Passion Hunt - Editorial: The lion Cecil and trophy hunting.
The facts according to the reconstructions provided by the newspapers, net of the truly imaginative ones, should have gone like this: the American dentist Walter James Palmer bought a regular safari in Zimbabwe from an accredited big game company paying the price of about 55.000 dollars. The rate includes all the services offered during the safari including the abatement fees. Lures have been placed in a large area with distances of up to several kilometers, all obviously outside the national park.
The story is now well known: the lion symbol of the Hwange National Park in Zimbabwe was killed.
Unfortunately the famous Cecil has decided to make a sortie outside the park boundaries and have a snack on one of the baits. We know the rest. Were there any mistakes made by the hunters? Surely! Have any crimes been committed? We do not know this at the moment but we hope that if we have acted outside the law, just and severe penalties will be imposed. Having cleared the field in relation to our position regarding the killing of this specific lion that has sparked a wave of international revolt, however, now we risk, also because of bad faith and ignorance, of transforming this unjust death into an even greater tragedy. to the detriment of African wild animals.
“Hunting, if managed in a conscious way, can play an essential role in the conservation of the African ecosystem, as stated by a growing number of biologists from the University of Zimbabwe”; “Recent studies have shown that, in the 23 African states where hunting is allowed, about 18.500 tourists pay over 200 million dollars a year to hunt lions, leopards, elephants, etc. and get related trophies. This generates a series of incentives, of an economic and financial nature, aimed at safeguarding nature: National Geographic 2009 ”.
The same prestigious magazine in a long article explained how the future of wild animals worldwide is essentially in the hands of hunters who with their love for nature and their passion create an interest and trigger an entire economy that contributes strongly to protect wild environments and the species that live in them. These, dear friends, are irrefutable data.
It is we hunters who pay for the Hwange National Park to exist in Zimbabwe. We are the ones who pay for the guards, equipment and tools necessary for the conservation of wild environments and ecosystems. It is always us who pay for the studies for the conservation of the species and support the economies of the parks where animals can live free and wild. The killing of the lion Cecil did enormous damage to us hunters and to the entire system. The pseudo-environmentalists of the city, the parlor press that doesn't even know what a pair of boots are made of is playing on them.
Jackals beware that playing with fire sooner or later burns us. Wretched reports broadcast in prime time on national news programs even showed as a symbol of conservation the two poor lions locked up in the zoo of Rome that the same "right-thinking" people have always called the biopark. I hope our children and grandchildren can learn about wild animals, enjoy nature and go hunting if they wish.
Federico Cusimano