Elephants Wanted: Dead or Alive
I was sitting at work, sipping black tea and drafting an article about elephant communication, when my supervisor looked up from her computer and said in a somewhat dazed and very confused voice, “I think the Trump administration repealed the ban on elephant trophies.” We looked at one another, baffled, because when the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service tried to pull that stunt back in November, conservationists were up-in-arms. They sent email petitions, urged people to call the department head and protest, and contacted news organizations to explain the dangers of trophy hunting. The Elephant Listening Project, the Cornell-based forest elephant research program where I work, had also joined the fray. To our surprise, President Trump responded to initial discussions of withdrawing the ban with an uncharacteristically hesitant tweet, declaring he would put the decision on hold until he reviewed “all conservation facts”. Two days later, he called trophy hunting a “horror show,” stating advocates would have a hard time convincing him of its value. In a move that once again shocked environmentalists — considering Trump’s record on undermining environmental standards — the ban stayed.
But just four months later, the FWS has slipped its repeal of the Obama-era ban under the radar. No large-scale protest spear-headed by environmental organizations, sensational journalism about the horror show, or presidential acknowledgement of the announcement. The decision allows elephant “trophies,” a euphemism for elephant parts (usually the tusks and/or skull) from animals killed in Zimbabwe and Zambia to be brought back to the US. Liz and I were horrified. How does it make sense to re-open hunting season on elephants when poaching and habitat loss are on the rise?¹.
Trophy hunting advocates claim that high-price hunts generate revenue for and interest in conservation efforts.
“I’ve been in this business a long time and listened to a lot of animal-rights organizations that talk loudly about how they’re going to save rhinos and elephants, but we’re the ones putting money on the ground to make it happen” Richard Parsons, chief executive of Safari Club International, said in an interview with the New York Times.
The average elephant trophy ends up costing anywhere from $30,000 to $80,000, most of which, advocates claim, is returned to conservation programs and local communities to protect elephants². Critics of the business dispute the efficacy and morality of this blood money, as much of the money is siphoned by corrupt governments and the risks of over-hunting abound.
At its core, this debate engages ecological holism and separatism. The arguments of trophy hunting advocates rest on the idea that humans can be separated from nature and that the natural world can be segmented, exploited, and partitioned. It is especially easy for a wealthy foreigner to consider the wildlife of Africa as outside their own life, since the consequences of environmental degradation are not immediately felt around the world.
This belief encourages environmental exploitation and risk because it attaches the value of nature to a price tag. The rights of nature — the right an elephant has to its own life — is ignored in favor of its economic and social value as a pair of tusks hanging on the wall. Many critics of trophy hunting take issue with that worldview, stressing ecological holism, our connection to and reliance upon nature. Many people rely on the ecosystem services provided by elephants, from communities living in elephant habitat to those of us throughout the world who gain spiritual, aesthetic, economic, and recreational value from the existence of elephants. Furthermore, preservationists argue that nature has “intrinsic value”³ regardless of any benefit to humankind. What right do any of us have to decide what elephants live or die? Do we have the right to override an elephant’s interest in living?
Trophy hunting proponents counter by claiming that the sacrifice of a handful of elephants is negligible when compared to the populations supported by high-price hunts. Trophy hunting is also arguably less invasive than photographic tourism, as fewer clients generate proportionally more revenue, and hunters are willing to enter less developed and/or politically unstable areas unfit for high-volume tourism⁴. Furthermore, trophy hunting assigns significant economic value to elephants that can otherwise burden local communities: African elephants are capable of serious damage, not only injuring and even killing people that stray too close, but also eating and trampling crops — fruits and vegetables grown in close quarters and large quantities are like a buffet for a hungry elephant⁵. The harsh reality of living in elephant country often sets people and elephants at odds. In an interview with the NYT, Chinhoyi University of Technology zoologist Victor Muposhi said: “If people see that elephants and lions no longer have value, they’ll kill all the animals and let their cattle use the land currently set aside for wildlife.”
Trophy hunting seems to promote environmental stewardship by essentially subsidizing the economic and social challenges of living with elephants. To maintain the hunting industry, governments and communities fund environmental protection, from setting aside designated hunting areas (placing limits on human expansion) to training anti-poaching guards.
But the efficacy of such payment for environmental services is questionable: what incentive do countries have to maintain elephant populations beyond the bare minimum essential for sustaining the hunting industry, and what happens when urban/industrial expansion becomes more advantageous or necessary than maintaining sports hunting areas? What happens if the industry becomes so lucrative that elephant hunting quotas are raised beyond the sustainable level?
