The Cecil effect

[Nomad]

Who could have thunk it ?

http://globalnews.ca/news/2535297/african-reserve-where-cecil-the-lion-lived-may-have-to-kill-200-lions-due-to-overpopulation/

[shawnhu]

If the lions needs to be culled, their corpses should be sent to anti-hunters doorsteps as a reminder of what happens when conservation is under attack.

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[Critter4321]

You just cannot make this sh#t up!!

[Grouse]

Saw this great comment on the net.  Perfectly sums up the situation:

"Last year, the bleedin' heart liberals lost their collective mind over the fact that dentist Walter Palmer shot and killed a lion named Cecil during a hunting trip to Zimbabwe. Big whoop. Hunters go to Africa. They kill animals, and the licensing fees help the conservation efforts on the continent. But thanks to the outcry, hunters are no longer booking trips to the African Savanna. Now, the place where "Cecil the Lion" was bagged and tagged is facing a bit of a lion problem. The lion population at Bubye Valley Conservancy has ballooned to more than 500 felines. Combined with a dry summer that caused the grassland to grow stunted, the lions are laying waste to the other animal populations. As a result, the conservancy is saying it might have to go out and kill 200 lions.

"The astronomical fees foreign hunters paid to shoot animals in Africa directly supported the continent's conservation efforts," wrote The Truth About Guns' Nick Leghorn. "It was a mutually beneficial, self-sustaining system. Now that the hunters are gone, there isn't enough money to support Hwange National Park's operation and the ecosystem is out-of-whack. Lions will be killed, anyway, without any of hunting's enormous economic benefits."

Furthermore, think of the economic loss to the region. Think of the lost jobs, the money not coming into the area because there are not the hunters willing to pay for lodging, food, transportation and guides. Anti-hunting groups had their field day, but they aren't going to be concerned about the effects of their rabid protesting."

[Five Seasons]

 

Anti-hunting groups had their field day, but they aren't going to be concerned about the effects of their rabid protesting."

 

 

This is so true. And it's funny as I debate with my liberal friends about the current race. I've been told a few times that I vote republican because I vote what's best for me, and not for society. These statements mostly coming from Sanders supporters. In contrast, the financial and ecosystem impact on the Cecil effect has benefited many anti-hunting groups and they're happy. They're probably still happy knowing the impact it's had on the parks. But of course, that's because they only care about their own interests and not for those of others.

Edited February 25, 2016 by Belo

[EspressoBuzz]

Please don't lose sight of the fact that the dentist either of his own will or by being misled by his guides killed a protected lion on a protected reserve. Regardless of the culls that take place before or after, His ILLEGAL action brought an unwelcome light to hunting and trophy hunting in particular. I'm a hunter and conservationist and I don't feel vindicated or smug about the fact that there may be a cull at that reserve now. We need to be one when it comes to condemning those that don't follow the laws even if we don't always agree with the laws. In other threads people want to hang poachers themselves, why is this different?

[Culvercreek hunt club]

Please don't lose sight of the fact that the dentist either of his own will or by being misled by his guides killed a protected lion on a protected reserve. Regardless of the culls that take place before or after, His ILLEGAL action brought an unwelcome light to hunting and trophy hunting in particular. I'm a hunter and conservationist and I don't feel vindicated or smug about the fact that there may be a cull at that reserve now. We need to be one when it comes to condemning those that don't follow the laws even if we don't always agree with the laws. In other threads people want to hang poachers themselves, why is this different?

I believe if you look into it, he ended up being off the preserve and the lion was lured out. That was shy he was cleared of all charges. So not illegal from the hunters perspective. 

