What type of people pay $55k for the "privilege" to shoot a well known lion?

This will feel good when he is extradited and will send a message, but the root problem remains.  The economics of illegal killings of endangered species must be less than the economics of tourism and protecting these animals.  Getting morally holier than thou and stopping at whataburger, and sending no contributions to animal protection groups in Africa is the pinnacle of hypocrisy.  My personal belief is that like the bison in America the population expansion of humans will limit these species to basically preserves, and sadly many will become extinct.  When you see modern farming practices in the midwest and the sterility of stripping the land of habitat draining wetlands and destruction of an entire environmental system, it amazes me how morally superior Americans feel we are to Africans who we frown on when they attempt to use their resources......we would say they abuse them and are not good conservators of the same, but folks in glass houses should not throw rocks.

2seaoat wrote:Getting morally holier than thou and stopping at whataburger, and sending no contributions to animal protection groups in Africa is the pinnacle of hypocrisy.

Making this comparison is the pinnacle of stupidity.  

There is quite a difference between harvesting farm raised beef for a food source and killing protected lion for a sporting trophy.

Lions Are Not Listed As Endangered. But Their Numbers Are Falling, And Conservationists In The U.S. Disagree Over A Hunting Ban.

Lawful hunting can in fact be a conversation action.  We have the Bambi lovers up here as the deer populations have exploded and wasting is killing far more than the DNR setting limits which maximize the deer population.  I personally have no use for trophy hunting, but I reject the bambi lovers who condemn hunting.  Man is a predator.  I think of the cultural assault on bull fighting when I lived in Mexico, and how indignant people got with the cruelty of the kill.  All beef  killed in a bull ring is eaten......yet how cattle are handled up to three weeks prior to slaughter and the actual slaughter process.....well I find it the height of hypocrisy.  We vote with our dollars.  We sometimes do not examine what we vote for.  The part of the State of Illinois I now live once was massive prairies with buffalo and a vibrant ecology rich with butterflies, mink, fox, beaver, deer, and biodiversity.   When we started feeding beef corn because corn fed beef had better flavor, we plowed under those environments and created a ecological desert which is sterile.  Mile after mile of destroyed ecology for beef eaters and the most recent burning of food to make some rich.  Yet, we want the Africans to remain economically limited because if they use their resources to maximize THEIR environment we make no contribution or sacrifice, and have Jimmy Kimmel living high on the horse in LA tearing up about Cecil the Lion.....its stupid.  The man appears to have broke the law, but some are using this to attack hunting which have correctly discussed its role in conservation.  I have no use for anybody who hunts an animal and does not eat that animal unless that person is threatened by that animal, but as sad as I get with Cecil meeting his demise, the problems are much more complex than this feel good moment of getting this horrible human being.....our greedy consumptive western lifestyle contributes to much more suffering in this world than a stupid hunter.

Africa generates 200 million a year from animal/ trophy hunting.

Africa needs trophy hunting of lions - another POV

Odd as it may sound, U.S. trophy hunters play a critical role in protecting wildlife in Tanzania. The millions of dollars hunters spend to go on safari here each year help finance the game reserves, wildlife management areas and conservation efforts in our rapidly growing country.

This is why we are alarmed that the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service is considering listing the African lion as endangered. Doing so would make it illegal for U.S. hunters to bring their trophies home. Those hunters constitute 60 percent of our trophy-hunting market, and losing them would be disastrous to our conservation efforts. In 2011, five animal-rights and conservation groups petitioned the Fish and Wildlife Service to list the African lion as endangered, arguing that the population had fallen dangerously low because of habitat loss, poaching, commercial hunting and new diseases associated with human encroachment. “The U.S.,” their petition said, “is by far the largest importer of hunting trophies from Tanzania.”

While that is true, the lion population in Tanzania is not endangered. We have an estimated 16,800 lions, perhaps 40 percent of all lions on the continent, the biggest population in the world. Their numbers are stable here, and while our hunting system is not perfect, we have taken aggressive efforts to protect our lions.

Tanzania has regulated hunting for decades. Females and younger lions are completely protected, and the hunting of males is limited by quotas set for each hunting area in the country. We recently made it illegal to hunt male lions younger than six years old to ensure that reproductively active animals remained with their prides. And proposed amendments to our wildlife law would further crack down on the export of lions taken illegally, penalize hunting companies that violated our rules and reward those that complied.

(snip)

Of all the species found here, lions are particularly important, because they draw visitors from throughout the world — visitors who support our tourism industry and economy. Many of these visitors only take pictures. But others pay thousands of dollars to pursue lions with rifles and take home trophies from what is often a once-in-a-lifetime hunt. Those hunters spend 10 to 25 times more than regular tourists and travel to (and spend money in) remote areas rarely visited by photographic tourists.

In Tanzania, lions are hunted under a 21-day safari package. Hunters pay $9,800 in government fees for the opportunity. An average of about 200 lions are shot a year, generating almost $2 million in revenue. Money is also spent on camp fees, wages, local goods and transportation. And hunters almost always come to hunt more than one species, though the lion is often the most-coveted trophy. All told, trophy hunting generated roughly $75 million for Tanzania’s economy from 2008 to 2011.

The money helps support 26 game reserves and a growing number of wildlife management areas owned and operated by local communities, as well as the building of roads, schools, hospitals and other infrastructure — all of which are important as Tanzania continues to develop as a peaceful and thriving democracy.

(snip)

As Tanzania’s highest-ranking wildlife official, I ask on behalf of my country and all of our wildlife: Do not list the African lion as endangered. Instead, help us make the most from the revenues we generate. Help us make trophy hunting more sustainable and more valuable.

Please work with us to conserve wildlife, rather than against us, which only diminishes our capacity to protect Tanzania’s global treasures.


It is also noted meats from the hunts are donated to villages in need of food.