Trophy Hunting: Stop Killing Animals for Your Amusement

 “… obtain animal parts (that is, their heads, hides or claws and even the whole stuffed animal) for display and for bragging rights, but not for subsistence” shared The Humane Society of the United States on their website in explanation to those who participate in trophy hunting and what they ‘gain’ from it. Why kill such a beautiful animal, such as the elephant? Instead of hunting them, why not take safari trips to visit and possibly interact with one. Stop taking family trips that end with blood on your hands and end the trip with saying you had the opportunity to meet these beautiful animals in their own environment.

Specifically, trophy hunting has become widely popular in South Africa, Tanzania, Zimbabwe, Namibia and many other African countries. Today, this topic has spread through the media captivating many more people as we come to find that the Trump Administration has now allowed the exporting of trophy hunting from the bigger games such as parts from elephants and lions by lifting Obamas ban of it in 2014. Imports to the United States alone from 2005 to 2014 were 1.26 million, and what have we gained from that? With this new law, that number will only continue to rise. With such an issue being legal it brings in the attention of more groups of people and only increases the severity of the dangers we are pushing onto our animal wildlife. There needs to be a higher level of importance that we place on the conservation of these animals because one day they are simply not going to be around and within time we are only damaging the biomes due to creating an imbalance in the cycle of natural life.

From a National Geographic website article, Meet the Man Who Knew Cecil the Lion Best by Simon Worrall explained that a media sensation hit in 2015 of a black maned lion named Cecil that was shot by a hunter in Zimbabwe and was “left to die a long, slow, agonizing death.” Due to how much outrage it brought the world it created movement from bigger companies seeing the picture of how tragic this is for our world. Airline companies began taking part in the controversy by stating their side on the issue. United, American and Delta airlines immediately put a ban on the transportation of “buffalo, elephant, leopard, lion or rhino trophies.” This decision only helps to block hunters in limiting their ways to succeed in getting their hunts across to the United States. The transportation of any animal that was killed solely for trophies is completely unjust because these animals deserve to have rights as anyone else should. Why do we feel we have authority over them? To decide what they deserve?

Devastating enough, numbers have risen regarding lion deaths or disappearances in a National Park in Zimbabwe. Unfortunately, the population of adult male lions has decreased “from 26.3% to 13.7% during a period of 4 yr… 72% were killed by trophy hunters" explained in the article of 'Assessing the sustainability of African lion trophy hunting, with recommendations for policy' by Scott Creel, et.al. Also, keeping the lion population or any animal population sustained is not a difficult thing. With reports from 2004 to 2012 there are records explaining the skull width and length of the animals that were shot over time and you can see that the measurements have only grown meaning that bigger, adult lions are being killed, more adult lives are being taken. It is also noticeable that there is no intention of the number of hunts declining in the future. For some reason we are not trying to save life here, we are trying to accommodate the ridiculous needs part of the population wants which is to kill off species of animals for their own amusement.

Considering all this there are still those who believe that we could save endangered wildlife by killing them which is inane and as Jeffrey Flocken wrote in the article Trophy Hunting: ‘Killing animals to save them is not conservation’ posted to the CNN website explained that the logic behind that does not make sense in any way possible. Killing an animal would mean you also killed off any offspring they would have been able to produce. Killing just one animal means you are killing hundreds because you strip them away from the possibility of producing any babies for future generations. Just as we come to learn through experiences so do animals as well and when animals are in negative situations with humans all their future interactions become negative and could lead to reasons why some villagers kill them. One would say the argument of killing animals brings conservation is not supported in any way due solely on numbers. For instance, looking at just the elephant population in Africa it has drastically dropped since the 1940’s losing over 90% of their population. Imagine that. The idea of living without 90% of people on earth. Let’s let that sink in. If this idea of kill to conserve really did work, then numbers as significantly big as these would not be reported. Once again, the president’s administration was wrong.

To add on top of hunting animals for amusement author Ameena Schelling published ‘Hunters Say Trophy Hunting Helps Animals Here’s Why They’re Wrong’ by The Dodo explains what ‘canned hunting’ is. Considered a sport for hunters is when they breed lions and place them into cages and shoot them for fun. Its important to understand in this situation that these hunters are creating the situation themselves, torturing these animals from birth to where they are breeding them in captivity and then being placed in cages and ending their life when they please.

Supporting this cause will help many factors that you may not feel right away but those factors are what contribute to the planet’s overall health. If we kill off more and more wildlife, we begin to mess with ecosystems that will eventually affect us and our daily lives. The biomes around us will begin to change and not for the better. These are the slow but real changes that will occur if we begin to proceed with the laws that we have passed. Let natural wildlife simply be in peace. Observing wildlife is not prohibited in any way but why go farther than that, why endanger an entire species for your revolting amusement. I propose that we put an end to this “sport” as eventually we are going to come to find the beautiful biomes we have are slowly decaying as there will be no animals left to bask in it. Why live in a world where people enjoy the idea of killing animals? As insane as our society is, who knows how far this will go, the idea of going farther than already killing beautiful wildlife is scary enough. As we already take a considerable amount of land from these animals yearly for our own purposes, we could spare the decency to stop taking the lives of these animals. As we as humans ask to be left in peace when we want, we should be able to grant the same to an animal species that is unable to ask but deserves the right to it as well.