[Doc]

Disgust with poaching by a huge percentage of hunters goes without saying. That message never has a shortage of supporters. Believe me, there are plenty of anti-hunters who are quick to pile onto that message and attempt to link poaching with hunting. We even have hunters who for some unknown reason would like to have all hunters tarred with the same brush as poachers. To me disgust for poaching does not need us running for cover or welcoming any connection between poaching and hunting. I am tired with being stirred in with lawbreakers and always being on the defensive as if I had done something wrong. My attitude is that there is nothing gained by restating what I consider to be obvious. Poaching is an offense against hunters .... period. And if someone wants to look at this story and point out what happens when wildlife is mis-managed, I welcome that half of the story that never gets told enough.

[The_Field_Ager]

 

 

"The astronomical fees foreign hunters paid to shoot animals in Africa directly supported the continent's conservation efforts," wrote The Truth About Guns' Nick Leghorn. "It was a mutually beneficial, self-sustaining system. Now that the hunters are gone, there isn't enough money to support Hwange National Park's operation and the ecosystem is out-of-whack. Lions will be killed, anyway, without any of hunting's enormous economic benefits."

Furthermore, think of the economic loss to the region. Think of the lost jobs,

 

 

Liberals don't care about the real world consequences after the hysteria they have generated dies down.  It's all about the narrative and pushing the agenda at every available opportunity. It's the same mindset that sees German feminist groups favoring refugee rape over their perceptions of 'racism' in terms of native public reaction to the invasion of their country and the attacks on German women and girls.

 

British social commentator, Malcolm Muggeridge wrote about the liberal death wish for western civilization over 40 years ago. This is just another manifestation of that. Burn the whole house down, even if you yourself still live inside it. That is the modern Liberal way

Edited February 25, 2016 by Papist

[chas0218]

You mean Simba might have to die?!?! 

 

Are they taking volunteers to help? I'm in!

Edited February 25, 2016 by chas0218

[Grouse]

The dentist was never convicted of anything illegal.  All the charges were dropped.  It wasn't poaching, but the guide has been accused of unethical behavior.  The lion left the safety of the preserve and moved into legal hunting territory.  It was lured with bait, but that also is not illegal there.

 

The anti hunting groups used this info to create the perception of a crime.  This ended all the lion hunting there, because of the negative publicity.  No wealthy African hunter wants to wind up like the dentist.

 

So, the conclusion has to be, the animal rights people stopped all legal lion hunting there, so the local government will be forced to kill (legally poach?) a lot of lions without any monetary compensation when it's done.

 

It's a huge waste, thanks to the emotional response the anti hunters conspired to create.

 

[skiop]

 

Now, the place where "Cecil the Lion" was bagged and tagged is facing a bit of a lion problem. The lion population at Bubye Valley Conservancy has ballooned to more than 500 felines.

 

This seems a bit misleading portraying this ballooning took place in the last year and was direct effect of that incident

[Grouse]

Well, if there were 300 lions a year ago, and that was near the carrying capacity of the area, one year later there can easily be 500 lions, making it necessary to kill 200 at this time.

 

That would be a direct result of no lion hunting in the area for a year.

 

[skiop]

I find it hard to believe their yearly population growth rate is that high

[shawnhu]

I find it hard to believe their yearly population growth rate is that high

When there are plenty of food available, animals tend to breed like rabbits. If not controlled, the food source will quickly deplete and a massive famine will plague the the predators and you'll see a massive cycle until the food source recovers, but the lions may or may not recover from such a shock in the ecosystem.

A quick search showed this.

http://www.defenders.org/african-lion/basic-facts

A lioness can produce as many as 12 pups a year, and the first batch of 4 would be ready to hunt after 11 months. With those numbers, I would say from 300 to 500 is entirely possible within a year.

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Edited February 26, 2016 by shawnhu

[Dinsdale]

Sorry this is long.....might answer some more questions.....Source is a Nat Geo article 

 

Culling to Conserve: A Hard Truth for Lion Conservation

Posted by Michael Schwartz in Cat Watch on February 25, 2016

People that don’t live in Africa tend to learn about wildlife conservation in easy to understand terminology. But safeguarding animal species like lions is often more complex than mainstream media sound bites would have their audiences believe.