The link between trophy hunting and conservation is also far more muddled than advocates insinuate. The money from trophy hunting does not contribute significantly to conservation programs in most countries, and the money for hunting permits may not even reach those programs or communities due to corruption and political instability⁶. And despite the assertion that trophy hunting deters poaching, illegal killing has grown throughout the past decade² alongside trophy hunting expeditions.
Many governments and communities also lack the resources to properly census elephant populations and determine sustainable quotas. Over-hunting can result as much from greed as good intention. The lack of information about elephants and resources with which to acquire it should provoke caution. Elephants typically chosen for hunts tend to be older males, once considered reproductively and ecologically superfluous; however, recent evidence suggests that these males are in fact critical to the gene pool and bull social life. Big-tusked, old male elephants pass on good genes — large tusks, longevity, and good health.
“Killing these males compromises the next generation of the population,” says Cynthia Moss, head of the Amboseli Elephant Research Project.
Old bulls also check the testosterone levels and aggressive behavior of younger males. In Pilanesburg Park in South Africa, for example, young male elephants were responsible for killing 10 percent of the white rhino population, likely because of high testosterone and an unstable social hierarchy. The park lacked older bulls because the elephant population in Pilanesburg had been relocated from another park twenty years prior to the rhino killing incidents. Adults were too difficult to remove, so Pilanesburg received only infants. When old bulls were introduced to the Pilanesburg Park population, white rhino killings stopped⁷.
Older males with the largest tusks are also the targets of ivory poachers, and with a dwindling population, we may seriously need to consider the viability of hunting any male elephants for sport. And because we simply do not know what new information we may discover (preliminary research suggests elephants are self-aware, communicate using seismic signals, and have more complex social systems than we think), perhaps we should avoid unnecessarily threatening elephant survival.
And that is an important question: how necessary is trophy hunting? Clearly, it’s not related to a need for consuming meat. The point of returning home with an elephant “trophy” is to prove one has overcome, bested, and defeated the huge, magnificent beast. Social media has fostered this “kill-and-tell”⁶ behavior, operating as a platform where hunters can boast about their kills to huge audiences. Experts theorize that along with the “multiple satisfactions they seek while hunting,” including social status and achievement, the trophy is a “signal of the costs associated with the hunter’s accomplishment”⁸. Kill shots, where hunters pose with the animals they’ve killed, are an example of this grotesque competition for attention, along with scoring systems devised by hunting associations that award status to members that kill large and/or rare animals.
There are two more illuminating facts that suggest hunters are far more interested in the trophy than conservation or the thrill of the hunt. First is that after several governments banned lion trophy imports and the US banned elephant trophy imports, hunting in those regions fell sharply. Jan Stander, director of Phundundu Wildlife Park in Zimbabwe, told the New York Times that after President Obama’s elephant trophy ban, he “couldn’t even give away” elephant hunts, which he once sold for $80,000⁹. To be clear, trophy hunting was not itself banned. Importing animal remains — the trophy — was restricted. Hunters lost interest in the sport when they could not bring back proof of their kill.
Second is the rather deplorable practice of canned hunting, where animals (like lions) are captured, bred in captivity, and then released for a hunt. These operations are rife with inhumane treatment: young animals are taken from their mothers, raised in cages and petting zoos, then shot and killed for cheap hunting fees⁶. The trophy is all-but guaranteed.
“The expectation of coming home from Africa with a trophy has led to rash behavior,” the Democratic staff of the House Natural Resources Committee reported in a document to Congress in 2016. “These expectations can put pressure on guides and professional hunters to take shortcuts,” both in streamlining the hunt and turning to canned animals. On some level, it is unsurprising and understandable that hunters who spend several thousands of dollars on hunting trips thousands of miles from their homes want a reward for their efforts, but the mentality of entitlement is dangerous.
The belief that nature owes a debt to someone spending money to kill it is exemplary of ecological separatism. This ideology is rooted in distinguishing oneself from both the animals one has killed — through kill shots and say, hanging trophies from the conquered creatures on one’s wall — and even other people, who are not able to afford the costs associated with a hunt in Africa¹⁰.
Public perception seems to share a distaste for gross ecological separatism. Reactions to kill shots and displays of dominance over nature have received media criticism and negative feedback, like the outrage after millionaire dentist William Palmer killed Cecil the Lion. Mobilizing public opinion and pressure to drive government-level change and investment in environmental protections has seen some success, like the Obama administration’s ban on elephant trophy hunting and China’s domestic ban on the ivory trade in 2017.
