No matter where you live in the world hunting is a vital part of the ecological balance of humans, animals, and plants. Hunting no doubtably has a huge impact on animals and in turn plants, which then affects humans, with this in mind one has to ask does hunting have a positive affect on the planet or is it harmful? In the United States of America there is hunting in practically every state, however it is very closely controlled by the Department of Natural Resources (DNR), this government organization sets laws for hunting, bag limits, maintains habitat for the animals and other various things that affect the environment and animals. The DNR has done very well at keeping the balance of animal population in the US but in a continent like Africa where there are many independent countries close together regulating something like hunting is going to be much more difficult because certain species might live or migrate over large areas of land that include multiple countries.
Humans have been hunting since the beginning of their existence so why is it that in more recent years that the population of certain species has become threatened? Is it from climate change? Maybe its a result population growth or could it be from hunting? Perhaps its all of them. In Africa there is what many call the “big five,” these are five animals that people consider the most impressive animals to kill, it includes the African Elephant, Lion, Cape Buffalo, Black Rhinoceros, and the Leopard. People have been hunting them for a very long time, some for trophies, some for the thrill, and many for food. The Elephant is the largest dry land mammal in the world and attracts a lot of attention when it comes to hunting, the rest of the big five are very dangerous animals and thus the there is a thrill to hunt them.
The African Elephant is currently the most poached out of the big five for is massive tusks which have been recorded to weigh up to 220 lbs. as pair and 11.5 feet in length, and 12 feet at the shoulder, however there is an elephant that had an estimated 340 lbs. pair of tusks. The elephant uses these tusks as weapons, tools, or for resting the trunk on them. (Dyer, 4-5) The elephant is a remarkable creature that displays intelligence and other human like characteristics, one of which is that they are very family oriented, elephant families stay together, the immediate family very rarely separate and even the relatives stay close together, this makes the elephant harder to hunt because one has get them scatter find a straggler, but if the hunter gets to close the herd the elephants have been known to attack people. The lion is also a very desired animal to hunt although there is little motivation to poach lions, unlike the elephant for its tusk, the reason people like to hunt the lion is because it is a large dangerous animal. The lion is called the king of the jungle for reason, it has no natural predator and eats pretty much anything it wants, however during the course of a hunt lions can be injured or even killed by their prey. Lions like the elephant care for each other, lions live in “prides” and tend to stay together in a family type group and in some cases “Two lions had dragged the skinned body of their friend to a bare place in the shade of an acacia tree, where they guarded her remains.”(Dyer, 80) The leopard is much smaller than the lion but is equally ferocious, it is a solitary animal and does like being around other leopards. The leopard spends most of it’s time in the trees, it also likes to keep its food up in the trees where hyenas and other scavengers cannot get to it.
The cape buffalo is a very resilient, it has tough skin and bones, it is hot tempered and will fight anything that threatens it. The cape buffalo has long horns that it most often uses as a weapon to fight off predators and for challenging other buffalo for a mate.
The black rhinoceros is a large animal that is a little to brave for its own good for it has little to offer in a fight. Rhinos are not a social animal, they tend to stick to themselves and keep their routines of eating, drinking, and sleeping.
It is not right to kill an animal for a thrill and leave its carcass to rot, many have done this in the past and continue to do it, in Theodore Roosevelt’s book “African Game Trails” he talks about times he himself and his friends went to Africa to hunt the “big five”, for the most part they went to hunt for thrill but he says on page 85 “The two Hills, Clifford and Harold, were running an ostrich farm. The lions sometimes killed their ostriches and stock; and the Hills in return had killed several lions.” Like in the early settlement of North America animals such as wolves and mountain lions would kill peoples live stock so they would often kill those animals so they would not kill their live stock anymore, but in modern day this is rarely the case, the “big five” have been extensively hunted, so much so that the black rhinoceros is an endangered animal and the rest of the big five could easily become the same if people do not learn how to hunt responsibly.
Hunting in African has been changing over the years and people hunt for a couple different reasons. The most widely known form of hunting in Africa is trophy hunting, surprisingly, Americans known for their obsession for entertainment, tho they make up the largest number of Africa’s hunting market are not the only ones who trophy hunt in Africa, many Germans trophy hunt in Africa as well. In a short survey about lion hunting conducted by the South African Journal of Wildlife Research, interviewed 154 hunters, 48 (one third) of which were German. For a small scale survey Americans only made up about 75% of the hunters. Another reason for hunting is for food, however non-citizens have no need of the food for they rarely take the animal home, but many hunting guide organizations feed local people with the animals.