The National Post recently reported that management from Zimbabwe’s Bubye Valley Conservancy was considering a controversial move to cull upwards of 200 lions out of a rough population of 500 in order to ensure the reserve’s wildlife biodiversity.

It was also reported that since the growing calls to end trophy hunting, due in large part to the killing of Cecil the lion in Zimbabwe’s Hwange National Park last year, conservancies like Bubye are no longer seeing the funding necessary to adequately cover conservation costs, which includes fence maintenance, financing local schools and health clinics, and providing meat to local people.

Given the many challenges conservationists face in Africa, coupled with culling and trophy hunting being such contentious issues, I decided to reach out to Dr. Byron du Preez, a Bubye Valley Conservancy project leader and member of the Wildlife Conservation Research Unit (WildCRU), in the Department of Zoology at Oxford University.

Specifically, I was hoping for clearer answers regarding the potential paradox that increasing calls for hunting bans in Africa have on existing lion populations, and how that may be playing out within the recent culling conundrum.

Fortunately, Du Preez went one step further by clearing up what was initially reported, clarifying the proposed cull, explaining how culling works, and elaborating on the dangers of promoting single species management.

Clarification on the Proposed Lion Cull

I am an independent scientist working on the Bubye Valley Conservancy, focused on lion ecology, which actually means just about every aspect of the ecosystem, such is the influence that lions have. I am neither pro- nor anti-hunting. I simply focus on practical conservation solutions that actually work in the real world.

We are hopeful that we will be able to translocate some lions, although all previous attempts to translocate lions out of the Bubye Valley Conservancy have been derailed by factors entirely out of our control. However, if the species was in as much trouble as the sensationalist reports like to focus on, one would think that it would be a lot easier to find new homes for these magnificent animals than it actually is.

‘There is basically no more space left in Africa for a new viable population of lions.’

The fact remains that habitat destruction is their biggest enemy, and there is basically no more space left in Africa for a new viable population of lions.


The Science of Culling

A cull is not a once-off fix (neither is translocation, nor contraception), but would be more of an ongoing management operation conducted on an annual basis. When given adequate space, resources, and protection, lion populations can explode, such as they have done on the Bubye Valley Conservancy.

Reducing numbers to alleviate overpopulation pressure does nothing to permanently solve the problem, nor halts the species’ breeding potential; [it] only slows it down for a relatively short time until their population growth returns to the exponential phase once again.

Culling is a management tool that may be used for many species. That includes: elephants, lions, kangaroos, and deer, basically animals that have very little natural control mechanisms other than disease and starvation, and that are now bounded by human settlements and live in smaller areas than they did historically.

As responsible wildlife managers who have a whole ecosystem full of animals to conserve (not just lions), we have therefore discussed culling as an option for controlling the lion population, but have agreed that, for now, this is not necessary just yet and we will continue to try and translocate these animals until our hand is forced.

As already mentioned, there is very little space left in Africa that can have lions but doesn’t already. Also, where lions do occur, especially in parks and private wildlife areas, they often exist at higher densities than they ever did historically.

This is mainly due to augmented surface water supply resulting in greater numbers of non-migratory prey that now no longer limit lion nutrition and energy availability, allowing the lion population to rapidly expand.

For example, successful hunting to feed cubs all the way through to adulthood and independence is one of the greatest stresses for a lion, and often results in dead cubs and reduced population growth. In turn, a high density of lions can severely reduce the density of their prey, ultimately leading to the death of the lions via disease and starvation—far more horrific than humane culling operations conducted by professionals.

The Dangers of Single Species Management

Lions are the apex predator wherever they occur, and as such exert a level of top-down control on the rest of the ecosystem. Lions prey on a wide variety of species, and we are starting to see declines in even the more common and robust prey such as zebra and wildebeest—not to mention the more sensitive species such as sable, kudu, nyala, warthog, and even buffalo and giraffe.

