The Zambian authorities have lifted the ban on trophy hunting lions and leopards. On the face of it seems like a crazy decision because both species are under threat and both are endangered. Officially, the leopard is “Near Threatened” and the lion “Vulnerable” (IUCN Red List). In truth, there is no argument to support hunting them and forget so called “conservation hunting” which is a scam because the money for hunting does not back into conservation.
The decision really is crazy and I tell you why.
The idiot, Jean Kapata, who calls himself the Tourism Minister said,
“We did an aerial survey and established that we have more than 4,000 lions and leopards are in excess of 8,000.”
Who the heck is going to believe that? “We did an aerial survey” – how the hell can anyone count the number of lions and leopards in Zambia from a aircraft? It is obviously impossible so the figures they have come up with are inflated guesses to support the restarting of hunting so they can charge hundreds of thousands of US dollars for the privilege of shooting an old lion and then pocket it.
Hunting this animals was banned in 2013. The reason: the population size was too low. All of a sudden for some mysterious reason the population is so high they can he hunted.
The reason has nothing to do with the population size of the lion and leopard. The reason is money; they can make a lot by charging American hunters exorbitant fees, as mentioned.
When are they going to learn? There is another sad aspect to this. In restarting hunting of these wild cat species, Zambia encourages it elsewhere and the international trade in these animals.
It is time to stop sport hunting not restart it.
Source: Zambia lifts ban….