It’s worrying that the Trump administration seems determined to roll back all environmental progress made by its predecessor. Despite scientific data demonstrating the importance of elephants to their natural ecosystems and moral appeals to the horrific nature of trophy hunting, the FWS has proven to be on the side of sports hunting, touting the argument that hunting funds conservation, despite the real risks of population collapse and the shady connection between hunting and conservation.
To be fair, trophy hunting has benefited some governments and communities, and provides not an insignificant amount of funding in some places. The Communal Areas Management Program for Indigenous Resources (CAMPFIRE) in Zimbabwe is an oft-cited example of a successful payment for environmental services program, including hunting permissions¹¹. Between 1989 and 2001, the program generated $20 million for participating communities, 89 percent of which came from sports hunting.
Thus, neoliberal economics suggest that price signaling will solve issues of economic trade off and sustainability. But this assumes we properly census and value an elephant corpse, when we may be incapable of either requirement. And the allure of rarity may overpower environmental well-being, as the current ivory poaching situation suggests: rising ivory prices have not stifled demand but stimulated it, because the high price of ivory signals rarity and luxury, spurring exploitation. Expensive elephant trophies will likely only increase in value and interest as the population declines, fueling an “extinction vortex.” This effect particularly threatens elephants because their body parts are highly valued throughout the world.
It’s important to realize that trophy hunting is not going to solve ecological or economic crises. At best, it is a short-term stimulant for communities that need ecologically and economically sustainable development strategies not reliant upon selling important resources to foreigners.
“Wild game is the continent’s version of crude oil — and it too will run out someday,” New York Times Magazine contributor Michael Paterniti writes⁶.
Trophy hunting commodifies nature, pricing elephants as objects static, stuffed, and stuck to the wall. Their survival is subject to human demand. It is up to us whether we want elephants to be worth more alive or dead. We must consider both ecological and spiritual concerns about the consequences of killing elephants, along with critical moral questions about the rights of nature. Perhaps we should consider the ecological, social, and economic costs of replacing elephants if the population collapses, rather than the manufactured aesthetic value of elephant trophies. If you, like us at the Elephant Listening Project, prefer a world with thriving, living elephants, the first step to defending that world is demanding the FWS replace the ban on trophy imports from Zimbabwe and Zambia. The next is to promote alternatives to trophy hunting that stress the ecological and moral importance of elephants to develop a longer lasting, stronger commitment to their preservation.
References:
- Thouless, Christopher, et al. “African Elephant Status Report 2016.” Occasional Paper Series of the IUCN Species Survival Commission 60 (2016).
2. Democratic staff of the House Natural Resources Committee. Missing the Mark: African Trophy Hunting Fails to Show Consistent Conservation Benefits. June 2016, http://democrats-naturalresources.house.gov/imo/media/doc/Missing%20the%20Mark.pdf.
3. Gunn, Alastair S. “Environmental ethics and trophy hunting.” Ethics & the Environment 6.1 (2001): 68–95.
4. Lindsey, Peter A., P. A. Roulet, and S. S. Romanach. “Economic and conservation significance of the trophy hunting industry in sub-Saharan Africa.” Biological conservation 134.4 (2007): 455–469.
5. Thekaekara, Tarsh. “Can Elephants and Humans Live Together?” The Guardian, 6 Mar. 2017. www.theguardian.com, http://www.theguardian.com/environment/2017/mar/06/can-elephants-and-humans-live-together.
6. Paterniti, Michael. “Should We Kill Animals to Save Them?” National Geographic Magazine, Oct. 2017, https://www.nationalgeographic.com/magazine/2017/10/trophy-hunting-killing-saving-animals/.
7. “The Delinquents: A Spate of Rhino Killings.” CBS News, 22 Aug. 2000, https://www.cbsnews.com/news/the-delinquents/.
8. Darimont, Chris T., Brian F. Codding, and Kristen Hawkes. “Why men trophy hunt.” Biology letters13.3 (2017): 20160909.
9. Nuwer, Rachel. “U.S. Lifts Ban on Some Elephant and Lion Trophies.” The New York Times, 7 Mar. 2018. NYTimes.com, https://www.nytimes.com/2018/03/07/science/trump-elephant-trophy-hunting.html.
10. Courchamp, Franck, et al. “Rarity value and species extinction: the anthropogenic Allee effect.” PLoS biology 4.12 (2006): e415.:
11. Frost, Peter GH, and Ivan Bond. “The CAMPFIRE programme in Zimbabwe: payments for wildlife services.” Ecological Economics 65.4 (2008): 776–787.