Apart from their prey, lions are aggressively competitive and will go out of their way to kill any leopard, cheetah, wild dog, or hyena that they encounter, and have caused major declines in these species, not just on the Bubye Valley Conservancy, but elsewhere in Africa where lion densities are high.

According to the International Union for the Conservation of Nature (IUCN), cheetah are listed as vulnerable, and wild dogs are endangered.

It is easy to simply focus on the number of lions remaining in Africa that has fallen steeply over the last century from ~100,000 to ~20,000 today, but which is directly linked to the reduction in available habitat.

Simply focusing on increasing the abundance of one species at the cost of another cannot be considered a conservation success—assuming that holistic conservation for the benefit of the entire ecosystem is the end goal—no matter how iconic that species is.

Luckily, lions kill lions, resulting in more lion mortality than any other species—including man on the Bubye Valley Conservancy—and in an ideal world the lion population would level off at a putative carrying capacity where lions control their own numbers (deaths from conflict equal or exceed new births). However, it is possible and probable (man-made water points increase the carrying capacity of — and therefore also the competition and conflict between — all wildlife species) that this would still be at the cost of certain other sensitive species.

Ecosystem stability is related to size (and conversely ecosystem sensitivity is inversely related to size) and smaller areas need to control their lion numbers a lot more carefully than large areas such as the Bubye Valley Conservancy, which is over 3,000 square kilometres [1,160 square miles]. In fact, small reserves in South Africa alone culled over 200 lions in total between 2010 and 2012 ,according to the 2013 report from the Lion Management Forum workshop.

Understanding Carrying Capacity

The Bubye Valley Conservancy does not rely on trophy hunting to manage the lion population. I will discuss the economics of hunting in brief. The most recent and robust lion population survey data calculate a current lion population on the Bubye Valley Conservancy of between 503 and 552 lions (it is impossible to get a 100 percent accurate count on the exact lion number — which also changes daily with births and deaths).

Carrying capacity is an extremely fluid concept, and changes monthly, seasonally, and annually depending on all sorts of factors including rainfall, disease (of both predator and prey), and economics.

It is estimated that 500 lions eat more than U.S. $2.4 million each year (the meat value used is a very conservative $3 per kg – compare that to the price of steak in a supermarket, and then remember that the Bubye Valley Conservancy used to be a cattle-ranching area, and if wildlife becomes unviable, then there is no reason not convert it back to a cattle ranching area once again).


To give the question of carrying capacity a fair, if necessarily vague, answer, I would personally estimate that the upper carrying capacity of lions on the Bubye Valley Conservancy would be around 500 animals—assuming that they are allowed to be hunted and therefore generate the revenue to offset the cost of their predation.

Remember, lion numbers can get out of hand. And if there was no predation, then thousands upon thousands of zebra and wildebeest and impala would need to be culled to prevent them from over grazing the habitat, leading to soil erosion, starvation, and disease.

The ecosystem is a very complex machine and whether anyone likes it or not, humans have intervened with cities, roads, dams, pumped water, fences, and livestock. The only way to mitigate that intervention is by further, more focused, and carefully considered intervention, for the sake of the entire ecosystem.

It is important to bear in mind that the wildlife here, and in the majority of other wildlife areas in Africa (hunting areas exceed the total area conserved by Africa’s national parks by more than 20 percent), does not exist as our, or anyone else’s, luxury.

The Bubye Valley Conservancy is a privately owned wildlife area, or to put it another way, it is a business. The fact that it is a well-run business is the reason why it is one of the greatest conservation successes in Africa, converting from cattle to wildlife in 1994 (only 22 years ago) and now hosting Zimbabwe’s largest contiguous lion population at one of the highest densities in Africa, as well as the third largest black rhino population in the world (after Kruger and Etosha).

