequently retaining some or all of the animal’s body as a trophy.
Part of the ongoing problem, the researchers write, is the word “trophy,” a sanitized expression for the tusks, ears, feet, heads, etc. that hunters remove from the animals’ bodies.
“It’s almost like an ethical distraction, calling it by some other name,” said co-author Michael Paul Nelson, a professor and the Ruth H. Spaniol Chair of Renewable Resources at OSU. “We have these metaphors that we hide behind. It’s like we recognize it’s an ethically loaded topic but we don’t know what to do about it. And we’ve tied conservation to the practice of trophy hunting – how do we get off that train?”
Proponents argue that trophy hunting supports conservation goals by generating money and reducing poaching and also that it bolsters local economies.
Nelson, Batavia and their co-authors recognize these benefits, but they counter that “collecting bodies or body parts as trophies is an ethically inappropriate way to interact with individual animals, regardless of the beneficial outcomes that do or do not follow.”
“We owe these animals some basic modicum of respect,” the researchers suggest. “To transform them into trophies of human conquest is a violation of common decency, and to accept trophy hunting as the international conservation community seems to have done is to aid and abet an immoral practice.”
If it’s determined that saving wildlife is inexorably linked to trophy hunting, conservationists should then “accept the practice only with a due appreciation of tragedy, and proper remorse,” the researchers write. They do acknowledge the possibility that future scientific research may suggest trophy hunting is in fact critical to the conservation mission in certain contexts.
“In that case trophy hunting should be used reluctantly,” they write. “The enthusiasm with which trophy hunting has already been championed as a potential conservation success story is misplaced. Trophy hunting violates the dignity of individual nonhuman animals, and is beneath our dignity as human beings. Continuing complicity by conservationists without fully exhausting other options is not now appropriate nor has it ever been.”
Learn more: OSU researchers question conservation community’s acceptance of trophy hunting
The Latest on: Trophy hunting
via Google News
The Latest on: Trophy hunting
- Venison Was An Important Protein Source for Food Banks. Now It May Be Too Dangerous to Eat.on June 21, 2022 at 1:00 am
Chronic wasting disease is running rampant among deer populations, and hunters have much less meat to donate to food banks.
- Tanzania: Thousands of Maasai Flee Into the Bush After Dozens Shot and Detained Following Evictions for Trophy Hunting and Conservationon June 20, 2022 at 9:18 pm
Press Release - Thousands of Maasai people have fled their homes and escaped into the bush following a brutal police crackdown on protests against government attempts to evict them to make way for ...
- Paid platinum trophies: 5 PS5 and PS4 games, 4 minute completions, at $3 eachon June 20, 2022 at 11:01 am
Trophy hunting on a budget? Well, it might mean playing through some truly dire video games, but for $3 you can get six video games this week for PS4 and PS5 that sport a platinum trophy.
- The Hardest Platinums On PlayStationon June 19, 2022 at 11:05 am
Let's go over a list of the most challenging and hardest platinum trophies you can unlock in PlayStation titles. From Star Ocean to Street Fighter.
- Violent clashes as Masai ‘driven off land’ for Emirati trophy hunterson June 18, 2022 at 11:00 am
The Tanzanian soldiers must have moved in very late at night, said Nosisim, a Masai woman, but they were there and primed when she woke. Soon after that, the bu ...
- Rod Stewart, Gary Lineker, Cliff Richard and more back Crawley MP Henry Smith's landmark bill to ban trophy hunting importson June 17, 2022 at 4:35 am
Henry Smith MP has introduced a landmark bill to Parliament (on Wednesday, June 15) to ban British hunters from bringing ‘trophies’ of endangered and vulnerable animals into Britain.
- Latest attempt to ban sick trophy hunting imports welcomed by campaignerson June 16, 2022 at 6:04 am
Campaigners demanding a ban on bringing hunting trophies to Britain today welcomed the latest attempt to change the law . The Government has spent years promising to block hunters coming home with ...
- Maasai people evicted to make way for trophy huntingon June 16, 2022 at 12:02 am
The Maasai people are being shot and forced to flee from their ancestral lands, all to make room for trophy hunting, tourism and 'conservation', says Survival International.
- How Much Money Does Trophy Hunting Bring In Annually?on June 14, 2022 at 9:55 am
Big game hunting is big business for some countries in Africa. The controversial hobby has sparked outrage across social media but it may help conservation.
via Bing News