In the state of Minnesota the wolf has been illegal to hunt for many years because it was on the endangered species list but this past year the DNR decided it was okay to hunt again. Hunting is important to the balance of population, wolves have no natural predator so the population had gotten to a point where it could start harming the wolves. The white tail deer is the main food source for wolves and when there are too many they eat so many deer that they start to starve, how ever people also hunt deer for food, this is where regulations come in, there must be balance of deer and their predators.
The population of the white tail deer has been closely monitored and the DNR allows people to bag a certain number of deer based on the population of that area with consideration of the wolves. When the deer population gets to high it leads to diseases like Chronic Wasting Disease so for the general welfare of the deer the DNR allows limited hunted reduce the population, this is the same idea behind the wolf hunting. The population of the big five rarely if not ever gets to be too high, so hunting them has become a problem, so many countries in Africa have been putting laws into place to maintain the number of animals killed. The black rhinoceros is illegal to hunt with no exceptions, the trading, selling, and buying of elephant tusks has been banned in hopes of deterring people from killing sensuously.
The US does not allow importation of any of the big five or part of them to help reduce the desire to hunt the animals, however many Americans still hunt them despite these laws, some spending upward $30,000 just for the hunt. Some laws in place restrict the types of guns people can bring into the countries because it can make it easier to kill the animals, also there are many fees for citizens and non-citizens to hunt in Africa, all these laws are to make it more difficult to hunt the animals help their populations stay higher.
Poaching has been a huge problem in Africa in part because there have not been many laws regarding the animals for very long but even with those laws people continue to poach because the see money to be made and do not care about the implications of a species going extinct. The International Fund for Wildlife Welfare estimates that 35,000-38,000 African elephants were poached last year in Kenya which is about 10% of the population in that region, with poaching like this the elephants existence is threatened, legalized hunting allows agencies to monitor and control the population of the animals and the fees for licenses help fund the countries in ways they can fight poaching. International trafficking agencies confiscated about 25 tons of ivory which they estimate to have come from 2,500 elephants. The Black Rhino is another one of the big five that has been poached, primarily for its front horn. That has had a devastating affect on its population. The countries in Africa and others have taken steps over the years to prevent poaching of animals in Africa. One example of this is the US banning importation of ivory to take away the desire for people obtain it.
With the many hunters and poachers the population of the animals in Africa has become a big concern for a lot of people, with most of the big five (in exception to the cape buffalo) they are nearing the endangered species list because of the rate at which the are being killed. It would seem that a solution to this problem would be banning hunting, but there would be some detrimental implications to this, most hunting companies and game farms donate the animals to local villages for food and other purposes and often an animal killed on a hunt is large enough to feed anywhere from 50-100 people. For many people who live in Africa they can not afford to legally hunt so when people come in from outside the country and kill an animal and the local people it is a huge blessing to them. In an article called “Helping Out in Africa” written by Jim Zumbo he tells a story about a hunting trip he took to Botswana Africa and how it really helped the local people “Imagine my delight when I went on a recent trip to Botswana in southern Africa, where every ounce of meat from the game we killed was given to people on the verge of starvation. To give you an idea of how desperate these folks are, consider that most of their protein was coming from mopani worms, an insect that invades their trees during the hot summer months.”
It may seem crazy to some that a person could go to Africa and spend ten thousand dollars or more to shoot an animal, especially when that species population is decreasing, but a lot more goes on then just killing an animal, starving people are fed and clothed because of it. If man is not careful and those animals completely die then no body has food, and that can not be undone so it is important to keep close watch of population and why the animals are being hunted.
Works cited:
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<http://www.dnr.state.mn.us/mammals/wolves/mgmt.html>.
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<http://worldwildlife.org/species/african-elephant>.
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<http://animals.nationalgeographic.com/animals/mammals/african-elephant/>.
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Jim Zumbo. “Helping Out in Africa.” May 2006. Article
P. Lindsey, R. Alexander, G. Balme, N. Midlane, & J. Craig
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Devan Allen McGranahan
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Theodore Roosevelt, “African Game Trails.” New York, New York. 1910. Print.
Anthony Dyer, “Classic African Animals, The Big Five.” New York, New York. 1973. Print.
Peter H. Beard, “The End of the Game.” San Francisco, California. 1938. Print.