This is only possible because it is a business, and is self-sufficient in generating the funds to maintain fences, roads, pay staff, manage the wildlife, pump water, and support the surrounding communities—all extremely necessary factors involved in keeping wildlife alive in Africa.

Michael Schwartz is a freelance journalist and African wildlife conservation researcher. He is also an honorary member of the Jane Goodall Institute and International Institute for Environment and Development’s Uganda Poverty Conservation Learning Group.

[skiop]

When there are plenty of food available, animals tend to breed like rabbits. If not controlled, the food source will quickly deplete and a massive famine will plague the the predators and you'll see a massive cycle until the food source recovers, but the lions may or may not recover from such a shock in the ecosystem.

A quick search showed this.

http://www.defenders.org/african-lion/basic-facts

A lioness can produce as many as 12 pups a year, and the first batch of 4 would be ready to hunt after 11 months. With those numbers, I would say from 300 to 500 is entirely possible within a year.

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Not sure where you are coming with 12 a year, but up to 80% die before they are 2

 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lion

[shawnhu]

Not sure where you are coming with 12 a year, but up to 80% die before they are 2

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lion

3-4 Cubs per 110 days, makes 12 per year.

300 lions a year ago, at a conservative 3:1 ratio of females to males will have 200 females producing 2400 Cubs, per year. Even if I take the mortality rate of Cubs to be 80% before age 1, we are talking about 480 survivors in just the first year alone.

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[Dinsdale]

Not sure where you are coming with 12 a year, but up to 80% die before they are 2

 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lion

 

read the article I posted.

 

Its not really about lion numbers but the shortage of money as the USF&W has effectively eliminated US hunters from importing trophies and there are not too many folks willing to drop $100K on a hunt and leave it there.

 

Marquee animals are what pays for large areas to stay wild.

 

 

 

The same thing is happening with Elephant. USF&W has banned imports from Zimbabwe and Tanzania.

 

A decent Zimbabwe bull hunt was around $40K all in at one point......and out of my league.

 

I can buy the hunt for $16-18K now, because I can never import the ivory; the demand is non existent. Outfitters are just covering costs to keep going.

 

I need a new work truck.....but I'm so close to my dream hunt now I may do that hunt if work looks solid into winter of 17'.....screw the truck, they make em' every day.

 

I can live without the ivory.....or I can find a home for it in Canada and I may well do that.

 

Edited February 26, 2016 by Dinsdale

[skiop]

3-4 Cubs per 110 days, makes 12 per year.

300 lions a year ago, at a conservative 3:1 ratio of females to males will have 200 females producing 2400 Cubs, per year. Even if I take the mortality rate of Cubs to be 80% before age 1, we are talking about 480 survivors in just the first year alone.

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Just because the gestation period is 110 days doesn't mean they have cubs every 110 days

[shawnhu]

Just because the gestation period is 110 days doesn't mean they have cubs every 110 days

That's true, I am assuming, because I'm not a biologist, but I'm willing to bet that there is indeed a population crisis at the preserve. I'm also willing to bet my numbers are pretty accurate for a non-biologist.

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[skiop]

, but I'm willing to bet that there is indeed a population crisis at the preserve

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I was never debating that

[Grouse]

No matter how you look at it, you can't deny the anti hunters effectively stopped hunting there.  This stopped all of the revenue hunters brought into the area.  Now they are going to kill 200 lions and gain nothing by doing it.

 

The anti hunters consider this a win.  Not because it saved any lions, but because it stopped hunters from killing them.  The fact that lions will still be killed is immaterial to the anti hunter.

 

 

[shawnhu]

I was never debating that

Actually, in post #14, it seemed like you were.

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[Dinsdale]

That's true, I am assuming, because I'm not a biologist, but I'm willing to bet that there is indeed a population crisis at the preserve. I'm also willing to bet my numbers are pretty accurate for a non-biologist.

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 Big cats are incredibly prolific on their own give a prey source and room to expand.

 

Its the room that is the issue for much of Africa's wildlife.