Kendall
Jones is a young, blond Texas cheerleader and—if you listen to
the Internet outrage machine—a cold-blooded killer.
The 19-year-old Texas Tech University student has been attacked
on her
Facebook page for posting photos of herself posing with dead
exotic animals she killed on African hunting trips. Currently,
there are two petitions calling for her hide: the first one
asks Facebook to take down the photos and the second asks for
her to be
barred from Africa.
Jones has defended her big game hunting saying that her kills
are not only legal but they promote conservation efforts.
And you know what? She’s right.
It seems counterintuitive: How can killing animals actually save
endangered wildlife?
According to Reason Science Coorespondent Ronald
Bailey we should look
to the chickens:
“The world is in no danger of running out of chickens. Yet the
world has fewer and fewer elephants. lions, tigers, giraffes and so
forth. Why? In part it is because no one owns wild animals and
consequently they are nuisances rather than resources.”
A 2005 paper in the Journal of International Wildlife Law
and Policy
provides evidence for this phenomenon:
“The legalization of white rhinoceros hunting in South Africa
motivated private landowners to reintroduce the species onto their
lands. As a result, the country saw an increase in white rhinos
from fewer than one hundred individuals to more than 11,000, even
while a limited number were killed as trophies.”
A study done by Peter Lindsey, a conservation biologist with the
Univeristy of Zimbabwe in Harare,
came to the same conclusion:
“Trophy hunting is of key importance to conservation in Africa
by creating [financial] incentives to promote and retain wildlife
as a land use over vast areas.”
Because contrary to what animal rights activists are posting on
Jones’ Facebook page, the primary threat to endangered animals is
not trophy hunting. It’s the destruction of the animals’ natural
habitats and poaching. And as conservationist Mike Norton-Griffiths
points out,
private ownership curbs both of these issues:
“The economic driving force behind both these is the fact that
for most landowners the returns available from agriculture greatly
exceed those from livestock, so it pays them to plough up the
rangelands. Everything is loaded against landowners making money
from wildlife…”If Kenya wishes to maintain significant wildlife populations
outside its protected areas, then it has to ensure that landowners
can gain an income from wildlife that is competitive with what they
can earn from agriculture and livestock.”
Let the cheerleader hunt. She’s saving our wildlife, after
all.
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