This "Birdwatcher is against lion hunting" mantra has been a flat puzzle to me from the beginning.
And I wondered if providing goods and services for 100+ non-hunting eco-tourists for every one safari company-supported hunter (which companies in Zimbabwe apparently buy most of their supplies in South Africa) might actually benefit the locals more than co-opted and mis-directed trophy fees.
In another great link posted over on the 'Fire, THE Richard Leakey hisself (I got to hear him speak once), who would probably otherwise like the lion researchers be labelled an "antihunting POS" here, emphatically states otherwise.
Apparently the tourist lodges and such ain't benefitting the locals, and do create a noxious footprint. Question answered.
Birdwatcher
I don't see your posts as an attack on hunting, but some questions you pose the anti's have co-oped and perverted for their gain.
In Africa, everything must pay its own way. Maybe this will help someone out there who has never been to Africa or doesn't understand what dynamics are at play.
1.) Dangerous game and people cannot co-habitat. Lions eat livestock, elephants eat crops. If the wildlife eats the crops and livestock, people starve. People aren't going to starve without a fights, so they will poach (KILL OFF) the dangerous game and eat the edible game they can readily poach.
2.) The population of Africa has exploded. There is a whole lot less of "wild unsettled" land. Too damn many people. As people encroach on the range of wild game, you get #1 above.
3.) Wild, unsettled Africa now largely only exists in National Parks and Game Management Areas (GMAs). Most of these GMSs boarder the national parks. They serve as a buffer between settled areas and the park. You cannot have settlements right up to the edge of the park boundaries without #1 above.
GMAs allow animals to move in and out of the park without immediately getting hammered by the locals for food, and it prevents them from raiding right outside the park for food every night and running back in before dawn for protection.
The GMAs protect the animals and protect the people. Without them, more poaching, less animals. Conservation can carefully control animal populations both in the GMAs and INSIDE the park by setting hunting quotes for the GMAs. Overpopulation of let's say elephants will force some out of the park. Without GMAs, they become crop raiders and get poached by the score. In GMAs, they can be controlled.
Hunting and GMAs also fund the Game Guards and the anti poaching efforts in an effective way.
As to eco tourism and photo's only? It doesn't do much to maintain stabile populations. An area can only sustain so many before the vegetation gets decimated. Especially true of elephants. They can wreck the vegetation of an area when there is drought or overpopulation.
