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The King is Back
“As the apex predator, lions are a vital component of functioning ecosystems,” Sharp says. “However, without the incentive of trophy hunting, we could not afford to have as many lions as we do. Lions eat other animals, and in real terms consume hundreds of thousands of dollars’ worth of wildlife on the conservancy each year. Lion hunts are not cheap, but this is why. If we were unable to continue harvesting our lions, their population size would unfortunately need to come down, and this means culling them, as there is currently nowhere left in Africa to introduce a viable lion population.”
And this is a direct comparison beween wolves and lions. Predators need to be managed and controlled, else they eat available prey species to a much lower level.
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The future of places like BVC is crucial to the future of lions in Africa.
Lion ecology is widely misunderstood. The general public seems determined to vilify trophy hunting when, in reality, the loss of habitat, a rapidly-growing human population, and poaching for profit are the true risks to wild lions. To that end, the BVC has partnered with the University of Oxford Wildlife Conservation Unit to help study these cats in the BVC.
“Lions are an important cog that makes the ecological machine work, and we don’t want to lose the lions,” Sharp says. “Responsible trophy hunting cannot significantly affect lion population density or survival, as it is only the old males no longer contributing to the gene pool or protecting their pride that are hunted. Indeed, the lion abundance has increased exponentially despite, and indirectly because of, hunting.”
Sharp points out that the BVC’s success with lions has resulted in the area accounting for more than a third of the CITES harvest quota for the entire nation of Zimbabwe. In late 2015, BVC representatives, along with lion experts from Hwange Park and the Save Valley Conservancy, met with officials from the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service to discuss the future of lions and lion hunting in Zimbabwe. According to the official USFWS statement, “The Service found that sport-hunting, if well managed, may provide a benefit to the subspecies. Well-managed conservation programs use trophy-hunting revenues to sustain lion conservation, research and anti-poaching activities. However, the Service found that not all trophy hunting programs are scientifically based or managed in a sustainable way. So in addition to protecting both lion subspecies under the ESA, we created a permitting mechanism to support and strengthen the accountability of conservation programs in other nations.”
The fact that there are any lions at all in the conservancy is a testament to the BVC’s commitment to conservation. While lion populations continue to decline across much of the continent, the Bubye Valley’s population of big cats remains stable thanks to careful management bolstered by ecological research. More importantly, the future of lions in the valley is a benefit to the shareholders who live alongside these cats. Since there are more wild lions on hunting areas today than in parks and preserves in Africa, it is time that the world began to understand why the future of places like the BVC is congruent with the future of the lion as a species.
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